You’re reading 5 Steps to Rethinking Success, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Success if defined by the individual that is pursuing it. Unfortunately, too many people settle for less than their full potential and struggle with regrets later in life. I have found that many people do not take the necessary time to identify what success means to them. If you have not defined success for yourself, you will most likely borrow another person’s definition of success and spend your life comparing yourself to them. Here are 5 steps to rethinking success:

1) Spend a lot of time discovering your definition of success. You need to know what makes you feel happy and secure. One person may want to make a certain amount of money while another person’s definition of success is owning a farm and living off the land. If either one of these individuals pursued the other’s definition of success, they would most likely not have a lot of passion and thus never reach that goal. You will fail before you start if you pursue success that you are not passionate about.

2) Accept that you will experience adversity on the path to success. If you think true success is easy and you plan to spend most of your time searching for the path of least resistance, success will continue to elude you. If you expect challenges along the way, you will be less likely to be thrown off track when it occurs. As you get better at this step, you will learn discomfort is necessary to accomplish great things, and you will start pursuing challenges as opposed to just dealing with them as they come.

3) Do not think small. I have met many people that settle for less than their full potential because they don’t believe a higher level of success is possible for them. My family faced a lot of adversity when I was young and as a result I believed that a high level of success was not possible for people like us. Broaden your perspective by reading books, interviewing professionals and becoming a student of the things you enjoy. I enjoyed finance, so I started learning about the most successful people in that field and realized I could take the same steps they took to their success. I could not achieve that success over night, but if I was willing to work hard it was not impossible.

4) Success is much harder on your own. All successful people need others to reach their full potential. Identify your weaknesses and find people that can help you in those areas. For example, one of my weaknesses is processes. I enjoy coming up with the vision and having technical knowledge about subjects, but I don’t want to track paperwork or plan events. I have team members that thrive performing those tasks and as a result I can focus on the larger vision of our company.

5) You do not have to sacrifice everything else in your life to be successful. I have learned that intentional times allow me to accomplish much more in a day than most people. I am laser focused when I am working because I want to be successful in multiple areas of my life. When people find out that I run a successful financial advisory firm, that I have written a book and I get home at 5:30 p.m. on most days to be with my family, they wonder how it is possible. I have the same amount of time in my day as they do, but they can’t seem to figure it out. Make every minute of your day count!

STEN MORGAN graduated from Linfield College in Oregon with a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics. In college, he interned at Northwestern Mutual selling life insurance and quickly rose to the top 10 percent of the group. After college, Morgan applied for his dream job at an investment firm and was hired on the spot. A prodigious student of the financial industry, Morgan earned his investment licenses in record time. After a few years, he decided it was time to build his own financial practice, Legacy Investment Planning. “The Seven Mindsets of Success” is his first book. Learn more at www.stenmorgan.com

You’ve read 5 Steps to Rethinking Success, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

http://ift.tt/2pzYkBr

You’re reading How To Stay Productive In the Face of Sickness, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

At the time of writing this, I have already been sick for a week. I am finally reaching the end of my cold and I have regained the energy needed to work but my work and my productivity levels have suffered over the past few days. If you are like me, losing time and being relatively unproductive are two things that make you feel as though you have completely failed at life. For those of you who may struggle to work when you are sick or for those who are currently sick and are struggling, take a look at some tips below to help you stay productive in the face of sickness.

1. Realize That You Won’t Be As Productive

You’re not going to be able to produce as much work when you are sick as when you are healthy. It doesn’t mean that you have failed in any way or that you need to put in extra time to make up for it. It only means that you need to put in less work on your work and more work on your health. Allow yourself to be content with what you achieve rather than what you expect yourself to achieve.

2. Do What You Can

Unless you have a big project looming over the horizon, don’t push yourself too hard. Limit yourself to simple tasks or to tasks that will only take up at most an hour of your time. Create time blocks for yourself in which you can do work and rest in between these specific time blocks. Spending too much time doing work and ignoring the state of your health will only create more problems that might end up causing your sickness to last longer.

3. Plan for the Days Ahead

Sick time is the best time to get your planning done. Instead of fretting over all the things that you aren’t getting done, plan ahead and rearrange your schedule so that you will be able to tackle your projects more efficiently when you begin to feel better. If you have the time and the energy, you can plan your whole month in advance.

4. Respond to Calls and Emails

If your voice mailbox and your inbox are full, take some time to respond to your emails and your voicemails. These things would usually be a productivity problem but since you won’t be as productive when you are sick, using downtime to reach out to those who have tried to contact you is a great opportunity. However, let yourself and the people that you reach out to know that you won’t be this available once you begin feeling better and getting back to a normal schedule.

5. Use Spurts of Energy to Your Advantage

If, during the duration of your sickness, you feel a sudden burst of energy, use it to your advantage. Do work during these bursts of energy and rest when you begin to feel drained. If you feel energized for the entire day, great! If you only feel energized for 20 minutes out of the day, that’s okay too! Remember, the most important thing to do is to listen to your body. Don’t push yourself to continue working if you are feeling drained.

