HealthMoneySuccess.com » Productivity

How I Track My Results And Why You Need To Do It Too

Vincent — Thu, 12 May 2011 18:58:06 +0000

Tracking is rarely mentioned in personal development books. However, I think tracking is important. Why is it important? Tracking gives you a clear picture of your progress and helps you decide whether to maintain the same course of action or change a new set of action to get better results.

When you don’t track your results and feedback, you are trying to achieve your goals blindly. Lack of tracking means you may unknowingly walk around in circles. You stay frustrated because when don’t get the desired results and when you don’t know what is wrong, you can’t make specific changes to change the outcome.

How Tracking Helps Me To Become More Productive

Let me share with you an example. If you noticed, I have not been blogging for the past 2 weeks. This is because I’m currently preparing for my final year exam and I spent long hours studying.

I track my time to check whether I invest enough productive time studying. I found out that I am more productive when studying in school (70% productive hours) as compared to studying at home (25% productive hours).

How am I able to provide you with figures? These are not blind figures that I got out of nowhere. Before I start studying, I write down the time that I start studying and the time that I stop. I also have a section where I will write down the productive hours that I spent.

You have to know this. Time spent doing something does not necessary means high productivity level. Productive hours mean you focus only on working on high value tasks that will bring you closer to your goals. In my case, my high value task is studying.

I also work in short burst. I use a countdown timer to time 1 hour of focused studying followed by 10 minutes break. Repeat this process. At the end of the day, I divide the total productive hours by the total hours spent (total hours = time start studying to time ended) and multiply by hundred.

I get a percentage that I can conclude that studying at home is not as productive as compared to studying in school. If I did not track my time, it is impossible for me to see a clear picture and make the change to enhance my productivity.

How Can You Apply What You Learn Today

If you don’t track your results, you don’t know what action you are doing today that is leading you to the outcome you have today. If you want to change your outcome today, you have to change the action you are taking. Tracking helps to identify what is not working so that you can make the necessary changes.

What you can do now is to track your time like what I did so that you can spot “weaknesses” that you can rectify and improve on. You can also track your progress toward your goals.

Take one of your goals that you want to achieve this year and think about the actions that you took during the past few months to move you closer to your goals. You will not be able to recall the exact actions that you took unless you track your action using a journal.

So starting from today, take an action everyday that will move you closer to your goals. Track your action by writing what goal oriented action you did for today. You can also track the amount of time spent every day on goal oriented tasks. Review your results every week.

When you review your results at the end of every week, you can see whether you are closer or further to your goals. If you are not closer to your goals, you can flip through your journal and see are you spending enough time on goal oriented tasks? You can also review the actions that you took that did not produce the desired results and make the necessary changes.

If you want to improve your productivity so that you can take more effective action to move closer to your goals, opt into the newsletter below. I am writing a new ebook on how to improve your productivity and by opting into the newsletter, you will be notified when the new book is out.

Cheers,
Vincent

Post from: Health Money Success

How I Track My Results And Why You Need To Do It Too

Danger Post: Don’t Read This Unless You Are Prepared To Face The Truth About Your Productivity

Vincent — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 19:00:28 +0000

Are you sure you want to read this article? If you dare to, you may find out something that is really important. If you choose to read on, please continue.

In my previous podcast, I spoke about why 80% of the people who indulge in personal development materials are self-help junkies.

For those who do not know what self-help junkies refer to, it means people who consume personal development materials but do not implement what they learn. Simply speaking they do not take any action.

Many of us are not living consciously or I would like to say living in self-denial.

If I ask whether you have implemented what you read in the last personal development book, you may say yes to defend yourself. However, how much truth is there in your answer? I don’t know but you certainly know it.

Are you really taking action? Or I would say, are you taking MASSIVE action that counts? Most people say that they took action but they did not take sufficient action. For those who took action, most did not take enough action that counts.

If you want to create an online business, taking action does not mean that you are reading forums, blogs, commenting, Facebooking, Twittering, Googling and whatsoever.

Taking action means that you are doing something that will help you move towards your goal. Sadly speaking, taking action is not sufficient. You have to take effective action to move towards your goal.

Most people mistook activity as REAL effective action. Lets take running an online business as an example.

