Archive for December, 2005
Do you let negative people poison you with their limiting beliefs? Do you have people in your life that don’t seem to have anything positive to say when you share a goal, dream or plan? If you do, you’re probably letting their negativity bring your level of performance and achievement down - even if you don’t think it’s happening!
In my life I’ve had people around who were not positive when I shared with them a business plan or a goal I had set. Sometimes they were even negative when we were talking in general. I’m guessing that you probably have someone like this in your life - hopefully you know who it is (sometimes figuring out who’s your “negative nelly” can be tricky). Once you know who it is (or who they are for some of you) you need to figure out what steps you need to take to make sure their negativity doesn’t cause you to start to doubt your own abilities, plans and successes.
Let me share an example; years ago when I was just out of school, I had a friend who was pretty happy with his station in life. Let’s just say his station involved playing a lot of video games, living at home for free, and not working any harder than he needed to in order to pay his car payment. He wasn’t what you would call “ambitious.”
He was always negative when I would talk to him about my plans. He had fifty reasons my business wouldn’t succeed. He had all the reasons why moving into an apartment when I didn’t have a guaranteed paycheck was a bad idea. He knew exactly why he wasn’t able to get ahead himself, or find a better paying job; society was keeping him down.
I never thought I took any of his negativity to heart. I would try to let it roll off my back, and for the most part I think I did a pretty good job. I did start a business, I did move into (what was for me at the time) a pretty expensive apartment. I was doing all the things that he said I would fail at. I thought I was doing great!
But over time I realized that every now and then this little voice would pop up and say, “Maybe Joe was right about this. Maybe it’s a fluke that things are working out for you…” By listening to, and being around, a negative person I had picked up a limiting belief that wasn’t even originally mine. He had passed it on like a cold!
I was fortunate enough to find and work with a mentor and business coach during this time. I really began to realize who around me was genuinely trying to help me by questioning my assumptions and statements, and who was just negative and trying to tear my goals, hopes and dreams down.
After several years I decided that “Joe” was bringing me more pain and negativity than I wanted or could handle in our relationship. I decided that the best thing to do would be to stop spending time with him. I had to take a very drastic step and “fire” a friend. When you don’t identify negative people around you early, and take steps to minimize their negative influence on you, you sometimes have to take drastic actions like stopping the friendship.
You have to be careful too when looking for negative people. Not everyone who disagrees with you is being negative! Also, some people who seem to be negative are really supportive, they’re just challenging you with, “how.”
If you tell your negative friend you’re going to earn a million dollars they might say, “You can’t earn a million dollars, you never went to college.” A supporter would say something like, “It will be very difficult to earn a million dollars - impossible without the right plan.”
If you stop listening after your supporter says this, you’ll miss their follow up comment; “Lets talk about your action plan to see if it makes sense to reach your goal.” A lot of times the distinction between someone being negative and trying to tear you down, and someone being supportive, but asking hard questions, won’t be so clear.
So, how do you handle people in your life who are chronically negative that you can’t “fire?” You can try to understand why they’re being negative. Is it the result of a bad experience they’ve had with a goal you’re trying to achieve? Are they worried you’ll fail and make a fool of yourself?
I’ve often found it’s the latter. Many times you’ll find the people who are most negative are the people who love you the most. I don’t believe it’s because they are trying to poison you, but they’re afraid your failure to achieve a goal will be too much to bear (but for you or for them I don’t know).
The best thing I’ve found to do with people who are negative for these reasons is to start small, share your cemented successes, and build up the goals and dreams you share with them slowly. If you burst into the room and exclaim, “I’m going to be president of my company in 2 years!” They’re going to slip into “negative nelly” mode. If you burst into the room and exclaim, “I just got promoted to manager of my department! I’m going to start learning how I can keep moving up in my company. I would enjoy being at the top someday.” you’ve shared with them an absolute achievement - you received a promotion - and you’ve set the stage to start talking about your rise to the CEO’s office.
It’s much harder for your constantly-negative loved one to poison you with limiting beliefs if you take this approach with them.
