Image courtesy of educ8n4

Panic – a sudden overwhelming fear, with or without cause, that produces hysterical or irrational behavior Resource

Most people panic at the wrong time.

Panicking at the wrong time is a waste of energy. Most people panicked too late and it causes a negative domino effect. One bad thing may just lead to another.

Some scenarios may include panicking when the dead line is near or when exams are near the corner (In fact, I’m in my exams period now). When we start to panic or experience fear, our ability to perform usually decrease. It is hard to be at your best when you are in a worried state and burning midnight oil to meet your deadline.

The Good And Bad Of Being Caught In A Panic State

As I had mentioned, our performance usually dips when we are in a panic state. You may suffer from mind blocks or simply cannot perform efficiently and effectively. However, this state of panic instills fear in you, which push you towards taking action.

In fact, a panic state is a double-edged weapon. You can either use it for your own benefits or use it against yourself. When you have fear that you do not have enough time to meet your deadline, you usually spring into action right away. Even though this is a good thing, it creates unnecessary (read this article on 15 ways to deal with stress) stress on yourself.

The key here is to panic at the right time.

When you panicked too late, you create stress on yourself and you suffer from a dip in performance. What worse is that you can’t do much about improving your current situation.

What if you start to panic earlier? If you are able to get yourself into a panic state at a further time from your deadlines, most probably you will spring into action right away without the added stress of looming deadlines.

Conclusion

I learned this lesson the hard way. Now I know that being caught in a panic state is a good thing, as long as it is at the right time.

I believe most of us have moments when we are caught up in the panic state. What do you think are the factors that hold you back from panicking earlier and taking action? I look forward to your comments below.

Cheers,
Vincent

Post from: Health Money Success

Why You Should Start Panicking Now (At The Right Time)

Related Articles

• If You Don’t Track The Numbers In Your Life Now, You Will Regret It Later (8)
• One Big Secret That You Can Use To Help Your Goals At The Speed Of Light (5)
• The Law Of Harvesting – One Of The Most Important Lessons I Have Learned (7)
• Are Your Doubts Killing You? – How To Clear Your Doubts And Live A Life Of Excellence (13)
• 3 Great Reasons To Forget About Your Past Mistakes (10)

Image courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/photo/483719

Recently I have just completed the book, “No B.S Time Management For Entrepreneurs” by Dan Kennedy. It is a great book on time management and anyone who wants to be more productive and get more out of their time should read that book.

In the book, there are various concepts on how to get the most out of our time. One of the concepts particularly caught my attention. It states that spending too much time with Time Vampires can result in losing our valuable time and cause a drastic dip in productivity.

Time Vampires

What exactly are Time Vampires? Time Vampires are people who tried to such as much “blood” (time) out of you as you permit. They tend to leave you dry and tired at the end of the day causing you to lose valuable time to do things that are of greater value.

If you think about it, there will definitely be some Time Vampires around you. Do you have colleagues that keep interrupting you with small talks during your work hours? Or friends that talk to you for hours on the phone about gossips or force you to listen to his/her complains? If you allow them to do what they want, they will suck out as much blood as they want and leave you exhausted by the end of the day.

If you truly want to achieve your goals or excellent results in life, you have to protect your time from anyone who tries to suck it out of you. Time is a limited resource and you only have 24 hours, 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds available to you every day. Everyone is given the same amount of time everyday and people who spend it wisely will be the top achievers in their field. Whoever that can maximize the value of their given time will ultimately do better in their life than those who can’t.

How To Protect Your Time From Time Vampires

For one to achieve something, they will definitely need time. If you want to achieve anything in your life, you will need to learn how to protect your time from Time Vampires. Here are some of the ways.

1. The Courage To Say NO.

This is something that you will need to work on. Too many times, we find it hard to reject the phone calls, small talks or outings. It is okay to do these tasks from time to time but doing them too frequently is a killer to your productivity. When you know that you have a tad too much of these counterproductive tasks, you will have to say NO to them.

Some of you may find it hard to say no to others. You have to understand that if you allow others to interrupt you when you are working on your important tasks, you will not complete your them. Start setting up your steel defense against them by saying NO to them and protect your time at all cost.

2. Be Busy

Acting busy is a way to deter Time Vampires from trying to suck out your time. When they approach, be busy and make sure that they can see it. People tend to avoid disturbing others when they see others are busy and Time Vampires are the same. If they try to reach you by phone, tell them that you are busy and you have only 5 minutes to spare. They will either come straight to the point or avoid disturbing you by hanging up.

3. Disappear

If Time Vampires cannot find you, they cannot disturb you. However, this is hard to achieve as we have phones that allow others to connect to us easily. If you are working at home and you find that you are getting too many interruptions, try to work at cafes near your house. You can choose to bring your phone along or leave it out totally. If you are bringing your phone along, silence it and finish your work before returning any calls.

Parting Words

There are too many Time Vampires out there trying to take up your time and the best way for you to protect your time is to avoid them. By saying NO to trivial matters, useless chatters, gossips and whining, you will be surprised by how much more important tasks that you can complete and move faster towards your goals. I would love to know how you protect yourselves against Time Vampires. Do share with you in the comment section below and I will talk to you soon.

