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habits

Nov 30
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Turning Challenges into Opportunities

By Blogpost, Attitude, challenges, Food for thought, Goals, habits, mindset, opportunities

Every time the week ends, it’s a great opportunity for me to review the week, and use these realizations to help me face the next week with a fresh mindset.

So, what’s been happening? What’s been some of the wins, some successes, some lessons along the way? Here in Sydney town, it’s a beautiful sunny day out there today. It’s sweltering hot! Hopefully you’ve got the beach and cool off throughout the day.

Again, this is a great way to review the week. What’s been some of the wins? What’s been some of the lessons? Love to hear those wins and those lessons. Comment below, and yeah, let’s see how you’ve gone.

Lesson 1: Keep Challenging Yourself

Now, looking at a good lesson from this morning’s training session. I’m training up for our next event, which is coming up in February, which is the Tarawera Ultra Marathon. It’s a 100k in Rotorua in New Zealand, and that’s in February.

So, training up and back on the stairs, Coogee death stairs – so to speak. It’s about 200 plus stairs there, and I’m training with this mate this morning.

As I was doing 10 steps and was up to my 9th set – about to stop on my 10th – and I suddenly noticed that he has just got on to his 4th of his set. Anyway, he’s obviously gone through some ups and downs at the moment, through some challenges.

Instinctively, I looked back at him and said, “Mate, alright! Last set! Here are the rules. There’s no walking and we’ve got to go to the top. And you got to lead the way.”

And he goes, “Yeah! You’re on.”

Then I said, “If we walk, we’re going to do another set.”

He goes, “DONE!”

Then, what happened was, in previous set – I’ve gone halfway and have a little bit of walk, and go again, and so forth, and so forth. This last set was a game changer. What happened was that he obviously made through that whole 200 plus stairs without walking, and he lead the way.

And I said, “What a great metaphor in life.”

  1. You knew the rules that you need to be playing by.
  2. You finished it and you completed it to the end.
  3. There was no walking, you jogged it all the way.
  4. You led the pack.

Lesson 2: Learn from Your Challenges

I finally said to him, take those lessons now into your day, into your week – and watch what happens. And now, this is where exercise can draw upon so many amazing lessons that we can utilize in our own life.

You know, that little self-talk that the challenges, you know – working by yourself or working with your mate, or working in a group. Always different components, we can take a lot of those lessons into your day to day, into your business life.

So there we go, some lessons learned from training this morning. What’s been some of your wins? What’s been some of your lessons?

Love to hear your thought. Please comment below and looking forward to speaking to your soon.

Nov 06
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Plan vs. Review – or Both

By habits, Blogpost, Food for thought, management, purpose

Welcome to another opportunity to shed some light and learn some tips and techniques, strategies and some insights for the week ahead.

So, what do we do? Do we go planning or reviewing – is the question for today.

What do you do? Do you plan, or do you review?

Coming up to our next intensive where we bring all our clients together to go through a couple of these different strategies. And obviously, I’ve been working with a lot of clients over the last week.

So the questions comes, do we plan or do we review?

And the answer is both! Alright!?

Because what happens is, we can’t plan unless we review. We can’t review unless we plan. It sounds like a funny concept, and it reminds me of the question about which comes first – the chicken or the egg? But it’s so true. Let me explain.

How do you know where to go, if you don’t review where you’ve come from? Are you familiar with the saying about hindsight being 20/20?

The review isn’t so much about beating ourselves up on what we did wrong, or the things that we could have done better. That’s not the point in doing all of this.

While it’s true that we should not ignore our wrong decisions in the past so we would not repeat them, let’s not spend so much time on that during the review process. It’s getting the key wins, it’s getting the key lessons, getting the key aha! moments.

Once we get the review underway we can take a look at the different patterns and the different things that we need to change. We take that into consideration and start planning ahead. Armed with the knowledge of what works, and what doesn’t, we look at our vision and plan what steps to take to make that vision into a reality.

So, again – planning or reviewing? Do both!

The four core questions that we need to go through during a review:

  • What’s working?
  • What hasn’t been working?
  • What are the key lessons?
  • What do we need to be doing differently?

When we’re planning, we’re obviously seeing the big picture ahead. And then, we start to reverse engineer back to the key KPIs that we need to be achieving and also the three key projects that we will be working on.

Hope you learned something today. Love to hear your thoughts by commenting below.

Oct 23
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Chunking: Bringing Structure into Your Business

By Attitude, Blogpost, challenges, habits, management

Welcome to another opportunity where we share some insights to help you get ready to rock-and-roll and tackle the week ahead.