Lingering in forums is not REAL effective action.
Updating your Facebook status is not REAL effective action.
Surfing online mindlessly in search for the next magic bullet to get thousands of visitors to your website is not REAL effective action.

These activities will not move you closer toward your goals.

Real and effective actions are things such as:

Creating products
Marketing
Improving conversion rate
Design your sales funnel

Are you even doing any of these if you are aiming to create an online business?

If you do these 80/20 tasks every day, you are going to see much more results definitely.

Time To Face The Truth

Think about your goals. If you haven’t even written down your goals on a piece of paper, you should go write it down now.

I want to ask you this question:

How many productive hours have you spent last week on working towards your goals?

It may be zero. It may be 30 minutes or it may be more. Nevertheless, I bet most of you don’t even know how many productive hours did you put in last week to reach your goals because you were just going with the flow.

Beware. Going with the flow often bring you to a destination that you may not want to end up at.

Back to the question. So are you a self-help junkie? You don’t need to tell me this, but in your heart you know how you fare. Even if you are a self-help junkie, don’t worry because you can make the decision to change now.

What you can do now is start to dedicate time each week for your goals (how many hours per week). If you don’t dedicate time for doing productive work, you will give yourself excuses such as

I’m too busy
I’m too tired
I don’t feel like doing it
I got work to do
I will get to it after this show
Tomorrow will be a better day to work on my goals (yeah, right.)

Sound familiar?

Each week, I dedicate a specific amount of hours I will work on activities that will bring me closer to my goals. This helps me to keep track on my progress and to ensure that I am constantly moving towards my goal.

Do You Want This Ebook?

I got a system to help me stay productive and I would be able to write it into an ebook. This ebook will not be free and it will be the first ever paid ebook in HMS.

However, whether the ebook will be launched or not will depend on the response on you – my dear readers.

If you would like to know how to start taking REAL action, be productive and move towards your goals instead of being a self-help junkie, fill in your name and email below.

Once you had opted into the email newsletter, you are officially in the early bird notification list. This early bird list is free and it is only use for informing you firsthand once the ebook is about to launch.

It is time to start taking action and seeing results.

Till then,

To your success and beyond
Vincent

Post from: Health Money Success

Danger Post: Don’t Read This Unless You Are Prepared To Face The Truth About Your Productivity

5 Free Applications To Help You Get More Things Done

Vincent — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 20:13:00 +0000

If you want to get more things done and be more productive, this post is for you. These are the 5 tools that I use to help me make life easier for myself and help me be more productive. If you are a blogger, internet marketer, freelancer or you work for long hours with your computer, you should take a look at these great tools.

1) Dropbox

Dropbox is a must have for people who want to have all their data in a single place. It acts as a main storage for all your files. You can store all your files online, sync and even share it with your friends.

Dropbox is easy to use Dropbox adds a folder at your desktop and all you need to do is to drag and drop your files into the folder. Once you had done that, it will auto sync it and you can access these files using other computers either using the Dropbox folder or just go to their website to find all your data.

Who is this for?

This is for you if you have multiple computers and want to have all your files in one place. It is also good for travelers as you can access all your files in your home computer even when you are out. All you need is a computer and internet access and you’re good to go!

Click here to download Dropbox for free

Everything is on the cloud, so that you can have access to all your data at any of computer or hand held devices

2) Launchy

I read about Launchy in Leo Babauta’s new ebook, Focus. Focus is a great book that teaches you help to clear out distractions and get things done. You can get your free copy here.

After installing Launchy, I had deleted over 30 icons from my desktop. Right now, I am left with 2 remaining icons – my recycle bin and one folder. My desktop is uncluttered, beautiful and it has much fewer distractions than a cluttered desktop.

So how do I access my files without any icons? Launchy comes into the picture now. By pressing Alt + Tab, I am able to load a small search box that I will use to find my programs, files and folders. This is a much faster way to search than digging through your cluttered icons to find the files or program that you want. Launchy puts everything at your fingertips.

Example: I want to load up my Skype program. Alt + Tab to bring up the search box, type S, Skype program appears, I will press Enter, and Skype will start to load now.

I took around 5 minutes to set it up and right now, I have an uncluttered desktop with a cool application that makes searching a much easier job to do.