Vincent

Exploring Ultimate Productivity

Post from: Health Money Success

Warning: Are You Spending Too Much Time With Time Vampires And Wasting Your Time Away?

Related Articles

• Why You Should Stop Complaining About The Lack Of Time (14)
• How To Tackle The Email Monster (7)
• 33 Things You Should Stop Doing To Double Your Productivity (26)
• 11 Keys To Double Your Productivity (27)
• How To Overcome Reluctance And Have Never Ending Motivation (13)

Image courtesy of kainet

Have you ever found yourself short of time to complete all the things that you want to do? Do you complain about why there are only 24 hours a day instead of 48? If you are, you are not the only one. Time shortage is one of the most common problems that people faced.

People may feel that they lack the time to do the things that they need to do. But there are also people who achieve much more with the same 24 hours they have. So what is the difference between those who complain about the lack of time and those who had achieved results using the same amount of time? What is it that they know that others don’t know?

Lack Of Time is A Myth

Here comes the crucial part. Make sure you catch this part. There is no such thing as a lack of time, only a lack of priorities.

People thinks that they do not have time to complete everything that they want to do because they feel that everything is important. When you feel that everything is important, then you will definitely feel that time is not enough for you.

In order to cure the “lack-of-time-syndrome”, you must be able to know what are your priorities in life and spend time on them according to the level of importance.

I can understand the feeling of wanting to do everything. I want to become a great guitarist, play badminton, read my books, create an A list blog, learn to dance, surf the web aimlessly, tweet whole day long, learn to sing and the list goes on. There are lots of things that I want to do and if I did try to squeeze everything into my schedule, it will be just a matter of time before I collapse and failed to achieve anything.

If you want to have a balance life or have enough time for things that are important, you will need to set priorities. Know what you want (set goals) and prioritize time for those activities that will help you to move towards your goal. You may also need to sacrifice/minimize some activities that are good to have but absolutely contributes nothing to help you move towards your goal (chatting with your friends, watching tv, surfing the web, Facebook-ing)

Achieve More With Your 24 Hours Now

So how do you prioritize your activities and achieve more in same 24 hours that other successful people have? Here are some of the ways:

1. What You Want to Achieve? Think on paper

First of all, you will need to know what do you want to achieve? Do you want to have better grades in school, contribute more to your company or start your own business?

Write down what you want to achieve on a piece of paper. Goals that are not written down are usually forgotten. So always remember to write down your goals.

2. List down tasks

Brain storm and write down all the tasks that you are doing daily and tasks that you believe that will help you to achieve your goal. If you have problem thinking about what tasks are needed to help you move towards your goal, seek someone who had done what you want to achieve to help you.

3. Prioritize

Run down the list to prioritize your tasks. Use ABCDE method taught by Brain Tracy to help you prioritize.

This is how you use this method. Run through the tasks that you had written and assign either A,B,C,D or E to them.

Example

To become an outstanding blogger

A tasks – Tasks that are important and need to be done. Exp: Writing articles, marketing.

B tasks – Tasks that are of less importance than tasks in category A but need to be done. Exp: Checking emails.

C tasks – Tasks that are not really important at all but will be fun to do. Exp: Chatting on skype or MSN.

D tasks – Tasks that can be delegated.

E tasks – Tasks that can be totally eliminated. Exp: Watching Tv shows and etc.

4. First thing first

Once you had identified your most important tasks (category A), make sure that you always complete tasks in the category A before you go on to do other tasks in other categories. If you try to do tasks in other categories before completing tasks in category A, there will be a high possibility that the most important tasks will not be completed.

5. Review and 80/20.

Always review your tasks. There will be times when you will thought that you are doing tasks that are important but they are not. Always review weekly what you had completed and check your results when you are regularly completing tasks that important? If the results does not justify, review your important tasks and ensure that they are really important ones. Lastly apply the 80/20 principle and find out what are the tasks that will give you 80% of the results using 20% of your effort. This principle can help you to create the results that you want using the least amount of time.

Cheers,
Vincent

If you like this article, please digg, stumble or bookmark it in de.li.cious. Remember to subscribe to my blog via Email updates or RSS feed so that you won’t miss out on my upcoming articles. (It is free!)

**P.S**Check out my first video interview that I did with Joseph from Viralogy.

Post from: Health Money Success

Why You Should Stop Complaining About The Lack Of Time

Related Articles

• How To Go Through A Year Without Achieving Anything – Stop Being Mediocre And Start Achieving Now (14)
• Warning: Are You Spending Too Much Time With Time Vampires And Wasting Your Time Away? (13)
• How To Tackle The Email Monster (7)
• 33 Things You Should Stop Doing To Double Your Productivity (26)
• Are You Using The 80/20 Principle In Your Life? (24)

Image courtesy of respres

Most of us spend around 8 hours at work but most of that time are spent on tasks that are of insignificant value. One of the time wasters that we may indulge in may be handling our emails.

Handling our emails can really cause us to lose many valuable hours, especially if you are receiving around a hundred or more emails per day. If you do not try to minimize the time wasted on handling email, you can easily find that a huge chunk of your time are wasted on it.

So here are some ways that works for me to help me tackle the email monster.