I want to start by sharing with you a little story about something that we’re going to be talking about today which is called CHUNKING. Sounds like a meat pie, doesn’t it?

What is Chunking?

So often I hear and see when working with people is that they’ve got so much to do. They are busy all the time and it seems that they have so much on their plate.

But when we actually look at it, there’s usually a number of key areas that if we can compile all these things into these certain areas. It will make the “overwhelm” and the frustration disappear.

When we go through this process called chunking, what it enables you to do is to really look at things a little bit differently. Because what usually holds us back is the overwhelm and the over frustration of where do we go? What do we do first? and so forth.

Chunking is a really good process to bring all that craziness into some structure.

If you look at three key areas within your business or within your life, there’s always different chunks that go into different bite-size pieces, which goes into those key areas.

It could be team, it could be prospecting, or it could be admin.

What is the Importance of Chunking?

The first step in chunking is identify those big rocks.

Those big areas within your life or within your business. And then, all your to-do-lists and all your daily activities will be into that.

And if you look at what is the key outcome – what’s the key outcome to that overall task, that overall big rock – a lot of those things underneath will actually end up become less important or that’ll disappear.

Because what happens is, we get so caught up in the stuff.

We get so caught up in the “doing this,” when we need to step up and have a look at what’s the key outcome to this big rock and the reason why.

When we come from that key space of what’s the key outcome and what’s the “why,” all those little things will become less important. It will eventually become irrelevant that we don’t need to do anymore.

So there’s the importance of chunking.

Let’s really make sure we smash out this week with your chunking.

I’d love to hear if you have any questions or any comments – just comment below and let’s have a chat about chunking.

May 14
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Getting Things Done Effectively And Efficiently

By Time Management, Blogpost, habits, management, stress

Your office is busy. Everything is urgent. Nothing can wait. Your team is standing there with a sort of desperate look because they are terrified that they will choose the wrong thing to focus on.

But there’s a way to maintain everyone’s sanity and actually get things done effectively.

“Maintenance is cheaper than repairs.” It applies to your car and can also apply to your business.

Having systems in place is absolutely vital for the smooth daily operations. And these systems will help tremendously when there’s a crisis.

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Apr 15
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The Joys of Procrastinating the Right Way

By Blogpost, habits

We’re all told that procrastination is a terrible thing. But done right, it can actually be a great way to move toward your goals and make life fun at the same time – and mastering the “immediate reward vs. long-term benefit” game.

We are all somewhat rebellious when it comes to doing things we don’t want to do. You know – just one more ice cream cone and the diet will start tomorrow… just one more day of surfing the internet and then I’ll start making those calls…

The lure of the shiny, fun, interesting things is strong, even though we’re fully aware that we are self-sabotaging! When the short-term gratification outweighs the long-term gain, we cave in and do the fun thing.

Here’s how to turn that to your advantage:

It’s called structured procrastination.

Let’s say that at the top of your list is the One Thing that you don’t want to do. You look at it, think about it, and immediately feel resistance to doing it. Anything but THAT!

There are two approaches here that will work depending on the day, the mood, the alignment of the stars and your energy.

1. Get the One Thing done. Do it first, get it done and forget it. Okay… you know yourself. You know that this approach may work sometimes, but definitely not all the time. Otherwise you would have already gotten One Thing done.

2. Take on the rest of your list. Many tasks await your attention. These are the ones to turn to when you want to procrastinate – NOT the shiny, fun things! So pick the easiest and most fun, and do it. Wow, that feels satisfying! Want more satisfaction? Yes! Take on another task on the list. Even better… you can plow through the whole list like that, joyfully putting off the One Thing… until the day you are ready (or you’re out of “but I have to do this first” excuses) and you can devote your energy to the One Thing.

The beauty of this approach is that it makes the One Thing less “IMPORTANT” than the other things on your list. It takes away its monumental stature and reduces it to “just another to-do.”

Using this approach, you are tricking yourself into thinking that the One Thing is just another task. It doesn’t matter if you’re mixing long-term and short-term satisfaction. In fact, that’s what makes this so effective! You get both the pleasure of short-term avoidance of the One Thing, and the long-term pleasure of getting it done, matter-of-factly, as if it were no big deal.

 

Inspired by a post on http://99u.com/articles/7286/the-power-of-structured-procrastination.

Apr 08
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Motivational Tips for Slackers

By Blogpost, challenges, habits

Okay, I’m sure you don’t consider yourself a slacker. You work hard and have the best interests of your business in mind. But let’s face it. Sometimes, all the mojo seems to go out the window and you feel disconnected, scattered, unmotivated, frustrated, overwhelmed and tired of the daily grind. And there goes your productivity…

Don’t throw out your to-do list, and don’t stare at it blankly while dreaming of seaside holidays.

