Early-riser. Some things I’d like to share with you. All right, so I obviously didn’t spend a lot of time writing that title. But, there are some things I’d like to share with you and I figured the best way to do that is to just tell you about them. Lift Off Retreat First, my good friend and business partner Charlie Gilkey and Pamela Slim are doing their second Lift Off Retreat. If you’ve been wanting to connect with other people in person to get some support with your business, this might be exactly what you’re looking for. They have packed this trip full of super-charged coaching and support from people that really get what you’re doing. Last time, the retreat was held in Arizona. Small ways to make a big difference My friend Raam Dev has released a free document called “Small Ways to Make a Big Difference.”
But I’m not just sharing it here to promote myself. It’s the same with our own lives, too. If you’re interested in learning some small things you can do to make a big difference, here’s where you can download the free ebook. Share: How to Make a Schedule You Can Stick To - PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement. Have you ever been surprised at how much you can fit in when you’re at a conference? When we have a schedule provided for us, we manage to get from one event to the next at the right time; the imposition of external timings means that even if we’d like to stick with one task a little longer, we move on quickly. We deal with emails in brief breaks, sending shorter replies than usual, ditching any junk without even opening it. In day to day working life, though, we tend to find ourselves struggling to stick to self-imposed schedules. One or two things overrun; emails and phone calls come in; our boss dumps an urgent task on us.
However beautiful your schedule looks, just writing it out isn’t going to help you. Don’t Over-Plan The biggest mistake which most of us make when it comes to scheduling is to over-plan. Whatever your job, you’re almost certainly going to have to face all sorts of little interruptions and hold-ups. Build in Margins …and so on. Margins also apply at a larger scale. Too Many Things That You Want to Do? If you’re anything like me, there are a lot of things that you’d like to do, but somehow you never have enough time to actually do them. Perhaps you want to learn something new, or you want to start a new projects. I used to have the same problem, and even though I’ve not yet figured out how to do everything I want, I’m pretty happy with the system I’m currently using.
I’ll use my current situation as an example here, but the concept should apply to everyone in a similar situation. Step 1: What do you want to do? Let’s start with a list of the things that I currently want to do. Here’s an example from my personal list: study internet marketing write blog posts like this one study mac/iphone programming study math study general programming (algorithms, interpreters, compilers, etc) workout Note that I included only the things that I really want to do right now in my life. I suggest making a list like that with the things that you’d like to do on a daily basis. Step 3: Finding the time.
The 5 Benefits of Being an Early Riser | Change your thoughts. Achieve Anything in Just One Year. Posted in Book Reviews/Interviews | July 21, 2010 | 6 Comments This post was written by Anastasiya. Follow me on Twitter or StumbleUpon and keep your life balanced! Do you have goals in life? Most people have a certain idea of what they want to achieve in life. It can be anything from starting a successful business to building a strong marriage or strong friendships. The process of growing as a person is fascinating and it does not matter how old you are to start this journey. OK, that was a long rant about the importance of self improvement (I am pretty sure that you agree with me if you like reading blogs ) Now, would you believe me if I said that there is a single resource that can help you achieve anything in life? Even if you do not like book reviews, stick around and read Jason’s interview because he has really great tips to share with all of us.
I must say that I haven’t gone through 365 days yet (I am about 30 days into the book) and I am learning a lot. Who is this book good for? How to be Insanely Productive and Still Keep Smiling | zen habits. Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Mary Jaksch of Goodlife ZEN. Do you want to be more productive? Maybe you do, but I’m sure you don’t want to feel stressed, overwhelmed, or unhappy – which happens to many super-productive people. But there is good news: You can be insanely productive – and still smell the freesias, savor a Pinot Noir, or enjoy a languid hug. A few weeks ago Leo Babauta said to me, “Mary – you’re one of the most productive people I know. Most stuff I’ve read about productivity is about doing things differently.
High productivity isn’t about doing, it’s about being. If you want to be highly productive – and still enjoy life – you need to look at how you live, and how you use your mind. Make peace within. Finally, a key question you need to ask … If you want to be productive and still enjoy life, there is a key question you need to answer: why be productive? I mean, why not just chill out on the couch, eat potato crisps, and watch TV reruns?