1. Check your email less frequently.

I used to check my emails every now and then and it affects my productivity level because constantly handling my inbox takes away too much of my time and effort.

The first step I took to tackle the email monster is to check my inbox less frequently. I currently check my inbox around thrice a day(morning,afternoon and evening) and that helps me to save up my time and energy so that I can use them on things that are more important.

I only spend around 2 minutes scanning it in the morning for things that need my immediate attention. In the afternoon and evening, I will clear up my inbox and attend to other emails that do not need my immediate attention.

2. Unsubscribe from email newsletter.

One sure fire way to clutter up your inbox is to subscribe to all the newsletter you can find. Too much of these newsletter in your inbox will cause you to freak up every morning when you check your email.

I used to be an information junkie and tried to get my hands on every newsletter on blogging and personal development. It seems nice at first when I receive information from experts in these fields but it isn’t fun anymore when I have to clear up 50 – 100 emails every morning. I also find that I do not read most of the newsletter anyway so I unsubscribe to most of the newsletter.

If you are suffering from “newslettter overloading” too, it is time to do something about it. Stay subscribed to only newsletter that you are really interested in. You may feel that every newsletter you had subscribed to are important. However that isn’t really true. Find out what newsletter you are not reading already and you are only deleting them from your inbox the moment they reached it. Those will be the first on the line to be unsubscribed from.

3. Don’t leave things hanging.

If you do not process your email inbox right away every time (thrice daily) you check it, you will accumulate a huge backlog of emails. Whenever you check your emails, clear up on your inbox and you will not clutter it up. Cluttering your inbox means that you will need to spend more time and energy to clear it up. It may also tend to stress you up when you see the huge amount of backlog you have to clear.

Reply to those emails that need your attention immediately and keep emails that you want to read leisurely in other folders.

Make it a habit of clearing up your inbox everytime you check it. Process on the spot. It makes you feel good when you see that you had cleared up everything in your inbox and nothing is left hanging.

4. Chain mails or jokes.

Chain mails are considered spam and too much jokes or funny emails in your inbox are considered as spam too. Cut down on these emails by telling your friend not to send it to you anymore.

If you really do feel that you need the jokes in the email to entertain yourself, keep them in a separate folder. Read them as a reward when you had done productive work. These are the types of emails that you do not need to process immediately.

5. Set up template

If you are receiving the same queries every now and then. Consider setting up a template or FAQ to protect your time. It can really be a chore trying to dish out the same reply every now and then. Keep a template or FAQ so that whenever you receive an email with a question to people asked you frequently, direct them to the FAQ or reply with the template.

It may means that you lose some personal touch with a template but if you receive too much emails with the same queries, it may be wiser that you keep a template or FAQ instead of trying to type out the same replies every time.

6. Turn off website notification

You really don’t need to know immediately that people had sent you a message on Facebook. Turn off notifications from websites such as rel=”nofollow”>Twitter, Facebook or any other social mediate sites. These are huge time wasters and it makes thing worst when you are tempted to check out your Facebook after receiving a notification. Now you have 2 inbox to check!

7. Consolidate your inbox

It takes much more effort to maintain multiple inbox compared to one. If you have multiple email accounts, use the forwarding function you can find in your account and forward all the email to one account. This will allow you to check all your email in a single place.

I used to use Hotmail but they do not have the forwarding function (Ok, they do have but they only allow forwards Hotmail accounts). I had now swtiched to Gmail and had other email accounts set to forward all emails to this single account. This allow me to check everything in a single place which is much more convenient.

I would love to know the how you tackle the email monster. I look forward to your replies in the comment section.

Cheers,
Vincent

Post from: Health Money Success

How To Tackle The Email Monster

Related Articles

• Warning: Are You Spending Too Much Time With Time Vampires And Wasting Your Time Away? (13)
• Why You Should Stop Complaining About The Lack Of Time (14)
• 33 Things You Should Stop Doing To Double Your Productivity (26)
• 11 Keys To Double Your Productivity (27)
• How To Overcome Reluctance And Have Never Ending Motivation (13)

Image courtesy of emeryjl

33 Things You Should Stop Doing

Productivity is something that most of us struggle with and there are lots of things that we should stop doing in order to have more time and increase our productivity. Therefore I decided to compile this list of 33 things that we should stop doing so that we can have more time and increase our productivity at the same time.

1. Reading all the productivity blogs that you can find.

Productivity is affected if you are spending too much time reading productivity blogs. Ironic isn’t it? Don’t make it a habit to read all the blogs you can find. Find a few of the top blogs, follow them on RSS so that you can read everything in a single go and apply what you had learnt.

2. Spending too much time on social media sites. (Facebook and Twitter)

Social media sites can be addictive and it can take up a huge chunk of your time. Limit your time (30 minutes or lesser) spent on these sites and you will free up more time to help you do tasks that are more important.

3. Surfing online aimlessly.

Surf for information only when you need it. Surfing on the web aimlessly to find things to entertain yourself can take up to hours of your valuable time.

4. Saying yes to every request.

Saying yes to 3 hours long chat or additional work request when you can’t handle your current workload can make a huge dent to your productivity. Learn to say no to requests that do not help you to be more productive.

5. Checking emails every 5 minutes.

If you are checking emails too frequently, that means you are being distracted and you are not focused on your work. Being focus on your work can help to speed up the process which means using less time to complete the work.