Who is this for?

For people who believe that keyboard short cuts are faster than the click of a mouse (I am one) and wants to have a beautiful, clear and uncluttered desktop.

Click here to download Launchy

Sample of my desktop

3) TeuxDeux

If you need an excellent and minimalist web based to do list, TeuxDeux is the one you should use. I used to use Remember The Milk as my to-do list and I had switched over to TeuxDeux after trying it out for a week. TeuxDeux is an example of minimalist at its best. Talking about minimalist, go check out Everett Bogue at Far Beyond The Stars, where he writes about living a minimalist lifestyle. It is one of my favorite blogs right now.

Back to TeuxDeux. It is a simple web based to do list app. It is visually compelling (I love the clean design!) and easy to use. TeuxDeux doesn’t have additional functions to bloat it up, but it has all the essential functions of a to-do list.

One feature of TeuxDeux that I love is it provides the overview of the week. This helps when you are planning your week. It also have a someday bucket. Sometimes there are tasks that you do not know where to allocate into your to do list. Now you can simply throw it into the someday bucket in TeuxDeux.

The best feature of all is… (drum rolling), automatic rollover of unchecked tasks! I love this function. Try not completing your tasks for the day and you can see things start to pile up. This pressure gets me to start moving and get things done. Totally love it!

There is also an iPhone app for you to take your to-dos on the road. However, it does cost a little bit of money. I have both the web based (free) and the iPhone ($2.99) app. I think it is totally worth the money since I am away from home for most of the day and I get to take note of any tasks that I need to do on the road.

Who is it for?

TeuxDeux is for you if you want to have a great looking to do list and have all your to-dos in one place. Maybe it is time to ditch your pen and paper and start using this web based tool instead. Anyone with an iPhone should get the app to go with the web-based version too. I’m using both of it and I’m finally free from pen and paper. Get TeuxDeux and save some trees at the same time too.

Click here to get your free TeuxDeux

Take a look at TeuxDeux.

4) Leech Block Plugin

Are you indulging in Facebook and Twitter too much? Or maybe checking your email or watching Youtube videos are just too compelling that you can’t stay away from it? These common time wasters that can rob you of your valuable time.

If you rely on your self-discipline to refrain from indulging in time wasters, most likely you will fail. Self-discipline is overrated. Using willpower to refrain yourself from indulging in these time waster activities will most likely produce a short-term result. Tweak the environment and enforce curfews to assist yourself to win this battle. This will be a much more effective way.

Leech Block can help to block out any websites. You can choose to block off Facebook or other social media sites when you are doing your work. This will help you stay focus. You can set Leechblock to block any sites for the whole day or for any specific time of the day. You can even set a time limit to visit these websites in a day.

It’s time to get tough on yourself. Get this Firefox plugin and start to be a kick-ass action taker now!

Who is it for?

If you lack discipline want be a kick ass action taker, think that Facebook, Twitter and gazillion of other social media sites are just a waste of time and want to get some serious results in your life.

Click here to download Leechblock plugin

5) Roboform

Are you sick and tired of remembering all the different passwords for your login accounts? Roboform to the rescue! You don’t ever need to remember passwords anymore with Roboform (erm.. you need to remember only one password). With Roboform, you can register an account with any sites, generate passwords and save all your login info in one place. When you need to login, just click a single button and Roboform will do the entire login for you. No more lost passwords and the hassle of trying to get them back.

Roboform also comes with the sync function, so using multiple computers is not a problem. It also generates complex passwords (better security) for your accounts that you can’t probably remember. However, it is not a problem since Roboform is there to help you store all your login info for your sites. To login, all you need to do is to click on your account on the toolbar and Roboform will help to bring you to the site and auto login for you.

Who is it for?

For people who…

love complex passwords but are too lazy to remember them
tend to forget their passwords
do not want to use the same password all their accounts. You compromise on your security when you do that.

Click here to download Roboform for free

These are some great tools that you can use for free. Make full use of the tools to help make things easier for you or help you to get more things done. If you have any great tools in mind, do write in the comment section below and share it with us. I’ll be interested in what you have to recommend.