How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs. The beliefs you hold to be true make up the fabric of your experience. The stronger those beliefs, the more they seemunshakeable, and the more you will find evidence to support them. What most people don’t realize is that the vast majority of our beliefs about the world are not really true “out there.” They are only true because we’ve decided they are, albeit we likely haven’t done so consciously. Beliefs are formed through repeated thoughts, and the only reason they hold any weight is because you’ve decided or agreed that they are true. There are a lot of collective limiting beliefs that you’ve probably agreed to: Work must be a choreMarriage turns you into a boring old personTime is moneyOnce you’re an adult, life is about responsibilities, not funDreams are not practical And there are probably a lot of personally acquired limiting beliefs you’ve collected through your own unique experiences.
It’s not like one day we woke up and thought “Man, you know what would be awesome? Share: How to Be Resourceful. Most people put their dreams on hold because they’re waiting for the right resources to become available to them. And they wait indefinitely. When you let circumstances dictate when and how you will act, they will never be exactly as you want them to be. When you’re waiting for opportunities to show up, they rarely do.
When you wait for the right people to contact you, they may or may not. There’s a big difference between seeking resources and being resourceful. Seeking resources works some of the time. When the tools you need are easily within your reach, everything works out. Being resourceful on the other hand means you’re the one that mines the resources. Being resourceful means… The difference between being resourceful and passively waiting for or seeking resources is dramatic. The people that get things done are resourceful. The people that follow (and realize) their dreams are resourceful. Start now, from wherever you are. Photo courtesy of Chris Devers Share: How to Put an End to Procrastination Today | Change your thoughts.
The 26 Best Self-Improvement Posts Ever. Need a place to find the best self-improvement blog posts ever? One big list of inspiring geniuses? Well, here it is… my list of the best self-improvement posts ever: 1. – How to be Creative – Originally published in 2004 by Hugh Macleod at the Gaping Void. If you haven’t read it, you’re missing some of the best advice ever given freely over the internet. If you have read it, read it again… 2. – How to Make Money From Your Blog – If I had a dollar for every person who started blogging after reading this post… well… I could quit my job. 3. – Zen To Done (ZTD): The Ultimate Simple Productivity System – This is a post you can put to use to improve you life immediately. 4. – How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour (Plus: A Favor) – Tim Ferris describes in detail how you can learn the basics of new language quickly through a method he calls deconstruction. 7. – Do You Have Weirdo Syndrome?
9. – 279 Days to Overnight Success – This isn’t a blog post. 8 Harsh Truths that Will Improve Your Life. They say life is what we make of it. By the end of this post, I hope to have helped you decide whether that statement is true or not. There is no doubt that life has its ups and downs. However, how we deal with them can sometimes make all the difference.
Today I want to share eight harsh truths that I’ve come to learn from life. There’s also a message in each that I think we can all learn from, and when applied, will improve our lives infinitely. Some of these lessons may be old-hat for you. Friends will always come and go in your life; even though I’m back in the UK now, all my friends are in university around the country and not exactly in meeting distance. Important Lesson:There are an abundance of amazing people out there for you to meet and build relationships with. You Won’t Always Get What You Want I remember one Christmas when the only thing I had asked for was some second hand turntables for DJ’ing.
Important Lesson: Not everyone is always going to like you, and that’s fine. Connect with Your Creative Writer. Photo by Cindy Loughridge Do you have to complete a piece of writing but are putting it off? A report, a blog article, or a letter? Are you finding that the moment you sit down to write, your mind seems to go blank? Crap! Writers block! What can you do about it? Although, the term writers block is popular, this feeling of blockage and mind blanking is not specific to writing, but of any creative feats.
Through practice and observation, I’ve gotten pretty good at getting past these blank moments, and this article shares some insights for unlocking your creativity. Creativity & Mental Blocks Before digging into how we can unlock these creative blocks, here are some observations on the subject of feeling mentally blocked. The more we Think about it, the worse it becomes. How to Overcome Writer’s Block From my experience as a writer, I’ve learned that unless I was exceptionally inspired to write about a particular topic, I will experience writer’s block every single time. Can you relate? Your Mind Is A Computer: Learn How To Defrag It.
This is a follow up to my post: “Are You The Best Version Of Yourself? “. Specifically, that article used a geeky metaphor, comparing our own being with a computer. In order to be sure you run the best version of yourself, a certain number of maintenance tasks have to be performed, such as “updating your drivers” or “stay virus free”.
In this post I’m going to detail on “Defrag your mind”. Defrag Your Mind? For the non-geeky versions of my readers, I will briefly outline what a defragmentation is. This is where defragmentation comes in: it re-arranges the data on your hard-disk so it would be much more easier to access. Now, how can you do this to your mind? 1. Maybe you’ll be in travel mood for the next couple of weeks. Similarly, there are computer setups for video processing or for games. There are setups for text or image processing. 2. Once you correctly identified the main concern for the next period, start to identify related areas. 3. 4. 5.