6. Buying cheaper electrical appliances or gadgets

Recently Steve Pavlina had wrote an article on overcoming cheapness. In the article, he wrote that people are trying to be frugal by buying cheaper gadgets or appliances. However I find that it can waste alot of time if those appliances are easily spoilt and you will need to spend time to send them for servicing and bringing them back again which is a waste of time and energy. Buy stuff that can truly last and the extra money you fork out will help you save up more time and energy.

7. Cluttering your wardrobe.

If you spend 30 minutes every morning searching for your clothes or deciding on what to wear, it is time for you to declutter your wardrobe. Too much choices of clothes will lead to indecision and cutting the amount down will help you to have an easier time to decide what to wear. I sort my clothes according to the type they are (t-shirts, polo tees, shirt) so that I do not need to waste time searching for them.

8 Finding your keys, cell phone and wallet.

I used to search for my keys, cell phone and wallet every time when I am about to go out of my house. It can be frustrating especially when you are going to be late. I had tackled this problem by putting them in the same location every time I got home so that the next morning I know where they are and I can just grab them and go out without wasting time searching for them.

9. Losing your way.

I had once spent 2 hours driving to find a location. 2 hours are wasted! Always plan your route when you are driving to somewhere you are not familiar with.

10. Saving money manually.

If you are withdrawing money from one account to save in another account, you are doing something that can be automated which means saving time and effort. Create an account which will save a certain amount of money when you had banked in your pay cheque to automate the process of saving money. Doing this will also ensure that you will not spend the money you are suppose to save.

11. Paying bills manually.

Same as above. Auto billing will help you to save the effort and time.

12. Multi tasking.

Multi tasking cause you to switch your focus between tasks and every time you switch tasks, you are required to refocus. This means that every switch you do, you are wasting time to refocus on your tasks.

13. Cluttering your desktop.

A cluttered desktop will make it hard for you to search for the icons that you need and it also slows down the loading time of your computer. Deleting icons that you don’t use from the desktop will also help you to increase your computer’s loading speed.

14. Not getting enough sleep.

It is hard to feel productive when you are feeling tired. Get adequate sleep to ensure that you are feeling at your best for the day.

15. Team meetings.

Minimize the the amount of meetings and you can free up lots of time. I find meetings a waste of time and you can always share information using ways that are much more efficient (email) rather than calling everyone for a meeting.

16. Meeting without an agenda and time slot.

If you really need to have a meeting, be sure to know the agenda. This will ensure everyone will focus on the agenda instead of side tracking. Set a fix amount of time to the meeting to prevent “over discussing” on the matter.

17. Doing things in pieces.

When you do things in pieces such as replying emails and talking in MSN messengers all day long, it is hard to get things done. However if you batch similar tasks together and do them in a go, you will save up much more time. One example; Instead of reading emails immediately when they reach your inbox, read them in a single shot in the evening.

18. Acting busy instead of productive.

There are people who act busy instead of being productive. They are just trying to keep themselves busy by filling them up with tasks regardless of whether it is important or not. When you find yourself getting busy, remind yourself whether you are acting busy or being productive and change as required.

19. Working on things that are not important.

If you are working on things that are not important, your productivity will be affected. Use the 80/20 principle to help you find out what are the things that are truly important and spend more time and effort working on those.

20. Worrying

If you are worrying about things, it is hard to stay focus. If your worries are tasks that you would need to do later, get it off your mind by writing it on a piece of paper and deal with it later.

21. Cluttering your workstation.

It can be frustrating to waste time finding our stationary or documents. Keep your work station tidy and put things where they belong so that you can retrieve it immediately whenever you want it. Declutter your work station regularly to prevent clutters from coming back.

22. Chatting with co workers.

Chatting with co workers about gossips doesn’t really help to increase your productivity. Work when you need to work and the chatting comes later.

23. Email alerts.

Email alerts tend to distract you and cause you to shift your attention to them. This mean that you will be distracted whenever your there is an email alert and thus losing focus on your current task. Turn them off and refer to point number 17 to help you increase your productivity.

24. Answering your phone call every now and then.

Regular phone calls are distractions that should be eliminated or minimize when you are working. If it is possible, turn off your phone and use a voice mail.

25. Fail to do regular time log.

Our productivity tend to wane over time and we need to keep a time log to check our productivity in check. Whenever you feel that your productivity has taken a dip, take the time to log down how you spent your time during your working hours and check whether is there anything that you are doing that is not productive and cut down on it.

26. Watching TV.

TV shows can be addictive and sometimes we can spent a huge amount of time on watching it. Cut down on your time on watching the TV shows and you will find that you will have more time to do things that can make a difference to your life. Another tip you can use is to stop watching the commercials.

27. Excessive gaming.

I am guilty of this too. Some days my schedule can be disrupted if I spend too much time on playing games. I try to cut down on it and it helps when you don’t make the game icon so easily accessible (exp: do not put a short cut icon on the desktop).

28. Hanging out.

Everyone need a moment to relax but hanging out and spending time catching up everyday just doesn’t make sense. Moderation is the key here.