A motivational slump can go on for days, sometimes. Not good! Here are a few ways to jump-start your engine again and get you focused and on track.

1. A to-do list can be dauntingly huge. Make a “hit list” instead – a list of the most unpleasant, difficult and intimidating things you have to do. Get them out of the way first thing in the morning. That includes all the stuff you’ve been procrastinating on. Get it out of your hair! Take one one or two of these energy-suckers every day and build some massive satisfaction.

2. Delegate and outsource what you can, so you can focus on the things you love. It’s worth a bit of cash to have other people do the things you’d rather not do. In the long run, you’ll be mentally fresher, more motivated, more focused and more driven if you aren’t saddled with tasks that you are just not suited for!

3. Chunk it. A huge part of creating a masterful plan of action is breaking tasks down into their smallest action components. What can you realistically accomplish on a given task in a day? Break that down into hour-long chunks, and if possible, into even smaller increments of 10-15 minutes. You can make yourself focus and do anything for a very short time!

4. Turn off the alarms. All those beeps, bings and chirps are distracting and oh, so tempting. Set aside a time to answer emails and return calls. Just not while you’re focused.

5. Commit to your goals. If you’re working on a project that is outside of your normal daily routine, make yourself spend 15-30 minutes on that project every day. Yes, at the expense of something else. Everyone has some underused time in their day (TV,commuting, waiting, etc.) that can be put to productive use.

6. Step away from it. But on the flip side, you do need a mental and physical break from your work. Chunking allows you to take multiple mini-breaks throughout the day. Take them!!! Eat a healthy snack; go for a brisk walk; indulge in a little Facebook. Just take yourself away from what you’re focused on. You’ll come back fresh and motivated.

7. Keep your workspace organised and motivating. Have some visual representations of your goals hanging in your workspace. Keep your space clean and tidy. 5 minutes of daily cleanup at the end of the day will give you a chance to reflect on the day’s work, set the stage for the next day’s awesomeness, and remind you of any unfinished business that you’ll need to tend to.

Even when you just don’t feel like doing anything, you can keep going toward your goals with a few short bursts of intense activity. C’mon – you can do anything for 15 minutes, right! Go do it!

Inspired by a post on http://unclutterer.com/

Mar 11
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Success Habits for Time Management and Self Management

By Blogpost, habits

Habits automate your success (or your failure). Here are ten positive and empowering habits that will make it easier to achieve your business and personal goals.

1. Clear your space! Get rid of clutter in your workspace and in your living space. Clutter literally sucks the energy right out of you!

2. Write your goals down where you can see them often. Putting them on paper makes them more real than if you stored them all in your head.

3. Make a plan. You only have a limited amount of time to achieve your business and personal goals so make sure you’re making the most of it. Plans also help you stay motivated and on task.

4. Learn how to prioritize using the four categories below:
– DO NOW: “important and urgent”
– DO SECOND: “important but not urgent”
– DO THIRD: “urgent but not important” (the squeaky wheel may get the grease, but be careful that the squeaky wheel isn’t rolling in the opposite direction of your goals!)
– LEAVE FOR LAST (and who really cares if you get to it… either delegate it or leave it): “unimportant and not urgent”.

5. Make a decision! Of course refer to #2, #3 and #4… and if something is part of your plan, and you don’t know what to do, just do what your gut instincts say could be a good move. You can’t fail if you learn from your mistakes, and some action is better than analysis paralysis!

6. Do not procrastinate. Remember that procrastination is a sign of fear. Face the fear. Action sends fear running for the hills!

7. Work on your self-confidence through action. Even if you “fail” remember that you are being enriched because of the lessons you learned, PLUS… you won’t be so afraid to take chances and possibly fail again. If you did it once, you can do it again.

8. Be disciplined. It can take a long time to achieve anything. It takes for ever if you don’t do anything. Take one step at a time to keep things manageable.

9. Work towards a win-win for everyone. No matter what your goals are, if you can benefit someone else by achieving it, you’ll feel better about yourself, you’ll enlist more people to help you, and you’ll enjoy the process more!

10. Be aware. Inspiration, ideas, opportunities and resources are all around you. Are you seeing them or are you blind to them? Slow down, and consider that everything that “jumps out at you” did so for a reason.

You can add many, many positive habits to this list – and I encourage you to do so! But, it’s a great start and a strong productivity booster if you implement these 10 tips.

Inspired by a post by Ologundudu Abraham on: http://www.goalsontrack.com/blog/