Rapid Improvements

To be productive without being busy, you should work only on meaningful tasks. But there is a potential problem here: you can spend your whole day without getting your meaningful tasks done. How should we handle this problem?

One good way to handle this is by setting some most important tasks in the beginning of the day. Think about your priorities and choose the tasks that will give you the most return for your time investment. Set them as your most important tasks for that day. Then, focus on finishing them first before doing other tasks. If you follow this simple rule, you can always be sure that you get the meaningful work done. On the other hand, if you put off the important tasks to later time in the day, there is the danger it won’t get done.

So don’t do things in the wrong sequence. Start with your most important tasks. Work on them first. Get them done and you can then work on your other tasks.

There are many things you can potentially do every day. In such a situation, it’s easy to get busy with doing a lot of tasks without accomplishing anything important. But there is a big difference between being productive and just being busy. You could be busy without accomplishing something meaningful in your work. On the other hand, you could also accomplish something meaningful without being busy. Which one do you prefer?

Of course, it’s better to do meaningful work without being busy. If you can be productive without working over time, then why not? That’s why it’s important to distinguish between being busy and being productive. Are you being productive or just being busy?

One thing you can do to be productive without being busy is to do only the most meaningful tasks. Don’t waste your time doing something that is not meaningful. Instead, spend your time on doing the tasks that will give you the most benefit in the long term. If you consistently do that, you will be a productive person without necessarily being busy.

While there are many kinds of possible obstacles on your way to success, there is one that could prevent you from taking even the first action. It’s your failures in the past. Having failures in the past may intimidate you as if you will always fail in the future. They can discourage you to the point where you are afraid to take action.

Don’t let your past failures prevent you from having a bright future. The fact that you failed in the past says nothing about your future. In fact, your failures means that you already try. It also means that you have a lot of lessons that equip you for the future. Having failures in the past actually makes the situation better for you, not worse.

So make the decision not to be discouraged by your past failures. Learn from them and let them go. You have better things to do.

How big is your dream? The size of your dream is important because it greatly influences how far you will go in life. If your dream is big, chance is you will achieve great things in your life. On the other hand, if your dream is small then it’s difficult for you to achieve anything significant in your life.

Why? Because your dream affects your perspective. People with a big dream will see the world differently than those with a small dream. They know they need to work hard and smart. They know that they need to keep improving themselves. They know they need to be optimistic to overcome the challenges.

Since they have a better perspective of the world, it’s no wonder that the people who dream big will also achieve more in life. So enlarge the size of your dream. Be dare to dream big for a great future.

In order to achieve success, there is no doubt that you will go through difficult times. Challenges may come, problems may arise, and some people may go against you. In such a situation, it’s easy to get discouraged. That’s why you need something to keep you moving forward. That thing is perseverance.

Perseverance can help you go through difficult times. Perseverance makes you see further than what is right in front of you. While the challenges in front of you may seem big and intimidating, you know that there is something much better available for you ahead. So instead of being discouraged, you keep pushing forward and reaching out for the best that you can have.

Once Thomas Edison said that failure is often caused by people who stop without knowing how close they are to the finish line. I like it. Don’t stop in difficult times. Make perseverance your friend. Who knows, perhaps finish line is just around the corner.

It’s difficult to be effective if you are overwhelmed with a lot of commitments in your work and personal life. Just think about it. If you have ten commitments, how much time can you allocate to each of them? Not much, I’m sure. Compare it with the situation in which you have only five commitments. In such a situation, you will be able to devote more time into each of your commitment and thereby make them work better.

If you spread yourself too thin by having a lot of commitments, there is the danger that you won’t be able to accomplish anything valuable at all. There is always a minimum threshold you need to pass in order to make something valuable. If you devote too little resources to something, the chance is small that you will be able to pass the threshold.

That’s why it’s a good idea to reduce the number of commitments in your life. Choose only the essential commitments and eliminate the rest. By doing so, you will be able to increase your effectiveness. Not only that, you will also have more free time that you can spend with your loved ones.

How good is that?

Sometimes we are too busy to enjoy our life. There are so many demands we need to satisfy and so many responsibilities we need to handle, that we barely have time to appreciate our daily experiences. If you always rush throughout the day, the chance is small that you will be able to enjoy your life. To the contrary, your life will always be full of pressure.

You need to slow down to enjoy your life. Don’t be in hurry to accomplish a lot of tasks. Do fewer things but choose the ones that are most influential. Then slow down. Enjoy what you are experiencing right now. While you are eating, enjoy your meal. Taste it. When you are walking, look at your surrounding and feel the fresh air.

If you do this, you will be surprised by a lot of small things you’ve never noticed before. As it turns out, there are a lot of simple beauties around us, if only we are not too hurry to notice them.

There is one thing that can greatly help you in your self improvement: keeping a journal. Keeping a journal is helpful for your personal growth because that way you can easily review what you have learned through your experiences. There are many things we can learn from our daily experiences, but if you don’t have place to write them down, most likely they will just disappear. That’s why it’s important to have a journal: it makes sure that you learn the most out of your life experiences.

So how should we use the journal? Well, as I’ve mentioned above, the important thing is to write down every lesson and thought that comes across you. Don’t let them go without capturing them. Make sure that they are all captured and stored in a safe place which is your journal. By having this habit of journaling, you will be more observant in your life. You won’t just go through life as it is. Instead, you open your eyes and ears for useful things that you can write down in your journal.

Besides writing in your journal, you should also build the habit of reviewing it. It’s easy to forget the lessons we’ve learned if we don’t review them regularly. The reviewing period could be weekly, monthly, or anything else that works for you.

In the previous post, I wrote about the importance of energy management. You need to manage your energy well if you want to have a productive day.

But what should we do to manage our energy? There are many things you can do for energy management, but one of them you can quickly apply is taking frequent breaks in your workday. If you work continuously without taking breaks, you will soon deplete your energy reserve. It’s essential that you take a break after an intense working session so that you can recharge your energy. If you don’t do that, perhaps you can work intensely for now, but that won’t last long. There’s no way you can keep working intensely without enough time for recovery.

The breaks you take don’t need to be long. You can just take short ones. Walking for a while around the hallway is good enough. Or you can stretch your body while you are sitting in your chair. Or you can just close your eyes for a while. These simple things could help you preserve your personal energy.

Do you want to have a productive day? If you do, then how do you think you can have it? Many people think that the answer is time management. Time management is indeed helpful, but there is something that is even more important than time management. If you don’t have it, it’s unlikely that you will be able to have a productive day.

The key I’m talking about is personal energy management. Personal energy management is what you need to have a productive day. Just think about it. If your energy level is high, you can accomplish much in small amount of time. On the other hand, if your energy level is low, you can only accomplish a little even if you are given a lot of time. It proves the importance of managing your energy. If you can manage your energy well throughout the day, chance is you will be able to make your day a productive one.