29. Commuting.

If you think about it, we spend a huge amount of time commuting to work or school and those time are just going to be wasted. The best solution is to eliminate commuting, maybe work at home or something. But I doubt that is possible for everyone. Another way is to do something productive during commuting, such as listening to a podcast or reading a book.

30. Having too much credit cards.

Too many credit cards means that you will have more bills to be keep note of. Cancel a few of the credit cards that you don’t need and you will receive less bills and letters to take care of.

31. Opening too many tabs in your browser.

It is distracting if you have multiple tabs on your browser as you will start hopping from one thing to another. As I had mentioned earlier, jumping from one task to another is not a good productive habit.

32. Over sleeping.

Over sleeping means lesser time for important tasks. If 6-7 hours of sleep is more than enough for you, don’t try to make it to 8-10 hours.

33. Working longer hours.

Working longer doesn’t mean that you are much more productive. If you are able to stop doing the above 32 things that I had listed, you should be able to work lesser hours and yet achieve more results.

Cheers,
Vincent

**P.S** What are some of your favorite productivity tips that are not mentioned here? Share them with the rest of us.

If you like this article, it will be great if you can digg, stumble or bookmark it in de.li.cious. Remember to subscribe to my blog via Email updates or RSS feed so that you won’t miss out on my upcoming articles. (It is free!)

Follow me on Twitter over here

Post from: Health Money Success

33 Things You Should Stop Doing To Double Your Productivity

Related Articles

• 11 Keys To Double Your Productivity (27)
• How To Overcome Reluctance And Have Never Ending Motivation (13)
• How To Go Through A Year Without Achieving Anything – Stop Being Mediocre And Start Achieving Now (14)
• Warning: Are You Spending Too Much Time With Time Vampires And Wasting Your Time Away? (13)
• Are You Watching Too Much TV Shows? – Why Watching TV Shows Is Bad For You? (24)

Michael Jordan

If we want to achieve great results and be successful in life, we need to learn from those who had been there and done that. Michael Jordan has the qualities to be successful and he is definitely a great role model that we can learn from.

Michael Jordan is a guy who was cut out of his varsity basketball team because he was deemed too short to play at 1.8 meter but he turned out to be highly successful in his basketball career and was known as a legend in the game.

He had showed the mental toughness to bounce back from failure and here are 7 lessons we can learn from him.

7 Lessons We Can Learn From Michael Jordan

1. Our Own Expectation

“You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.”
Michael Jordan

A common trait between the successful people in life is that they always have high expectations of themselves. We may say that this is one of the core attributes that we need in order to achieve success. When we expect a certain standard of ourselves, regardless of high or low, we will fall into them naturally.

Michael Jordan expect himself to be the best in the game, that is why he spent countless hours practicing to bring out the best in him. He can definitely cut back on his practice hours and spend his time on other activities but his expectation of himself to be the best doesn’t allow it.

2. Do not fear failure

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Michael Jordan

Most people are afraid of failing. They are so fearful of failure that it halt all their action but the funny thing in life is that if we do not take any action, we are doom for failure. Contradicting isn’t it?

Failure is part of success. We can actually perceive failure as a feedback and the feedback works as a reminder to tell us something is wrong and we need to fix it. Failure doesn’t condemn us, it is just Nature’s way of telling us to fix something that isn’t right.

3. Just Try

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”
Michael Jordan

We won’t know the results until we give it a try and that is why we must always try something before we come out with 101 reasons of why we can’t do it. There will be obstacles along the journey when you are trying to achieve results, but don’t let those obstacles stop you from trying. Everyone has their fair share of obstacles and obstacles are meant to be conquered.

4. Don’t Give Up

Michael Jordan never give up and that is why he is being regarded as a legend in the basketball game and not a drop out of the varsity basketball team. He was cut from the varsity team but that doesn’t mean the end of his dream. Instead of whining and complaining, he doubled his effort in training and made it into his varsity roster.

5. Hard Work

“I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. ”
Michael Jordan

There isn’t any successful people in the world that don’t put in hard work to achieve what they have today. In order to collect your harvest, you need to put in the effort to sow first. That is the Law of Nature. If we want to achieve something, just put in the hard work and the results will definitely come.

6. Make Things Happen

“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.”
Michael Jordan

Dreaming allow us to think of the wonderful possibilities that can happen to us but a dream is just a dream. We can spend all day long day dreaming and wish things could happen but things won’t happen without us lifting a finger. Dreams are there to inspire us but don’t just wish that something would happen, make it happen by taking massive action.

7. Passion

“Even when I’m old and grey, I won’t be able to play it, but I’ll still love the game.”
Michael Jordan

It is hard to be successful in things that you do not have passion in because it tends to bore you in the long run. People who are highly successful today have great passion in the things they do. Donald Trump love to close his deals, Warren Buffett love to invest and would tap dance to work everyday and Michael Jordan just love his game.

Find things that excite you and strive to achieve excellent results in it. You will find it a lot more easier to be successful in that field because your passion will help to lift you even when the chips are down.

Parting Words

There are lots of role model in this world that we can learn from and Michael Jordan is one of them. He had shown us that achieving is possible and all we need is to believe in our own capabilities, don’t be fearful of failure and work hard to achieve results. If you want to achieve more out of your life, the teachings of the 7 lessons above will definitely help.