To enhance your success, goals and personal development, stop listening to negative people who want to tear you down. They’re not being negative to warn you away from disaster, they’re being negative because they’re jealous of your ambitions and goals. Share your small successes - if you keep them in your life at all - and make sure you supplement yourself with positive material on a regular basis. There are so many great resources on the Internet, in your local book stores and at the library that you’ll have more material available than you can use in one lifetime!
December 30th, 2005
How high do you place the “bar” when you set a goal for yourself? When you define the outcome you want to achieve for your goal, do you go ahead and use it, or do you raise it up?
If you’re not raising it up, you’re not getting the maximum benefit out of yourself when you work to achieve your goal.
My mentor used to challenge me with what she called the “rule of ten” when we talked about goal setting. Whatever outcome I had defined as the successful completion of a stated goal, she would challenge me to raise it by a factor of ten.
I know what you’re thinking, “That’s crazy, I’ll just set myself up to fail!” I thought the same thing when she first started pushing me to keep raising my expectations of myself and definitions of a success achievement of a goal…that is until I tried it and it started working!
You’re probably familiar with the S.M.A.R.T. method of goal setting; goals should be “S”pecific, “M”easurable, “A”ttainable, “R”ealistic, and “T”imely. When first challenged to set a goal and then raise your expectations by ten times, many people worry it violates the “realistic” test of a S.M.A.R.T. goal.
Please remember that “realistic” does not mean “easy.” Realistic means that the outcome is possible to achieve and is somehow within the grasp of your abilities even if at the time you set the goal you’re not quite sure how. A realistic goal should significantly challenge you without being impossible.
If you set a goal that’s too easy to achieve - what I call “gimme goals” - you won’t get the same satisfaction when you achieve the goal, and it tells your brain that you’re only capable of attaining “gimme goals.” It sets you up to create and reinforce limiting beliefs about yourself.
If you set a goal and then raise your expectation of the outcome by ten times, you set your subconscious mind up for a challenge that it’s really good at - figuring out how to deliver on your request. Your subconscious mind loves to do this, it’s what it’s built for, and it’s one of the things it does best. When you pose a really challenging question to your subconscious - and state it in a positive, non-limiting way - your subconscious will get to work trying to create an answer.
If your original goal is to write a book in twelve months, try raising the bar and setting the goal to write a book in a month and a half. How can you write a book in a month and a half? That’s the challenge you want to put your subconscious to work on. It’s certainly not impossible. You might - for example - devote an hour each morning and an hour each evening to writing. Over the course of a month and a half that would be 92 hours of writing - depending on your subject you could very well have a finished book on your hands.
I recently heard an interview on the radio with Neil Diamond. In the interview he recalled that one of his best known (and most requested) songs - Sweet Caroline - was written in about 40 minutes while he was eating breakfast before a studio gig. He had to have three songs to record and he only had two. Talk about setting the bar high!
If you set a goal to close $5000 in sales, what would you have to do to close $50,000 sales?
Years ago I was working on some proposals and I thought I would close about $3000 in sales. What did my mentor do? She challenged me to think about closing $30,000 in sales. By raising my bar, I opened myself to re-evaluate how I was handling the projects. I thought one client might want to spend maybe $1000 or $1500 on their project, but I had neglected to really sit down and listen to what they wanted. In one of our final meetings, I started asking some very open ended questions and listening!
It turns out that I had completely misunderstood their desires. They were looking for a prestige project to set them apart in their industry. I was busy trying to sell them a bare bones solution - get the “yes” and get out - and they wanted all the bells and whistles! In the final meeting I outlined all of the features they had talked about and they said, “Yes, that’s what we want!” I knew it would be a $12,000 project - not $1500. I balked a bit, not wanting to throw out what I thought was such a huge number. When I finally did, they didn’t bat an eye. They asked where they needed to sign to get started. You can bet I was on cloud nine as I walked out of that meeting!
Would I have gone back and really sought out what they wanted if I wasn’t being challenged to raise my bar? I don’t think I would have. It was a very uncomfortable thing for me to do at the time (I was way outside my comfort zone), but at the end of the day it couldn’t have been easier to actually get the project.