If you haven’t noticed, I finally changed the header of HealthMoneySuccess. It took me quite some time to get a decent header. I think the previous header is a little too ugly (I did it myself!). This time round, I paid for this header and I’m glad I did. I think the current header much better looking than the previous one. What do you think?

Cheers

Post from: Health Money Success

5 Free Applications To Help You Get More Things Done

5 Kick Ass Productivity Tips – How To Get Your Butt Off The Couch

Vincent — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:14:58 +0000

Image courtesy of MJimages

Do you have problem getting off your couch and taking action?

If you do, do not worry too much about it because most people do. Everyone have his or her own down time. By down time, I mean slumps when you are just not productive at all (spending hours in front of your TV, remember?).

I decided to write this article as this is what I am experiencing right now. My recent vacation at Taiwan broke my momentum for my exercise regime. This can easily slide into a few weeks of inaction but I will share with you the methods that I used to get myself into taking action again.

5 Kick Ass Productivity Tips That Will Help You Take Massive Action Now

1. Start Small To Help Build Your Momentum

When you find it hard to get started in any of your tasks, start small or break down your tasks. The problem with inaction is due to how the negative impression of the tasks we portray in our mind. If we see a task as overwhelming and boring, most likely we will not get around doing it.

If you are able to make a task appear smaller as it is (definitely possible and it is easy to do so), getting off your couch to get into action will be a much more pleasant experience.

Let us look at an example. Let say if you want to start a diet plan or exercise regime. However, the problem is you have already failed countless of times trying to exercise consistently. Some people may just think they are not suited for exercising and give up before even trying.

They are definitely capable of exercising consistently but they just do not have the right strategies and mindset to do it effortlessly. One of the key is to start small.

Most people are overly enthusiastic when they have a new idea they want to implement. It may be a new exercise routine or writing a new book. Nevertheless, when you start something new with a high level of enthusiasm, most likely you will bite off more than you could chew. This is a problem. Your own enthusiasm will kill your own plan prematurely (or you).

Most people find it hard to start small when they are overly enthusiastic over their new plans. They want to achieve the impossible of exercising 6 days a week (hitting the gym everyday) when they can hardly perform 10 pushups. What do you think will happen to the poor chap when he tries to exercise 6 days a week? Most probably, he will fail badly and he will think that he just isn’t a gym person. This will deal a huge blow to his self-belief and he/she may be reluctant to start exercising again.

When you have a new plan to improve any areas of your life, start small. You may be highly enthusiastic but you will need to build up momentum to help you make it into a sustainable activity. You will not lose weight overnight if you try to bench press 200 lbs immediately. However, losing weight gradually is much more easier when you exercise consistently for 10 minutes a day and build up from there. Start small, create momentum and let it roll. Think long-term.

2. Bring People Into Your Plan

I have talked about how having your own mastermind group and accountability partners can help you be more productive. If you still do not have one, you should start to look for it now. Some good places to start are MeetUp.com and Steve Pavlina’s Forum

A mastermind group can help you to stay positive and focus throughout the journey of pursuing your goals. It can also help to serve as an accountability group to help you stay accountable to your actions.

Starting a blog would be a good idea too. I use this blog to share my goals and challenges with you. Sharing my personal goals and challenges with you can help me to stay accountable and further motivates me into taking action.

You can also tell your new goals or plan to your family and friends. Find those whom you know will not laugh at your goals and plans for personal development. Tell them about what you want to achieve and the steps you will take to achieve it. Do not be surprised by how much more you can accomplished when you have an accountability partner or a mastermind group.

3. Tracking Your Progress

If you do not know how much you had progressed, you will not be motivated to continue. If you try to write a book and you complete one page every single day, you will be more motivated to keep on writing. For any plan that you have, you need to track the numbers.

If you want to lose weight, track your fat percentages or your weight. If you want to save money now, track your spending and savings in your bank account every month. Seeing your progress is a great motivation.

You can capture your progress in a physical note book, apps like Secret Diary on the iPhone (any journal apps), Google Docs, create a blog or online journal at Blogger or Penzu.

4. Create Habits To Tackle Your Tasks Effortlessly

It is hard to act on something that is new to you. Just like it is hard to start exercising if you haven’t exercised in a while. To ensure that you can perform whatever tasks with the least amount of effort, you need to cultivate a habit. You will need to refer back to point number 1 again; start small.