To your success,
Vincent

If you like this article, it will be great if you can digg, stumble or bookmark it in de.li.cious. Remember to subscribe to my blog via Email updates or RSS feed so that you won’t miss out on my upcoming articles. (It is free!)

Follow me on Twitter over here

Post from: Health Money Success

7 Lessons We Can Learn From Michael Jordan

Related Articles

• 7 Tips To Remove the Clutters On Your Desk (17)
• How Changing Your Beliefs Can Bring You Success Part 2 (14)
• How Changing Your Beliefs Can Bring You Success Part 1 (6)
• Are You Reading Enough? (20)
• The Story Of A Butterfly (5)

Image courtesy of inju

Newspaper Anyone?

Recently I have just canceled my daily newspaper subscription and I think that it will be a good time to write an article about it. I believe most of us read news daily either from the papers, magazines or through the internet but I wonder if it is really necessary for us to take in all the news that are available? I started reading the newspaper regularly about a few years ago and it is an easily accessible source of information for me as I have a subscription to it. However I have started to question myself on the need to consume all the news in the papers after I had read the book The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.

In his book, he talked about a point regarding about information overloading. He mentioned that he do not read any newspaper online or offline as he found that this activity does not help to add value into his life. This idea of his leads me to think hard about why I am reading the newspaper in the first place. I began to search for the reasons of why I was reading the newspaper and here are the reasons.

1. To be aware of what is happening around the world
2. To appear knowledgeable
3. Reading for the sake of reading since the papers are delivered to my doorstep everyday
4. Keeping track of the financial market

Do I really need the daily newspapers?

Reason #1 and #2: To be aware of what is happening around the world and to appear knowledgeable

I am still in a debate with myself on the subject, do I really need to be aware of what is happening around the world? I do not know whether it is good that I am constantly reminded about swine flu and using it as a topic to chat with others. If you have read or watched The Secret, you will know about the Law Of Attraction(LOA) and the LOA states that what you focus on will expand. So on this point, I think that reading the newspapers which are obviously filled with negative news is not really adding any value to me.

It also does not make sense that I am reading the newspaper to try to impress others that I know what is happening around the world. Isn’t it better if I can impress others with true skills and knowledge instead of boasting about my knowledge of the negative news I gained from the papers?

Reason #3:Read for the sake of reading

Since the papers are delivered to my doorstep, I find it hard not to read them because it is easily accessible, the papers cost money and not reading them seems like a waste of money. Reading for the sake of reading seems lame to me as I am actually repeating an action subconsciously(or we can say sleepwalking in life).

Reason #4: Keeping track of the financial market

This is the biggest hurdle I faced when I decided to give up on newspaper. I invest in the stock market and I need to monitor the market for opportunities to jump into it. The newspaper is the biggest source of information for me to find the right opportunities to enter the market. Giving up on the newspaper may mean that I will lose track of the market. I do not really know if it will affect me in the long term but I believe I can always keep track of the market through online methods to search for opportunities which are much more efficient and effective compared to reading the newspaper. I have adopted the style of value investing and this style of investing helps as I do not need to track the market as tediously as compared to others who are doing trading. If you are interested in learning more about value investing, I strongly recommend you to read the book The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham.

Conclusion

I predict that giving up on the newspaper won’t have any major effect on me. As a matter of fact, I have not read any papers for a week now and I do not really miss it. Instead, I found new free time that I can use to work on things that truly matters.

I wonder what my readers think about this discussion. Do you read the newspaper everyday? If yes, is it really adding value to your life and helping you in one way or another. Do you think reading the newspaper is really necessary? There is no right or wrong answers but it is definitely a good question to ask. I look forward to your comment in the comment section below.

Cheers,
Vincent

If you like this article, it will be great if you can digg, stumble or bookmark it in de.li.cious. Remember to subscribe to my blog via Email updates or RSS feed so that you won’t miss out on my upcoming articles. (It is free!)

Follow me on Twitter over here

Post from: Health Money Success

Is The Newspaper A Must In Your Life?

Related Articles

• Are You Using The 80/20 Principle In Your Life? (24)
• 7 Tips To Remove the Clutters On Your Desk (17)
• Biggest Mistake You Can Make To Stun Your Growth: Are You Being Choosy On Your Tasks? (8)
• How To Overcome Reluctance And Have Never Ending Motivation (13)
• The Power Of Information – How Information Can Make You Better Or Worse (7)

Motivation

If you want to excel in life, you will need to be able to motivate yourself. There will definitely be tough times when everything seems to be going against you and you will be too tired to carry on what you are doing. If you do not know how to motivate yourself to carry on, most likely you will quit what you are doing and fail to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Here are the steps that I have used to motivate myself and I found it effective.

1. Goal Setting

First of all, you need to have something that you want to achieve. Set goals that you truly want and not because others want it and you want to follow what they are doing. More often than not, people fail to motivate themselves to achieve their goals because the goals they set are not truly what they want.

2. Reasons

You always need to know the reason behind setting your goal. Are you trying to lose weight because you want to be like the model in the magazine or it is because others are poking fun at your huge waist line. You need to know what is the reason that makes you set your goals and this will be your main source of motivation.