I didn’t make my ten-times goal overall, but I did with that client and I felt great about my achievement. Originally I was thinking I would close about $3000 in sales and I closed $12,000 on just one client by raising my bar. Did I close the whole $30,000? Nope. Was I thrilled to close $12,000? In light of my original $3000 goal you bet I was!
I want to challenge you to raise your bar. The next time you set a goal, try raising your expectations of a successful outcome by 10 times and see what happens. If you really put your mind to work on the goal, and open yourself to the new possibilities such a challenge can bring, you can be more successful than you initially thought possible; even when your first thought is, “How the heck am I doing to do this?”
December 28th, 2005
How much are you worth? How much is your time worth? If you’re like most people, I can guarantee you think and act like your time is worth less than it really is; in some cases much less.
When I ask, “What are you worth?” I don’t mean net worth (which is important). I mean, how do you value yourself and how do you perceive the value you add to the relationships you’re in?
If you earn $75,000 a year and you’re being compensated for a 40 hour week, your time is worth $36.06 per hour. If you didn’t add at least $36 per hour in value to your business relationships, you probably wouldn’t stay employed for long.
But do you think of your worth in terms of dollars and cents on a daily or hourly basis? If you don’t, why not? Lawyers sure do, doctors too. Good businessmen and executives know their worth - their value - to the penny, and so should you. Why? Good question!
Consider this scenario; you’ve put in a hard week working (your value is $36 per hour remember?) and you’re ready to relax on a beautiful, sunny Saturday. Right about the time you open a frosty beverage and sit down to relax your wife reminds you that the yard needs to be cut. It takes about two hours to cut, trim and rake the yard; you would rather be golfing or fishing or napping - anything else - on this beautiful, sunny, warm Saturday afternoon. You know the neighbor has a kid who will cut the yard for $30 - should you pay him?
If you know what value you bring ($36 per hour), you can make a much better evaluation as to whether this is a good value. In the scenario above, it would take you two hours to cut the yard; that’s worth $72 of your time. You can get the job done for $30. If you value your time, it might be a good investment to pay to have the yard cut unless you really enjoy cutting grass.
This is a simple example to be sure, but think if you could use that time to generate extra income, or improve yourself a bit more. If you could “earn” your value while paying to have the yard cut, you would be $42 ahead. This is a powerful way to maximize your time and your value.
Knowing your worth is also extremely helpful when you have to make decisions about committing your time to projects. If you have a firm understanding of your value, when someone asks you to take on extra projects at work, or clients ask for more of your time, or your community center wants you to chair an event you can ask yourself, “Knowing my value is $X - is this a good and worthwhile use of my time?”
If you can’t answer “yes” to that question, or it’s not a task or cause you feel extremely positive about helping, it might be better to graciously pass on the offer.
If you don’t know your value, you can’t make an assessment like this; you will likely get stuck with another project or involved in another group from which you may not find (or provide) value.
You can also use your understanding of your value, to steer your behavior. An excellent exercise is to ask, “If I were worth $300 per hour, how would I behave?” Using the power of visualization, you can create a state where you do earn $300 (or $500, or $1000) dollars per hour - you can visualize you’re earning like a high-end New York attorney - and you can visualize how you might behave if your value were at this much higher level.
This gets you more comfortable thinking about money and larger sums of money. The ultimate goal of your visualization is to get yourself to feel completely comfortable believing that you do bring a value of $300 per hour (or more) to your business dealings. It’s a new concept for many people to think this way, and it’s usually uncomfortable to start thinking of yourself providing this level of value. If you don’t feel comfortable, you won’t believe in yourself; and if you don’t believe in yourself - that you truly do provide this high level of value - you won’t be successful; it becomes a limiting belief. Remember the words of Henry Ford; “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”
- The first step is becoming aware of what your value is today, and use that knowledge to steer your decisions.
- The second step is to get yourself comfortable with the idea that you provide a much higher level of value. Use the power of visualization to practice this and set a high goal for yourself; try for at least 10 times what your “today” value is, really stretch your visualization muscles!