When you start small (example; start by exercising 10 minutes per day), it is almost impossible for you to skip doing something this easy. If you fail to exercise for 10 minutes a day, cut back and start at 5 minutes a day (Its just 10 minutes!). Make a task so easy to accomplish so that it will be hard for you to miss it.

Keep working on your task everyday (for 21 days) and try to turn it into a habit. It takes around 21 days to create a new habit.

When you cultivated a new habit, you do not need to use much willpower to force yourself into action. Taking action will be much more easier from now on.

5. Reward Yourself

Everybody loves to pamper himself or herself. Find a reward for yourself when you kept up with your tasks. It may be something that you enjoy doing or small gifts that you like. If you wrote 10 pages of your new book, celebrate your mini milestone with a small reward that you like. Just be sure not to be counter intuitive in choosing your rewards. You do not want to reward yourself with chocolates right after each workout that you had completed.

Be frugal with your mini rewards and make yourself earn it. I sometimes reward myself with my favorite food or go for a small shopping trip when I reached my mini milestone for my goals.

These are my 5 productivity tips that can help you get your ass off the couch and get the essentials done. How about you? What do you do to help motivate yourself to get off the couch and start taking action? I look forward to your comments below.

Vincent
Taking Small Steps

Post from: Health Money Success

5 Kick Ass Productivity Tips – How To Get Your Butt Off The Couch

How To Overcome Reluctance And Have Never Ending Motivation

Vincent — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:36:01 +0000

One of the traits of successful people is to take massive action. You can find personal development authors stressing that taking action is important in every self-help book. This shows that taking massive action is important to help us reach our goals and achieve our desired success. However, there is always one thing that is stopping us from taking action. It is the feeling of reluctance to do anything and the lack of motivation.

Recently I have been thinking about how can I sustain my motivation for taking action. Even though I am blogging about personal development and I had written about taking massive action, I have to confess that there are times when the feeling of reluctance and lack of motivation stop me from doing so.

There will be times when procrastination takes place and the feeling of reluctance to do anything kicks in. My productivity usually takes a dip when this happen. I will spend some time in this low productivity period before I start to take massive action and be productive again.

I wonder what will happen if I am capable of taking massive action in a more consistent manner? What if I can overcome the feeling of reluctance and take massive action consistently? I believe my life would change more drastically if I am able to do it.

Brainstorming For Answers

I have been brainstorming for answers to help me boost my productivity by overcoming the feeling of reluctance and to sustain my motivation. I did not find any answers to my questions. I have tried out other methods shared by personal development authors and speakers but I find that something is lacking in their methods.

I did my night run yesterday and I was listening to an audio book, Cultivating An Unshakable Character by Jim Rohn. He spoke about the topic of how to sustain our motivation and how to overcome our feeling of reluctance. This is what I am looking for and it is great that Jim Rohn already has an answer for me.

He mentioned that to overcome reluctance and sustain your motivation, there are 2 things that you need to do. The first thing is to keep track of your time and the second thing is to bring others into your plan or goal.

1. Keep Track Of Your Time

If you do not keep track of your finance, you will not know where your money went and you may end up broke at the end of every month. If you do not keep track of your time, you will lose your most valuable asset and achieve nothing in the end.

Jim Rohn has recommended keeping a time log and taking note of everything that you did every day for at least a week. This can help you to reflect upon what you are doing, how much time you are putting into serious work and how much time you are wasting daily.

I always experience inertia (reluctance) when I want to start taking action. For this article that I had wrote, I had wasted 30 minutes walking around doing nothing before I set my mind to write it. This little amount of time wasted daily when accumulated in a week is a lot of time.

By keeping a time log and recording what you did in every 30 minutes interval daily can help me to track where I spend my time. Keeping a time log can help me know how much time I have wasted. This can help me to overcome the feeling of reluctance and get into action faster to avoid wasting time.

I plan to start recording my time log tomorrow. I will write a post on it after a week and share the results with you.