3. Write Down Your Goals and Reasons

Write down all your goals and the reasons of why you want to achieve it. Paste it some where that you can see it easily. This will help to remind you of your goals daily so that you will not lose your focus.

4. Baby Steps

It is discouraging to try to achieve a huge goal in a short frame of time. Break down your goals into bite size nuggets so that you won’t be discouraged when trying to achieve it.

5. Get an accountability partner.

This is a great way to help you get motivated. Get an accountability partner and tell them about your goals. Tell them of a punishment you will accept if you fail to achieve your goals at your deadline. Do not set a deadline too far away in time because it will cause you to lose your focus easily and it doesn’t creates a sense of urgency. I always set 30 days deadline for my mini-goals because 30 days isn’t too long to cause us to lose focus or too short to achieve results.

6. What You Have To Gain and What You Have To Lose

Whenever you don’t feel motivated to do your tasks, it may be because that the tasks are too huge. If it is, refer back to step number 4 and break the tasks into smaller sizes. Another way to motivate yourself to start taking action when you don’t feel like doing it is to remember what you have to gain if you take action and what is it you may to lose if you did not take action.

For example, if your goal is to lose 30 lbs and you break your goals into smaller sizes such as exercising for 30 – 45 minutes for everyday. Whenever you do not feel like following your exercise routine, think about what you will have to gain and what you have to lose will help you to weigh the consequences of your decision which will motivate yourself to take action.

Example

Parting Words

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents. ~ Andrew Carnegie

Nobody wants mediocrity and knowing how to motivate yourself can help you to take more action to escape the world of mediocrity. Learn how to motivate yourself now and let your own motivation help you to achieve your desired success in life.

To your success,
Vincent

If you like this article, it will be great if you can digg, stumble or bookmark it in de.li.cious. Remember to subscribe to my blog via Email updates or RSS feed so that you won’t miss out on my upcoming articles. (It is free!)

Follow me on Twitter over here

Post from: Health Money Success

How To Motivate Yourself In 6 Simple Steps

Related Articles

• How To Overcome Reluctance And Have Never Ending Motivation (13)
• 11 Keys To Double Your Productivity (27)
• How To Go Through A Year Without Achieving Anything – Stop Being Mediocre And Start Achieving Now (14)
• Facing The Giants: Are You Really Giving Your Best? (11)
• Rocky Balboa’s Lessons On Life (18)

Image courtesy of jpockele

Not Getting Things Done

There are times when we will wake up feeling energetic and feel that we can complete any amount of tasks on that day but there are also times when we will wake up feeling jaded and do feel like doing anything at all.

It will be great if I can wake up every morning and feel energetic and productive but I know that it is not really possible. There will definitely be times when I feel tired and don’t feel like doing anything.

When we are caught in an unproductive state, we tend to waste most of our time doing tasks such as watching the TV, surfing the net, sleeping or playing video games.  The problems arises when we did not limit the amount of time we are spending on time wasters and this cause us to indulge in those time wasters and waste our whole day away.

Common problems

When we are feeling unproductive, there are several reasons for it and some of them are…

• Fatigue
• Lack of Passion
• Just don’t feel like doing anything
• Distractions

How Get More Things Done Even When You Don’t Feel Like Doing Anything

1. Fatigue

If fatigue is the reason that is causing you to feel unproductive, I recommend that you do not fight against what your body is telling you and try to bulldoze through your work. It is better to rest your body by taking a short nap before resuming your work.

In order to prevent fatigue to hamper your productivity regularly, try to adopt a good sleeping habit and diet. Taking regular breaks will also help you to recharge your body so that you can prevent burn outs. Taking proper care of your body will enable it to function in it’s most optimal condition which will also help you to be more productive.

2. Lack of Passion

Whenever we are not passionate about our work, our productivity will definitely be affected. I got to admit that this had happened to me before. I had started a new blog that sell products on dealing with skin disorder but I am not passionate about the topic and hence I always try to put off writing articles for that blog.

When this happen to you in your respective field, you need to dig deep into yourself and try to reignite your passion again by asking yourself what is the reason that cause you to work in your field and why are you so passionate about it in the first place. More often than not, by revisiting the past memories on why you had started, you are able to gain back the passion.

However if you are not able to gain back the passion for what you are doing, this may be a time to find alternative work that you are truly interested in.

3.Do Not Feel Like Doing Anything

I believe most of us suffer from the “don’t-feel-like-doing-anything” syndrome every now and then. This syndrome cause us to indulge in time waster activities which does not require us to do anything (watching the TV). By doing nothing, we will be trapped in the unproductive state for longer hours which result in only wasting even more time.

To overcome the syndrome, start implementing the 15 minutes rule. Get off your couch and start doing something that you should be doing for just 15 minutes. The 15 minutes may be what you need to get your engine started. Whenever I use the 15 minutes rule, I find myself working  longer instead due to the momentum generated by just taking action for 15 minutes.

4. Distractions

Distractions are everywhere and they range from phone calls, emails, social media sites such as Facebook or even Twitter. When distractions regularly happen when you are working, it may be hard for you to be productive as you need to stop what you are doing in order to tend to the distractions.