- The last step is to truly believe you are worth this much higher value, and that you do provide this level of value. When you really believe this, it’s not difficult to earn $300 per hour, or $1000 per hour, or even $10,000 per hour. Consider real-estate; it’s possible for almost anyone to buy real-estate and sell it for a profit. All it takes is research on which piece of real-estate to buy. If you figure out your value for a transaction like this, it’s very possible your worth will be several hundred dollars per hour.
When you’re aware of your worth - and you use the power that knowledge brings - you can increase your worth. When you visualize a worth you want to obtain, you can learn and condition yourself to act (today) as if you do bring a higher value to your interactions with people. This will - in fact - lead you to actually having a higher value in your mind and in others’ minds. Once you open you mind to such possibilities, it’s freed and ready to help fill in the detail of how to make it happen.
But only if you know what you’re worth!
December 26th, 2005
My primary goal in starting this web site was to create articles to help people and to share ideas about success, passion, personal development, purpose and goals. My primary goal was not to generate money from the web site or to make a quick buck. A secondary goal was to create a vehicle that provides passive income which would eventually provide for my time to write these articles.
Passive income - income that generates itself for you - is a very powerful path to wealth.
After working on this web site for less than a month I’ve finally earned my first dollar with the on-line advertising. Sure a dollar isn’t much - it won’t even buy a large coffee at Starbucks - but it’s income that my efforts here have generated. It is also income that will continue to be generated long after these articles have been written. Hopefully you get excellent value and insight from this web site - that’s my primary motivation - and in return I’m hoping that as traffic to this site grows it will generate more passive income to allow me to create more content.
Throughout life you have to be aware of how you can build passive income streams. You have to keep yourself open to the potential opportunities around you everywhere. You also have to be willing to pay the price required to create the income stream (in my case, creating articles to provide you value, and keeping in mind the primary goal of inspiring people).
I want to sincerely thank everyone that has read the site so far. My pledge to you will be to continue to write what I hope will be insightful, useful, inspiring articles covering topics like passion, productivity, goals, improvement, time management and more. I also hope I can help inspire you to seek out and successfully find your own passive income streams. Please keep reading, and I’ll keep writing!
December 24th, 2005
Have you ever thought about what your unique talent is? There is something that you do better than anyone else - it’s your purpose for being, it’s your dharma.
If this sounds a bit “out there” please allow me to sound a little metaphysical for a moment, I promise I’ll make a point. Dharma is the law of “being”; defined broadly as the fulfillment of an inherent nature or destiny. To “follow dharma” means to act in accordance with divine law.
I like the way writer Deepak Chopra puts it; “When you blend your unique talent with service to others, you experience the ecstasy and exultation of your own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals!”
So when you know you’re living and working in accordance with your dharma, you’re in harmony. I think that means that understanding what your dharma is, is an important step in growth and development.
If you don’t know what your dharma is, how do you find it?
If we use Deepak’s definition above then we need to define what our unique talent is, that we can use to be of service to others.
Here are some questions you can use to begin to outline this for yourself:
1) If you were completely financially independent - if you had ten million dollars in cash - what would you do? What would you get out of bed for in the morning? What would you pay to be able to do? Write down your answers until you start coming up with things that don’t feel “true” to yourself.
2) What hobby totally holds your attention? What do you do that causes you to completely lose track of time? Watching television doesn’t count! Write a paragraph or two about your favorite hobby or activity - detail counts here so feel free to make it as detailed as possible.
3) How could you transform what you’ve written above to be in the service of other people? List some different ways you can incorporate helping others into what you’ve already listed.
For example, one of my passions is photography - it’s one of the things I would pay other people to let me do. When I’m working on a photography project I often lose track of time. I love to help someone visualize a photo, work with them to create the picture, and then see the look on their face when I deliver the final image and it’s exactly what they wanted. I think I get a bigger charge out of seeing them happy with the final image than they do.
