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The five priorities

A useful measure in order for you to ensure that you concentrate on the things most important to you, is to write down your top five priorities.

After you have the list of five things, evaluate everything on your todo list in relation to the five priorities you have written down. Chances are that most of the things will not be related to the priorities listed.

Divide the list into three categories.

1. Essential items for living.

2. Items that directly contribute to your priorities, or support them in some way.

3. Everything else.

For the first category think about how to eliminate as many as possible, by automating or reducing the effort required to complete.

For the second category, examine whether they actually contribute towards your priorities, or are actually part of the third category.

For the third category, dump as many as you can, and start reducing the number of items of this nature coming in. You may need to learn how to say no.

Note that you can do this for your life overall, or restrict it to a particular domain, for example, your job.

Kickstart your personal development

With all the bewildering array of self-professed gurus out there, giving sometimes conflicting advice, it can be a real minefield. Where does one begin in starting a personal development journey?

Although the answer to this is a highly personal, and often emotive subject, I have found that using one of the strategies below provides a useful starting point.

1. Work on the physical

Many people complain of a lack of motivation or energy. Whilst this can be for genuine reasons, such as depression or illness, it can also be down to not taking care of your physical needs.

Your body needs a plethora of vitamins, nutrients and energy in order to function at its peak. Ensuring that you eat properly is a key step in raising energy levels. There are a lot of good sites that cover this, so I won’t go any further into this.

Exercise is the other key to success in this area. Without it you will struggle to maintain your body tone. Ideally you should be aiming for 30 minutes of aerobic exercise at least twice a week.

Getting the above two things right should result in more energy, enthusiasm and enable you to progress in other areas.

2. Get your systems in place

A major cause of stress is feeling overwhelmed with the sheer amount of things you have to do. There are many ways of dealing with this, including the use of todo lists, calendars and many other tools.

The key to all of these systems is to write down your commitments, in order to get the total picture. This can be aided by simple habits like carrying a notebook and pen with you at all times.

You need to be comfortable with the system you use, but at a bare minimum the system should involve writing down what needs to be done.

This will free up your mind to be thinking about how to accomplish things instead of trying to remember them, which will help you cope with the myriad things that come at you each day.

3. Dive into doing

When faced with unpleasant or boring tasks, the natural response of most people is to procrastinate. This results in things becoming urgent, which can instil a sense of panic.

Instead, use some of the productivity tips to get yourself started, such as telling yourself that you will spend 5 minutes working on a particular task. Once the five minutes are up, feel free to stop the task if you wish. Quite often you will find that with the initial momentum, you will feel more able to continue.

This strategy can be combined with the one above to great effect, as the two habits complement each other brilliantly.

4. Build your social network

With the support of some enthusiastic people, getting started seems like much less of a chore.

The important thing here is to build meaningful relationships, where honesty is treated as a priority. Once you have a relationship based on trust and mutual respect, you can ask the question “where do I need to improve?”.

It may sometimes be painful to hear the answer, but, if you are willing to take the feedback on board, it can be the best motivation to work on those areas that you need to improve.

What are your strategies for getting started? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments.

The art of extrinsic motivation

In this day and age motivation is key to success. Using extrinsic motivation properly to achieve desired levels of motivation in order to keep yourself, your staff and children/spouse motivated can be a tricky art.

Firstly we need to define what is meant by extrinsic motivation. Simply put, it is the benefit that will acrue to you by performing successfully in some endeavour, but which is not a consequence of the performance itself. An example may suffice here.

When cleaning your kitchen, or sorting out your paperwork, you will end up with a clean kitchen or tidy paperwork (hopefully). This is what is known as intrinsic reward. It may also be a motivation to do the task in question. If so, it would be thought of as intrinsic motivation. In contrast to this, if your spouse offered to take you out for a meal if you clean the kitchen, it is apparent that this is not a consequence of cleaning the kitchen, but of your spouse’s intention. This would properly be regarded as extrinsic motivation (assuming that it was something you wanted).

If you offer sweets to your children, on condition that they finish their dinner, that would be regarded as extrinsic, not being a direct consequence of them finishing the meal.

Under certain circumstances, rewards do not succeed in raising the motivation levels above the threshold needed to perform the actions required. Below are some tips on how you can ensure that your motivational hacks have a higher degree of success.

1. Reward is not sized appropriately to the results desired

When a reward is much too small, or disproportionally large in comparison with the requested action, the result may be demotivation. If the reward is not seen as fair compensation for the work carried out, the result will be non compliance or reluctant compliance.

Therefore you should not make the reward overly large or overly small.

2. Ensure that the reward does not negate the intrinsic benefit

The intrinsic and extrinsic benefits should not be in conflict because, if this occurs, the opposing forces will cancel each other out. It is easier to demotivate people than it is to motivate them. You may have noticed this already.

3. Use when the intrinsic benefits are not well understood or accepted

This one works well on kids! Offering a reward for good behaviour is quite acceptable, and works very well. However, once the intrinsic benefits are understood, it is appropriate to stop the rewards, in order to allow for growth and development opportunities.