2. Bring Others Into Your Plan

It is easy to break a single chopstick but it is hard to break a bunch of chopsticks. It is hard to achieve your goals alone. I already have a mastermind group and I know how important it is to gather like-minded people together and try to achieve their goals.

I have a weekly meet up with my mastermind group. We will meet in person every start of the month and for the other weeks, we will conduct a talk using Skype. This weekly meet ups allow us to reflect upon our action for the week and plan for the new week. We also encourage and motivate each other into taking massive action to achieve our goals.

Jim Rohn mentioned something that caught my attention. He said that to sustain motivation, you would need to think about how achieving your goals can help your family or others. This is what I am missing. I do not have a clear picture of how my goals can help my family and others. It has always been me, me and all about me.

I believe this is why I am constantly experiencing a dip in motivation and productivity. I have decided to write down my goals once again and this time round, bring my family members into picture. For example, writing down how can achieving my goal in running a highly profitable business can help out my family and how I am able to help provide for my love ones and allow them to experience abundance.

Parting Words

How much difference will it make to your life if you have 50% less feeling of reluctance? How can the increased productivity help you achieve your goals much faster? What if you can sustain never ending motivation? I bet you will be living a life of abundance and prosperity.

I believe anyone can achieve their goals much faster and experience lesser obstacles if they can overcome their feeling of reluctance, start taking massive action and have never ending motivation.

When you are trying to achieve your goals with feeling of reluctance and lack of motivation, it is like running with a heavy weight tied to you. Stop allowing your feeling of reluctance and lack of motivation tie you down. Get rid of them and start achieving like you are suppose to.

Vincent
Overcoming Reluctance
Sustaining Motivation

Post from: Health Money Success

How To Overcome Reluctance And Have Never Ending Motivation

How To Go Through A Year Without Achieving Anything – Stop Being Mediocre And Start Achieving Now

Vincent — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 08:59:49 +0000

It does not feel good to have a year passes by without achieving anything. A single year contains 365 days and when properly utilize, we can achieve tons of things. Time is our most important asset. It is possible to lose all your money and get it back but there is not a single way to get back your time after it passes you by.

The One Big Factor That Leads To Lack of Results

If a year passes you by and you felt like you had achieved nothing, it is time to reflect upon your action. I used to have a few of those years before I start my own personal development journey. It does not feel good when you had wasted a year without achieving something. A year is a lot of time and who knows how many years we have in our life.

If a year passes you by and you achieved nothing, most likely you are making one serious mistake. You may be majoring in minor matters too frequently.

Majoring In Minor Matters

It is not the people who work hard that win, it is the people who work hard in the smart way that win. Someone who works hard on minor matters will not achieve the level of success of someone who works hard on things that matter.

The common mistake that people made is that they indulge in things that do not matter at all. Activities like playing games, watching TV or hanging out with friends too frequently for mindless chatters. These are low value activities or minor matters that will not make any big improvement to your life.

Another type of people is hard workers who fail to work hard on important things. They work hard on minor matters all year round and in a year time, they question themselves why are they not getting the results they want even though they are working so hard. The deadly mistake that they made is that they are working hard on things that do not matter at all. If you are a salesman, it does not matter if you check your email inbox 50 times a day, file your documents daily or reach the office earliest every day. What matters is that you accomplish tasks (prospecting, cold calling etc) that can help to make new sales!

I respect and admire hard work, but it pays to play smart instead of simply working hard. A sales man who works hard in doing every other thing except for making sales, he will not be valuable to the company and his commission check is definitely not going to be huge.

How To Start Achieving

Your life will change when you start to have this habit of majoring in things that matter. It becomes much easier to reach your goals when you start doing important tasks and I learned this in a hard way. After years of not getting results, I start to reflect upon my own action and find that I have been focusing on too many minor matters.

Many people fall into the trap of working hard on minor matters. However, the moment they start focusing all their energy on things that matter, getting their desired results seems much easier and faster.

If you do not want to feel like you have achieved nothing at the end of the year, it is time for you to start doing something about it. Here is the action plan.

Have your goal in place
Go through what you are doing daily and analyze whether they are important or minor matters
If it is important, continue doing it. If no, replace minor tasks with important tasks that can help bring you closer to your goal.