These are ways to know your working to your dharma. You’re easily in “the zone” and time is slipping away more quickly than it seems possible. You’re not only feeling powerful and excited and energetic for yourself, but you’re helping other people - providing a service.
You’re creating a positive energy flow around yourself. This positive energy flow creates affluence for yourself. Most people associate affluence with having money and wealth, but affluence literally means “a plentiful flow”.
When you are working to your dharma, positive energy is flowing out from you and positive energy will also begin to flow in to you. You’re creating affluence for yourself and you will eventually be rewarded for your affluence of positive energy.
It’s not an easy task to determine what your dharma is. I have thought and reflected and journaled on this very topic for years, and I still encounter new things that change my perceptions of what my dharma might be. However the struggle to answer this question for yourself will be rewarded with amazing amounts of positive energy and personal growth.
It’s well worth investing the time to answer this question for yourself; what is your dharma?
December 23rd, 2005
Years ago I was involved in a sales training program where one of the sections was titled, “What you ‘R’ is not who you ‘I’.”
It was a quirky title and it’s stuck with me over the years not because it’s just quirky, but because it’s a memorable way of remembering a powerful concept.
What is means is this; do you let yourself be defined by the roles you have in life, or do you define your roles by how you see yourself conceptually?
A role is simply a part you play. Most people have many roles, and in our culture when meeting new people often the first question they’ll ask after introductions is, “So…what do you do?” We tend to subconsciously group people according to their roles.
If I asked you to define yourself, how would you start? If you’re like most people you do it by listing out your roles:
- I’m a son
- I’m a technology worker
- I’m a husband
- I’m a friend
- I’m a photographer
- I’m a student
- I’m an avid reader
- I’m a writer
- etc., etc., etc.
There are an endless number of roles you could list if you had the time. But should these roles and your performance in them define you and how you feel about yourself? No!
Why? Because no matter how hard you work to improve yourself there will always be someone else out there in a role who is just a little better at it than you are. You won’t be the world’s most perfect son, you won’t be the world’s most perfect husband, you won’t be the best programmer; you may hold on to such a title at some point in your life - like a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods - but eventually someone will come along who is better.
And if you define yourself and your identity by the roles you fill you’ll eventually get to a point where a bad day in a role will result in you having a bad day.
So why should we try to separate ourselves from our roles, and a bigger question you might be asking is, “What the heck is left if not for my roles?”
What’s left is you. And just like every other person (sans-roles) your “you” is perfect, it’s always operating at a “10″ and it is the framework from which you hang your roles.
Because I’m not the world’s best technology worker, there will be days where I perform really badly in that role. I shouldn’t come home and let poor performance in my role as a “technology worker” cause poor performance in my role as a husband. Invariably though this is what happens; a bad day at the office is brought home and turns into a bad night at home. When this happens, we’re letting ourselves be defined by our roles.
The goal then should be to not let our view of our self be scripted by our performance in our roles. Just as professional athletes have bad games, they shake them off and keep working on having a great game - we should strive for the same!
This is a tough concept to understand and to accept. What are we if not our roles?
We need to create a clear concept of who we are, without the “R” - as an individual. I think of myself as an individual who constantly seeks to improve myself, to learn and continue to expand my knowledge. I seek to develop new skills that can benefit me in all aspects of my life and in all of my roles. I am constantly seeking passion in my life, in whatever form it comes to me.
I still have bad days as a technology worker. I still am not the most sensitive husband or the most thoughtful son. I still have arguments with friends. But at the end of the day I try to remember that these are just my roles and not “me”.
I would like to challenge you to work on separating your roles from your identity and remember that your “I” should always be at a 10 even if your “R” is in the basement.
I’ll leave you with a closing line from my sales training days; “You can perform in your roles (R) only in a manner that is consistent with how you see yourself conceptually (I).”
If you’re not at a “10″ conceptually, you’ll never perform at a “10″ in the roles you assume!
December 21st, 2005
I’ve been keeping a journal for over 9 years. I don’t know what prompted me to start writing, but one day I decided it would be a good idea. At the time I had an old, beat-up laptop with a copy of MS Works for DOS and I kept my journal in a text file.