Whenever you are working, eliminate distractions as much as possible. Disable your email alert, close your Twitter window or turn your phone on silent mode. By focusing 100% on your work and not getting away from your work regularly to tend to distractions, you can get more things done as a result.

Parting Words

If we truly want to achieve results in our life, we need to be able to take constant action which means being productive every day. There are definitely times when we feel like not doing anything but to achieve great results in your life, sometimes you need to be able to take action even when you don’t feel like doing it. So why not use the above tips and take some action now?

Vincent
Personal Development Blogger

**P.S** What are some ways you used to get yourself to take action even when you don’t feel like doing it? I look forward to your comments.

If you like this article, it will be great if you can digg, stumble or bookmark it in de.li.cious. Remember to subscribe to my blog via Email updates or RSS feed so that you won’t miss out on my upcoming articles. (It is free!)

Follow me on Twitter over here

Post from: Health Money Success

How To Get Things Done Even When You Do Not Feel Like Doing Anything

Related Articles

• Is Analysis Paralysis Stopping You From Taking Action? (31)
• How To Use Momentum To Help You Achieve Success (13)
• 7 Failures That End Up Successful (15)
• Who Else Want To Know The Benefits Of Taking Initiative? (13)
• Why Multi Tasking Is Bad (9)

What is 80/20?

I had heard about the 80/20 principle or the Pareto Principle a few years ago but I never really spend the effort to implement it into my life. It was until I started HealthMoneySuccess.com and I found that I was easily overwhelmed by the amount of tasks and information that I have to consume.

It was then I read up an article on the 80/20 principle written by Yaro Starak and I found that the philosophy of the 80/20 principle can help me to eliminate 80 percent of the non-important work thus I can focus on the 20 percent that is truly important. This mean that I can free up more time and get more things done using a lesser amount of time.

So what is the 80/20 principle? The 80/20 principle states that 20 percent of our effort will result in 80 percent of our outcome. Pareto’s research had shown that the world is running in a similar order of the 80/20 ratio. The numbers may not be exactly 80/20 and may differs but the important point is that there are always things that matters more than the others and our choice of tasks will greatly affect our output (20 percent effort that will have 80 percent results or the 80 percent effort that will have 20 percent results).

Examples of 80/20 Scenarios

If we took  notice of what is happening around us, we will find that there are lots of scenarios that is in the 80/20 ratio.

• 20 percent of the people in the world control 80 percent of the money in the world.
• 20 percent of your clothes get worn 80 percent of the time
• 20 percent of your 8 hours work time produces 80 percent of the results
• 20 percent (or may be much lower) of your contacts in your cellphone are contacted by you 80 percent of the time
• 20 percent of the files in your computer are used 80 percent of the time.

There are lots of examples that I can go on and on but the important point is that we need to know what are the few important (20 percent) tasks that we need to do daily to get the maximum output (80 percent) to make a great difference to our life.

How 80/20 Work For Me

In my typical work day, I will spend most of my time in front of my computer and this mean that I will be facing lots of distractions. Some distractions will be emails, Twitter, Facebook, clearing my Google Reader and receiving phone calls.

These are the tasks that takes up 80 percent of my time while producing 20 percent of my results. So it means that if I am able to eliminate or minimize those tasks, I will be able to focus more on important tasks (writing articles, sending out my email newsletter, writing my eBook) which is the 20 percent that will produce 80 percent of my results.

The 80/20 principle has help me to define what are the tasks that I need to spend more time on and also what tasks I need to eliminate or minimize.

How The 80/20 Principle Can Work For You

By correctly applying the 80/20 principle  into your life,  you can get more results in your life using the least effort. You may want to start observing what is happening around you and focus on the 20 percent tasks you are doing which creating 80 percent of the results and minimize the 80 percent tasks that is only creating 20 percent of the results.

The 80/20 principle is universal and can be applied to whichever field you are in. However one thing to take note is that you can apply the 80/20 principle in your life too.

Are you really loving what you do?

If you are not, most likely you are currently spending 80 percent of your time (your current job) to create 20 percent value. Instead you should find ways to spend more time working on what you really want to do and make the 80/20 principle work for you to create your desired lifestyle.

Parting Words

By applying the 80/20 principle into our work or life, we can get more results using the least effort and also create our desired lifestyle. Why not start implementing the 80/20 principle into your life and see the difference it can help you to create in your life.

Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger

**P.S**Are you using the 80/20 principle in your life? Share with us on what you think about the difference it would make in your life if you are implementing the 80/20.

**P.P.S**If you want to read up more about the 80/20 rule, you can start by reading up on the book The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch.

If you like this article, it will be great if you can digg, stumble or bookmark it in de.li.cious. Remember to subscribe to my blog via Email updates or RSS feed so that you won’t miss out on my upcoming articles. (It is free!)

Post from: Health Money Success

Are You Using The 80/20 Principle In Your Life?

Related Articles

• Biggest Mistake You Can Make To Stun Your Growth: Are You Being Choosy On Your Tasks? (8)
• How To Go Through A Year Without Achieving Anything – Stop Being Mediocre And Start Achieving Now (14)
• Is The Newspaper A Must In Your Life? (15)
• 7 Tips To Remove the Clutters On Your Desk (17)
• How To Overcome Reluctance And Have Never Ending Motivation (13)