1. Have Your Goal In Place

Without an objective, you will not know where to go. You will not start traveling before you know your destination and you do not try to achieve your goals before you know what your goals are. To know what the important tasks to you are, you will have to know where you want to end up in the first place. A blogger would have a different set of important tasks compared to a salesman. The first step to start achieving is to set what you want to achieve first.

2. Go Through What You Are Doing Daily

Keep a notebook that you can write down your daily to do tasks. Go through the list of things that you do daily and reflect upon it. Are the tasks major or minor matters? Do they help to bring you closer to your goals?

Write down the tasks that you had completed daily in a notebook and review them at the end of every week. By reviewing them weekly, you can make changes if you find yourself indulging in too many minor matters.

3. Replacing Minor Tasks With Important Tasks

Some people may have trouble differentiating the important tasks and minor tasks. If it is so, I recommend that you read this article about the 80/20 principle first. Go through the 80/20 principle and weed out the tasks that do not give you major results. Replace each of them with tasks that will give you 80% of the results using 20% of the effort.

Parting Words

“Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.”
~Jim Rohn

One of the most important things to do in your life is to keep working on yourself. Reading books, listening to audiotapes and attending seminars on personal growth can help you to build your character, mindset and attitude. With a strong character, correct mindset and positive attitude, you can achieve anything that you want. Working on yourself is definitely the top of the list of major matters in your life.

Don’t let this year end without achieving anything significant again. Start planning what you want to achieve this year and go out there to grab the success that you always desire!

Vincent
Focusing On Major Matters

Post from: Health Money Success

How To Go Through A Year Without Achieving Anything – Stop Being Mediocre And Start Achieving Now

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

Vincent — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:35:32 +0000

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?

The Power Of Certainty And Why You Need It

Vincent — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:12:46 +0000

Image courtesy of thomashawk

Recently my productivity had been down spiralling. Even though I was aware of it, I found it hard to bring myself back into taking massive action. This led me to search for answers within myself.

I did a lot of reflection upon my action and thoughts and I found that productivity stem from the feeling of certainty. There are a bunch of techniques that can help us to double our productivity but without the feeling of certainty, we will not be able to take consistent action to bring in massive results.

Why Do You Need Certainty?

I am in the internet marketing industry and I had tried various ways to make money online. However not 100% of them works for me. There are some methods that make me more money than the other.

Nowadays I procrastinate a lot on my projects because they don’t seem to be earning much income. I don’t used to be like that. I used to wake up every morning excited and start to do the tasks that are most important to my internet business.

So what is the reason for my dip in productivity? Is it because I am lazy or I’m just plain tired? The answer is no! My productivity dip is not due to laziness or just feeling tired. It is because I lack the feeling of certainty that my projects will give me enough rewards (make money) to justify myself to take action.

When you are certain about something, most probably you will put in more effort into it because you know you will be rewarded. But if you are not certain of the results, most probably you will put in minimal effort and give up immediately when you encountered obstacles. Think about it. How much effort will you put in when you know that you are bound to fail?

When you think that what you are going to do will not work, your thoughts will contradict your action. You will want to take action and move forward but your mind keep on thinking about how things are not going to work out and you take a few steps back. Without congruent action and thoughts, you will find it a struggle to take consistent action.

How I Recover From My Dip In Productivity

My reflection helps me to discover that the feeling of certainty is needed in order for me to start being productive again. I need to get back the feeling of certainty that those projects will work in order to help instil a strong positive belief. With the strong belief that things will work out, my thoughts and action are both congruent again.

This result in my willingness to put more effort into my projects and taking consistent action doesn’t seems to be a problem anymore.

If you are suffering from a dip in productivity or find it hard to take action, reflect upon yourself and find out whether your thoughts are holding you back? Do you believe in what you are doing? If you are not, most probably you are moving back and forth and staying in the same spot.

Remember this, you are not running at your fastest speed when you are taking 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. Congruent thoughts and action can help you to move forward at a much faster pace than you can probably imagine.

To your success,
Vincent

Post from: Health Money Success

The Power Of Certainty And Why You Need It

Why You Should Stop Complaining About The Lack Of Time

Vincent — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:26:34 +0000

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

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**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

How To Tackle The Email Monster

Vincent — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:31:19 +0000

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

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