Over the years I’ve tried various journaling techniques, I’ve used software specifically for keeping a diary or journal, I’ve used pen and paper, I’ve used MS Word and formatted my journal more like a book, complete with index and cross-references.
But the bottom line is this; no matter what the technology, I’ve keep a written record of my life for the last 9 years.
I didn’t know at the time what my intention was - it wasn’t to be able to look back and chart my growth (a benefit I stumbled on later) - but it felt like something I should be doing. In hind-sight I’m so glad I started.
How about you? Do you keep a journal of your life? If you don’t, it’s something you should seriously consider starting.
What is the purpose of keeping a journal? I find that when I write I’m not consciously thinking about the future, I’m usually just recapturing major events and changes in my life. It just so happens that in doing this I usually get a pretty good snapshot of my mood, my attitude, and the major “pain” areas of my life.
As I grow and change, I find that my “pain” areas change. As I improve my attitude or my outlook changes, I find it impacts my writing too. Nine years ago many of my journal entries were about what I thought I was going to do in life. Seven years ago many were focused on money (or my lack thereof). Five years ago entries covered some rough business situations and relationships I was in. Three years ago I wrote about how my life had changed since getting married. Now I find I write a lot about my future and goal setting.
I can look back through my journals and get a sense of where I was and what my major life-obstacles were at almost any point in the last 9 years.
You also can’t manage what you don’t measure. By writing about the issues (both positive and negative) as well as tracking my successes (or failures) in achieving goals and keeping commitments I am constantly measuring myself. This means I can manage my success, development and personal improvement much more easily than if I didn’t journal - and the same holds true for you too.
I also find that I write more often when things are really tough for me and life is throwing fastballs. I am not a daily writer, but I may write two or three times a week when I’m especially frustrated about some aspect of my life. It’s therapeutic to get my thoughts and frustrations out on paper.
Once I can see them written out, they don’t seem quite so overwhelming. Once I’ve emptied out my head and put everything in writing I find my brain seems to churn out ideas and solutions more readily than when it’s carrying all thoughts and ideas that I’ve written. I’ve recently read about this in “Getting Things Done” and “Ready for Anything”, David Allen attributes this fountain of ideas to having an empty brain. Once you empty it out, your brain will start to generate new ideas to fill itself back up. This is definitely true for me, and I use this to my advantage by journaling and getting as much out of my head as possible.
The only journaling issue I constantly struggle with is this; what is the best way for me to journal? I started with a plain ‘ol text file in a computer. I used paper journals for a long time (my favorite is the “Anything Book” and a nice fountain pen), and lately I’ve been using MS Word to collect, index and reference my thoughts. I like the allure of pen-and-paper, and you don’t need to worry about hard-drive crashes, but keeping a journal digitally is just so convenient! I’ll leave the best method of keeping a journal as an exercise to you.
Starting a journal is extremely easy too; grab some paper and write about your day. I’m not formal, I don’t start entries with “Dear diary…” I write as if I was sending a letter to someone - in this case myself - because that’s ultimately what I’m doing. I’m sending a letter to myself in the future. I put the date of the top of a blank page and then just start getting thoughts out of my head. Spelling and grammar is optional, unless you want to preserve your writings for your children or grandchildren.
And that’s another benefit of keeping a journal, passing some intimate history down through the family. My sister has our grandmother’s journal from when she was a young lady. It creates a special connection and provides a real-life window into the history of our family.
If you currently keep a journal, congratulations! You’re ahead of a lot of people in your pursuit of personal development and improvement. If you’re not yet journaling on a regular basis I would like to encourage you to give it a try. Promise yourself you’ll write weekly for two months, set some goal for keeping a journal and give it a try. Remember, you can’t manage what you don’t measure; start measuring yourself so you can maximize your ability to successfully complete your goals and continually improve and develop yourself.
December 19th, 2005
My father-in-law has a saying of which I’m fond; he maintains, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
In his hey-day my father-in-law was a competitive archer, and he likes to tell stories from competitions past, but he always stresses that what he accomplished during a tournament wasn’t the result of luck or wishing or wanting to win “real bad.” It was the result of hours and hours of practice…perfect practice.
