Things to do every day
that will improve your life and your business
Kevin Murphy in a recent column listed 17 things that
extraordinary people do every day. I
thought he must have read my notes, I use many of these ideas daily to improve
my productivity and have for years. Here
is my list:
1. Review your long-term goals - Do you know what your long term goal is? Do you know "why" you are doing what you do? If you do you need to review your goals daily, if you don't then take the time in the next week or so to define your why and what your long term goals are and write them down. It doesn't have to be a book, in fact a few lines is all you need.
2. Make daily plans - Plan your day either before you go home the day before or first thing in the morning. Use the top five idea, list out the five things you want to accomplish and prioritize them. Now when you sit down at your desk you know exactly what you are going to do. Do number one and cross if off. You will be amazed at how much you can accomplish in a short time when you know what it is you are going to do daily.
3. Ask for help - Just having someone to talk to is enough to change the course, if you don't have a mentor find one, make it a priority. Someone who has more experience and who is impartial and willing to listen. You are never too old to have a mentor and in fact your mentor may not be as old as you are, that is not the point. Having someone to discuss ideas with is essential to your success.
4. Engage in mentorship - if it's good enough for you then you should be engaging in mentorship with others, either in your own field or in another field where you can be the listener. You will be amazed what you learn.
5. Give yourself a break - Think about this in the context of a lumberjack for a moment. How many trees do you think he would have cut down if he never sharpened his saw? The preparation time he spent making sure his tools were as sharp as possible was as important as the time he was actually cutting trees. The same principle applies to your business, if you don't keep yourself sharp and alert you will not perform to your potential. Time spent at leisure or attending a seminar or taking a course is just essential to your success as the hours you spend on the job.
6. Keep a Journal - Probably the most important thing you can do is keep a record of what you did daily.
7. Develop confidence in yourself - Believe in yourself. You gain confidence by doing, take up the task and go forward, failure is not a disaster it is learning what doesn't work. The fear of failure is usually the fear of the unknown, destroying that fear is best accomplished by doing. Public speaking is the number one fear of most people, there is a good chance you fall into that category -- facing that one fear can do wonders for your confidence. Join Toastmasters or take a course in public speaking it will help you to achieve greater confidence in all facets of your life.
8. Express gratitude - Be grateful for all you receive, even if it is only the air you breath and the life you life. It is a fact that expressing gratitude begets more abundance, don't wait to receive express gratitude first. Use your journal as your gratitude journal write down daily what your are grateful for.
9. Write thank you notes - You should be sending five thank you notes a week. It doesn't matter to whom, it does matter that you say thanks or compliment someone on a job well done. It is magical how you will benefit from this simple task.
10. Focus on others, give back through service - Jim Collins while occupying the leadership chair at West Point was astounded to learn that the three keys of the cadets were; 1. Service to others, 2. Growth through failure , which led to 3. Success as leaders. If it is good enough for the elite that graduate from West Point should it not be good enough for you and me? Join a service club, volunteer in your community, do it because you want to be of service not because you want to promote your business the rewards will be a hundred fold.
11. Exercise - Do something physical every day, if you don't want to run or go to the gym, take up Yoga. Buy a Yoga book and start on your living room floor.
12. Deep Breathing exercise - Learn to do this daily, it rejuvenates your body adding much needed oxygen that makes your brain function more efficiently. Do this for five minutes every day.
13. Give something up - Learning to focus on what really works sometimes requires giving up what doesn't work but which has become comfortable to do. Take the time to examine your daily procedures and decide what you can eliminate.
14. Delegate - Micro managing kills more businesses than any other management mistake. Sometimes the hardest thing for a business person to do is to let someone else do it. The problem most often is that the manager is not happy with the results performed by the person he or she delegated the task to. You have to decide that you are willing to accept the results you get when you delegate. Nobody's perfect, learn to be content with the results you get, you may be surprised how effective someone else's concepts can be. More importantly the next time the results will be even better.
15. Laugh - Especially at yourself and laugh often, it is an elixir, the antidote to unhappiness and a healing agent that doesn't cost anything and gets amazing results. There is nothing that is so critical that you can't see the humour.
16. Sleep - There are 24 hours in a day, 8 of them should be used for sleep, it is essential to your success, you cannot rob from yourself and succeed. No matter what you think about sleep it is essential to get the eight hours you need and don't be afraid to catnap during the day, it refreshes the soul.
17. Continue learning - You are never done learning, take courses, use on line education services, attend seminars, read good books. If you have never read the works of Malcolm Gladwell, Jim Collins, Simon Sinek, or Jack Canfield now is the time to start. You can get all these books on Kobo or Kindle or at your local library. Do it today.
18. Share ideas with others - Freely give and freely receive, what you give away will come back tenfold, share your good ideas with others. You get to feel good and what you learn in return will amaze you.
19. Focus on Why - There is nothing that you can do that is more important to your success than to focus on why you are doing what you do and clearly define it. Watch the Ted talk by Simon Sinek and use this as the basis for your approach to this topic. It is far more important than the few lines I have written. When you grasp the importance of your why, you will no longer have to worry about customers, they will find you.
20. Learn to use the five Why's to solve problems - The founder of Toyota Machinery Corporation used this questioning technique to solve every problem that occurred, he taught his sons and his managers this method. It forms the basis of the management principles at all the Toyota companies today. This simple method will work for you too. Whatever the problem you ask the question (Why?) five times, invariably you will find the solution before you get to the fifth why. Nothing could be simpler and it works.
21. Measure results - What you keep track of grows. That simple, write down daily in your journal what you achieve in quantitative terms, i.e. if you sell something write down how much you sold each day in dollars. If your goal is x and you keep a daily record of what you achieve you will be surprised how soon you achieve your goal. It is law that you can apply to anything, measure results and the results will grow.
22. Build relationships - It is easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that your goal is to generate sales or revenue, but in reality the only goal you have is to build relationships with people. If you build relationships the people will come back and do business with you again and again. If your goal is to make a buck and get on to the next one, there is no relationship and you have to work twice as hard to find the next customer. There are few industries today where there are so many customers that customer relations are not essential to success. If you don't focus on building relationships with your customers, they don't need you, they can find what you sell on the internet.. The only thing that will distinguish your business from the next one is what you do to make the experience memorable to the customer.
23. You don't have any competition - This one may be hard to accept for many of you but in reality the only competition you have is yourself and your own apathy towards your business. The way to combat this is to work daily to be better than the day before at every facet of your business or your job.
Wow! Twenty three, far more than I thought. There are probably a few more but implementing these will take some effort. Add to the list if you like and don't hesitate to send me your ideas, I love new concepts and suggestions.
Colin J. Campbell CFP, CLU, Ch.F.C. is Managing Partner of
Guidance Planning Strategies Ltd. in Cranbrook BC he can be reached at colin.campbell@gpsbc.ca