A Real Life Example 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 106 Tips to Become a Master Connector. How to handle chronic complainers. Got any chronic complainers where you work? It seems like every workplace has them – the people for whom the weather is always too warm or too cold, the boss is a jerk, the food is lousy, work sucks and … you fill out the list. No matter how good things get they still only see the bad – and they go to huge lengths to point it out to everyone around them. I’m not saying we should outlaw complaining, but workplaces need to do something about the chronic complainers because they tend to make people around them unhappy at work. It’s a fact that negative people are highly contagious and one chronic complainer can easily get an entire department down. We try many different strategies to deal with complainers – one german IT company even bans whiners from the workplace. But most of the strategies we normally use on complainers don’t help and often make matters worse.
And then at the end of the post, theres a simple, devious trick that works amazingly well. A trick that does work. Mark Twain’s Top 9 Tips for Living a Kick-Ass Life. “It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” “Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” “When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.” You may know Mark Twain for some of his very popular books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Twain is known for his many – and often funny – quotes. 1. “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” If you don’t approve of yourself, of your behaviour and actions then you’ll probably walk around most of the day with a sort of uncomfortable feeling. This can, in a related way, be a big obstacle in personal growth.
What you may be bumping into there are success barriers. Or if you make some headway in the direction you want to go you may start to sabotage for yourself. So you need give yourself approval and allow yourself to be who you want to be. 2. “Age is an issue of mind over matter. 3. 4. The Fifty Success Habits. So I thought that I might write a quick review of every self-help book ever written all right here in this one little post. Simple enough. I love the easy jobs. Surely it couldn’t be that hard, could it? I figured that maybe I could take the important lessons from every self-help book I’ve read and every life experience I’ve endured, condense all that into fifty key points and save everybody a whole bunch of reading time.
Sure, global book sales in the self-help field might take a down-turn for a decade or so, but I’m willing to take that chance and put in a solid sixty minutes (or so) work for the good of humanity; my gift to mankind. Selfless I know. I thought that perhaps I could follow Stephen Covey’s lead (the Seven Habits) and come up with my own list of say… Fifty Habits (in truth, some of them are more qualities, than habits). Don’t answer that. Habits of successful people…. 1. 11. 25. Which they have no control of. 41. Okay, maybe not. About Craig. Top 5 Ways to Build a Wonderful Life - PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement. 1. Live Below Your Means There will always be temptation to forsake the future for immediate gratification. We all want to buy that new piece of technology, treat ourselves to an expensive night on the town, or take out a loan for the flashy car we can’t afford. It might feel great at the time but rash spending eventually will build and hurt a lot later on.
Enjoy life’s simple pleasures and save as much as you can. 2. Saving is great, but to make the most of your money you need to put it to work. A post today at The Simple Dollar really got me thinking. Wise investing is the surest path to financial independence and it’s something everyone can work on. 3.
To be happy we need continuous growth. Education builds over time. 4. Suppose you had everything you wanted. Taking the time to cultivate and enjoy personal relationships is essential to longterm happiness. 5. Even if your life isn’t perfect, you can always build towards a goal you’re passionate about. Bonus: 6. You only get one body. The 99 Best Business Books – The Personal MBA - The Personal MBA.
How I Left the Rat Race (And You Can Too) 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job. 279days.pdf (application/pdf Object) 120 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power. Do You Have the Weirdo Syndrome? 50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do. The Art of the Finish: How to Go From Busy to Accomplished. How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour (Plus: A Favor) Zen To Done (ZTD): The Ultimate Simple Productivity System | zen habits. 50 Ways To Start Fresh. What’s your Productivity Personality Type? - PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement. 10 Laws of Productivity. The Benefits of a Positive Attitude – and Five Tactics for Doing It. 4 Ultimate PC Productivity Tools | Work Happy Now! My Gmail Setup And Productivity System. Productivity Advice in 5 Words or Less.
Personal Development Plan – Examples, A Template and Guide. How To Be More Productive. Four Best Inspiring Blogs Every Life Hacker Should Subscribe To. 29 Semi-Productive Things I Do Online When I’m Trying to Avoid Real Work. 12 Classic Zen Habits Posts You Might Not Have Read. How to Use Personal Development Information in a Better Way. Personal Development: More Than Self-Motivation and Positive Thinking - PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement. The Top 50 Productivity Blogs To Watch in 2010. The Best Productivity System There Is. A Summer Reading List: 10 of My Favorite Personal Development Books.