My father-in-law never called it this, but a large part of his practice was visualization. He visualized the bow in his hands. He visualized the arrow settled in the rest. He visualized the tension as he drew the bow. He visualized the arrow as it flew from the bow and, most importantly, he visualized the arrow hitting dead-center on the target.
He saw all of this happen in his mind before he ever drew back the arrow or even picked up the bow. He did all of this over and over in his mind before each and every shot he took.
Visualization is an extremely powerful tool, but it alone won’t make you a super-star. For that you need a coach. My father-in-law did have some luck on his side, he caught the attention of one of the top archery shooters who took on the role of a coach; his mentor.
His mentor taught the base skills, how to technically be a perfect archer. The rest was up to my father-in-law and that’s where persistence, visualization and perfect practice comes in to play.
So what did all of this perfect practice and visualization do for my father-in-law? Well, he didn’t pick up a bow until he was an adult and in the course of only a few years was at a point where he had to decide between turning pro and spending all of him time on the road, or keeping archery as a hobby and spending time with his children. That’s a pretty powerful accomplishment for someone who won his first bow in a raffle.
There are two keys to being better at whatever it is you do. The first key is finding a coach. You have to get your technical skills down so you can practice perfectly in the first place. The second key is visualization, using your mind to create a perfect reality in which you cannot fail at anything you attempt.
When you visualize an outcome in your brain, the chemical reactions fire just like they do when you actually attempt the same activity in real life.
When you visualize in your head, you have the ability to break the rules. It’s your own miniature “Matrix” - you can bend the rules in your favor.
You can visualize giving the perfect speech over and over, you can visualize sinking that 20 foot putt over and over, you can visualize anything you can imagine. When you couple your visualization with the skills you learn from your coach you create a situation where you’re practicing perfectly, and you’re getting better at whatever you’ve put your energy and effort into.
And through small improvements you can see a huge change in your life. If you can improve just 1% a week on whatever aspect you’re turning your energy you’ll see a 52% improvement in the course of a year.
That’s a huge return on your investment! Wouldn’t you be doing back-flips if your stock portfolio turned in a 52% return in a year? Wouldn’t you be doing back-flips if your personal-development portfolio turned in a 52% improvement in a year?
When you work with a coach or mentor and you put to work the power of visualization you unleash a tremendous amount of energy that you can direct to personal development; if you want a better than 50% return don’t settle for a 1% improvement each week, strive for a 1% improvement each day. The sky’s the limit when you put these tools to work for you!
December 13th, 2005
Want a secret that will make you more productive in an extremely short period of time? Keep a time log on yourself for a week.
Now I didn’t say it was a secret that would shake you to your foundations, but it is something that most people have never done. It’s also extremely powerful to see your entire day, laid before you, in black and white. When you have a concrete log of how you spent your time (the only limited resource there really is) you’ll start to see how those extra trips to the coffee machine and those interruptions from co-workers really eat away at your day.
And how do you keep a time log? Great question, here’s how:
Get a piece of paper and write the time you start and stop doing any activity. It’s really that simple! If you’re like me though, you want to keep better track of your time to really get a good idea of where you’re spending it.
I found a form in the book “The Time Trap” by R. Alec MacKenzie that works perfectly for me, and I’ve created a PDF in the spirit of that form, which you can download for yourself:
Here is what a time log looks like when filled out.
Using the time log is extremely easy, but here are some helpful tips to get you off and running more quickly.
1. Write down the time anytime you change what you’re working on. This is the whole key to making a time log work for you. Be brutally honest with yourself, you’re the only person who will see this, so no fibbing.
Why write down the times as you change tasks or are interrupted? If you go back and try to summarize at the end of the day you will forget a substantial amount of what you did and the times will become fuzzy. Trust me on this from my own personal experience. I have at least two time logs I never finished because I stopped tracking the time and I could not remember enough detail to make it worthwhile.
