Habits That Create Success
Most people think of habits as a bad thing. However, habits can be good too. Just as you can develop a habit of doing something unhealthy, you can also develop a habit that is good for you and leads to more success. In fact, the habits you develop will create more success than anything else.
* Focus on Profit First – It’s essential that you earn money in your business to stay afloat. While money isn’t everything, focusing on performing money-making tasks before you do anything else, and taking your profit on a regular basis so that you have the incentive to make more money, is going to go far in creating the success you seek.
* Make Self-Care a Priority – You can’t work at a high level if you don’t feel well. Eat right. Drink water. Exercise more. Start with a small change that you can simply do by rote memorization for the first thirty days or so. When that thing becomes a habit, move on to the next habit you want to develop.
* Know Your Peak Performance Times and Tasks – Everyone has a different time of the day when they feel smarter, more energetic, and better able to get into the flow of any task they want to do. Know that time for you and schedule your entire day around that time, leaving your hardest tasks to do when you’re best prepared.
* Eliminate Distractions and Their Triggers – One of the things that get in the way of productivity is distractions. The best thing to do is to eliminate those distractions and any triggers that might make you think of doing that distraction. For example, having the TV on while you work might be okay except that the never-ending food commercials tend to make you hungry so you cannot focus on work. Stop watching them and create a habit of avoiding those triggers while you are supposed to be doing something else.
* Learn Proper Goal-Setting Techniques – It’s hard to believe, but taking the time to set goals correctly will ensure you meet more of them. The best goal-setting technique is the SMART one. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Plus, be sure to write down your goals and create a schedule of the tasks that you need to do to reach each goal.
* Look at Failure as a Positive – One of the shames of life is that failure has been spun as something that is bad for people. However, the truth is that if you don’t fail sometimes, you’re not trying hard enough. Start looking at failure as a challenge to do better next time based on what you learned.
* Check Email, Social Media, Texts and So Forth Less Often – This is a big time sucker that can turn into a complete lack of productive activity being done to reach a goal. For this reason, set up a schedule to do those things with a timer so that you don’t waste time. Plus, by setting up a schedule that you do each day at a specific time in a specific way, you will create a habit.
* Seek Feedback Regularly – You need to know how you’re doing, so it’s important to set up an autoresponder to send out to your customers asking for feedback once they’ve had enough time to try your product or use your service. For example, “How can I improve my service to you?” That’s a simple question, but it can lead to some powerful answers that will improve the customer experience for every one of your customers – not just the ones who answer the question.
* Look at Your Schedule before Saying Yes or No – One thing that gets in the way of productivity is a poorly made or interrupted schedule. It might take you some time to work out your schedule to get the perfect one but before you say yes or no to something new, always look at your schedule and realistically determine how you can add something else to your life. This also gives you more time to consider whether you even want to do it.
* Become a Lifelong Learner – You cannot ever know enough about your niche or industry because everything is always changing. Keep educating yourself about all aspects of your industry so that you’re aware of potential killer apps or issues that may arise.
It should be clear that you want to try to turn anything that makes you more productive and effective into a habit. If you want to lose weight, for example, you can turn the behavior that leads to weight loss into a habit – such as eating a bowl of soup before consuming the rest of the meal, which will cause you to eat less before every single meal. Over time, you’ll consume fewer calories and lose weight in a way that feels natural. All because of the habit of eating a cup of soup before your meal.