4. Avoid using extrinsic rewards when the intrinsic is sufficient

If the intrinsic reward can be used to motivate sufficiently, then it is usually better not to try to reinforce it by external rewards. Doing so is likely to diminish the value of the task in question.

Instead, a good method is to neglect to mention rewards initially, but to reward the effort at the end. This can result in a double rise in motivation, if it were quantifiable.

Let go of perfection

When trying to get something finished, perfectionism can be a deadly foe. Sometimes, things do need to be perfect, but for the vast majority of cases, there is an acceptable trade off between time spent and quality.

For instance if you are crafting a website, or blog post – does it need to be perfect, or is there a point in time when you can let it go, put it up there for the world to see?

Admittedly you could use this as an excuse for sloppy, ill-conceived ideas and poor writing. To be honest though, if you are a perfectionist, you are not likely to come across this problem. Rather the reverse.

You could tell yourself that you will go back to it later and improve it but, for most people I suspect that will never happen. However, it will take it off your plate for the time being at least, freeing you to move on to other things.

Will the world be a worse place because your idea hasn’t been realised in the exact way you imagined? Will you contribute your ideas to the world, or will they be hidden away in a folder and destroyed when you leave this world because no one else has the same passion for them that you do?

If your ideas are that good you must share them, don’t let them be lost by insisting on perfection in the execution before you unleash them on the world.

The value of feedback

Feedback is an essential part of many activities. For instance, when driving a car you rely on visual feedback from the road ahead to ensure that you are driving in the correct direction, that you are maintaining a safe speed and so forth.

Likewise you rely on feedback when communicating with other people. Subtle changes of facial expressions and body language indicate when you might want to change your approach.

Building feedback into your life is relatively straightforward and there are many ways you can do this.

You could ask for feedback from other people, you could look at stats from your website, or gauge the reaction of people using surveys.

I would suggest that the best form of feedback is from individuals, preferably from those who care enough to give it. Someone who seeks you out is likely to either point out the flaws in your work, or point out what you are doing well.

You can use the former to improve, and the latter to confirm what is going well.

The five pound value challenge

From www.robotii.co.uk:

This post is for those with some spare time on their hands, or those who want to make a difference in the world. The premise is very simple, just create and give away five pounds or equivalent of value.

This does not have to mean donating £5 to charity, it could be writing a blog post about your experience, giving some time to help someone out or anything that you feel generates value for someone.

Realising the potential of an idea

If you’ve ever had a good idea, but haven’t followed it through, you are certainly not in a minority. Many good ideas fall by the wayside due to poor execution, lack of time, or simple lack of interest.

The truth is that you need to be committed to your big idea in a way that matches the potential of the idea. If you are not committed, it may be better for you to release the idea in order that you can move on to other things.

If you realise that you are committed to realising the idea, you will almost certainly encounter resistance, possibly from other people, and often from the struggle to actually implement it. This is an important part of rendering your idea – a way that weaker ideas, or those you’re not ready to being to fruition, are discarded.

If you really want to push through and implement the idea, you must learn to treat the resistance you experience as a natural part of the process. There will always be something that stands in your way, be it time, money, people or even yourself.

Take a look at the obstacles. Can they be overcome or otherwise rendered impotent? You will usually find that the resistance can be removed, worked around, or otherwise ignored.

Remember that there is no rule that says it has to be easy.

Several Short Tips on Productivity

Write stuff down.

The first and most important means to getting things done is to keep a todo list. It also needs to be organised, so that you know in what order things need to be worked on, and what you need to complete the tasks.

Work long hours on Monday and Tuesday.

This especially applies if you’re a contractor. If you can only bill 40 hours per week, working 12-14 hours on Monday can get you an early-departure on Friday. Furthermore, by staying late early in the week, you’ll get your productivity ball-rolling early. People often say that their most productive work-day in a week is Wednesday. As long as you are actually getting the work done, and not just putting in the hours you should be fine. Note that some employers are not flexible with time, so you may have to adapt this somewhat.

Reading is a great way to learn most things.

If you want to learn something new (for your current or next career), the best thing to do is read. The world’s knowledge resides in books and increasing now, online. You can learn a lot from just reading. Of course, reading is no substitute for actually doing, and you will retain the knowledge better by applying it, but reading is a great first step.

Sleep is important.

While working late nights can be productive in the short term, doing it consecutively will burn you out quickly. Getting a good night’s sleep can often lead to greater productivity because you’re refreshed and ready to go. I find that if I don’t get enough sleep the night before, it dramatically decreases the amount that I get done.

Work on something you’re passionate about.

If you don’t like what you’re doing for a living, find a new job and quit as soon as possible. It’s not all about the money, it’s about being happy doing what your currently doing. It is always best to have something lined up before you take the drastic step of leaving your current job, but if you really can’t stand your current situation, or it is making you ill, I would say quit immediately. Of course, the best balance is both money and happiness. It’s unlikely you’ll realize this unless you have a job that absolutely sucks, but pays well.

The above also applies to personal projects as well.