2. Use abbreviations where possible. Alec recommends, and I use, the following: An arrow pointing in is incoming (you receive), an arrow pointing out is outgoing (you initiate). A capital “I” is interruption, “C” is call, “E” is email.
Using this system an incoming call looks like this: “->C Joe Smith, RE: New client” An outgoing call looks like this: “C-> Bob RE: Meeting plans”.
If a person walks up and starts talking to me I would write down “I, Sally RE: Her weekend”
3. Rate the use of your time. I like the 1-4 scale where 1=critical, 2=important 3=routine, and 4=waste of time. Most tasks are 2 or 3; the major item I want to accomplish in a day would rate a 1 and I try to weed out all of the 4s as much as possible.
4. Keep your time log for a minimum of a week. Plan on keeping a time log for a week at least twice a year. This will give you a good snapshot of your time over more than one day. This helps smooth out those really low or really high productivity days and gives you a more accurate picture.
Coming back to your time log twice a year (or even better, quarterly) helps keep you on your toes so you don’t fall back into your old, less productive habits.
How will keeping a time log send your productivity through the roof? Once I had kept a really honest time log on myself for about two weeks I noticed a few things; first, I spent way more time checking and replying to email than I thought I did - upwards of two hours a day! Second, I allowed myself to get interrupted by calls and visitors far more than I thought. Something like 60% of my interruptions were from people wanting to discuss non-business topics and about 80% of my phone calls were sales solicitations from companies offering services I had no intention of using.
I immediately changed my email habits. I now check my email when I get to work, after lunch and before I leave. I might check it one or two more times depending on how many meetings I’ve been in during the day. I also started paying a lot more attention to how much time I was spending in personal conversations. I didn’t want to cut them out and isolate myself from others, but now I make sure I have an exit planned so I can gracefully step out of a conversation after a few minutes.
I also stopped answering my phone unless expecting a call (thank goodness for caller ID!). Since I don’t have a secretary to handle my calls (and in our modern business society many people don’t), I let my voice mail screen my calls. Now instead of reaching for the phone every time it rings I let it go. I check my messages before I leave work and make notes of people I need to call back in the morning.
Just making these three minor changes in how I spend my day made a very noticeable change in my level of productivity.
I’m also a lot more careful about how I spend my time. I try to keep in mind that it’s the only resource that’s really limited and I pay careful attention to what I’m working on and to whom I’m giving time for interruptions and projects.
In the weeks since keeping a daily time log these longer-term changes have really boosted my productivity. One of the biggest gains is that I usually and ready to leave - with major tasks completed - at 5:30pm every day, it’s very seldom I need to stay late; this has the added benefit of making my wife much happier too!
December 12th, 2005
I found an excellent quote, when I read it my first thought was, “That’s exactly true!” I know several people who put themselves into the “loser” category exactly because of this behaviour.
“Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.”
–ARMONK, NY ( Aug. 8 )
How do you measure yourself? I’ve certainly been guilty of comparing my own successes to those of others. The times I did, I was never as happy with an accomplishment or an achievement as I was when I compared my successes against my goals.
It’s difficult not to be influenced by the success of people around us. It’s difficult to not try to use their achievements as a measuring stick for ourselves. But when we do that we set ourselves up for disappointment. No matter what you achieve, there will always be someone who achieves a little (or a lot) more.
So goal setting is extremely powerful not only for having a specific picture of the things you want to achieve, it also serves as your “yard stick” when it comes time to measure your success in achieving your goals.
This is why setting specific and measurable goals is so important. If you don’t have a specific idea of exactly what you want, and you don’t have a method of measuring it, you’ll never know if you succeeded in achieving your goal!
And if you don’t know if you achieved your goal, you’ll probably look to the success of people around you to see how you “stack up.”
And you know what? You won’t be happy with what you’ve achieved because you’re not using your own goals as the deciding factor of success, you’re using someone else’s goals as the deciding factor of success.
So make a commitment today to stop letting your sense of accomplishment be dimmed by comparing yourself to others. Make a commitment to set written goals and use those goals to measure your achievements!
December 9th, 2005
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TimeLog.pdf