Being sick doesn’t mean that you can’t get stuff done but it does mean that you have to be aware of your limits and work around them. You simply have to remind yourself to work smarter, not harder. If you are currently sick or you are feeling a cold coming on, use the tips above to help you remain productive.

Dylan is a freelance writer from California. When he’s not writing, he enjoys making music, taking pictures, and enjoying life. He hopes to one day hold a lifestyle writer position at a major magazine.  http://ift.tt/2oVTekc

You’ve read How To Stay Productive In the Face of Sickness, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

http://ift.tt/2p6X4Tr

You’re reading Four Clever Ways to Improve Focus, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

You have just 24 hours. And, you’ve got to do everything in these many (but few) hours. Practically, there’s a limit to the efforts you can put into a day, but then,
the paucity of time shouldn’t be a deterrent to achieving your goals.

You can achieve more by increasing your productivity which is contingent
upon improving your focus.

Focusing on the task at hand is the surest way to make the most of your limited
time.

Here are four clever ways to improve your focus

Don’t allow your mind to trick you

The human mind is a trickster. It’ll make you underestimate or overestimate
your capabilities. And, both of them are dangerous.

Your mind will trick you by suggesting that you can complete a task in less
time than you usually take. This is a fallacy that will make you allocate
two hours to do a job that may eventually take five hours to complete.
It’ll end up eating up more time than you initially planned and also drain
your energy. It will demotivate you to the extent that you may stop
planning your day.

Thus, understand your real strengths and weaknesses. Know your speed and do
a precise estimation of the work and plan accordingly.

Shorten your to-do list

It’s a good habit to make a to-do list. But don’t include every small task
in it. It’ll only increase your stress and distract your mind every time
you see it.

Instead, make a small list with just 2-3 most crucial things to do in a day
and assign sufficient time for each of these activities.

Keep your list short and succinct. Don’t overburden it with things that
aren’t going to add to your productivity.

Make a schedule for petty but important things

There are a lot of things which don’t add to your productivity but are
necessary.

Checking comments on your social media posts or wishing people on their
birthdays and anniversaries is not productive but required.

Watching or reading news, taking a coffee break, attending meetings, or
answering phone calls or emails are other things that consume a lot of
time.

But, you can’t avoid such activities. They don’t add to your output, but
you’ve to do them anyway.

Allocate time for them and make them a part of your schedule. What’s more
important is to stick to the schedule.

Take your two coffee breaks at the same time each day. Answer emails once
or twice a day.

For instance, I have fixed a schedule for all meetings, interviews,
responding to emails and queries, etc. between 12-2pm. For the rest of the
time, I focus on things that delivers output.

Do the hardest thing first

Do the most difficult or the worst thing upfront.

Mark Twain coined the term “eating the frog.”

If you’ve to eat a frog and you have the entire day to do it, when is the
right time?

The answer is first thing in the morning. Why? Because it’s the worst thing
to do.

If you keep avoiding it, it’ll linger in your mind breaking your focus.

Instead, get it done first.

Have a tough client to deal with? Meet him at the earliest. Have to
complete a complicated project that’s paying you well? Do it now.

Doing the toughest thing first will boost your confidence and also take the
thing out of your mind enabling you to focus on other things for the rest
of the day.

Conclusion

With these four clever hacks, you can improve your focus manifold.

By eliminating things that aren’t productive or those which are stressful,
you can focus better.

While doing so, aim at your long term goals but focus on the task at hand
in a manner that there’s no tomorrow.

This way, you’ll strive to achieve more, ultimately increasing your
productivity and chances of success.

Adela Belin is a private educator and a writer at Writers Per Hour. She shares her teaching experience with colleagues, students, and writers. Feel free to contact her on G+

You’ve read Four Clever Ways to Improve Focus, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

http://ift.tt/2oRUODK

You’re reading 5 Ways to Craft Your Own Happiness at Work, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life – or so the saying goes. But what does it really take to find a career that you’ll be truly happy in?

Although most of us know what makes us happy in our personal lives, translating this to our professional lives can be a more difficult task. Research shows that today’s job seekers believe more strongly than ever that their careers should be fulfilling and meaningful, and one study found that 72% of Generation Y wouldn’t apply for a role with an organization if they didn’t believe in what it stood for.

Despite this, many workers aren’t happy in their chosen careers and a recent survey by Deloitte found that if given the chance, 44% of millennials would quit their job to join a new organisation or do something different within the next two years.

If this sounds familiar and you’d like to change careers or simply gain more satisfaction from your current job, here’s what research says about crafting happiness at work.

1. Use your strengths and talents

Although when choosing a career we tend to gravitate towards the things we love, it’s a lot more realistic to pursue something we are good at, or at least, have the potential to be good at. Research shows that working in a job that allows you to use your strengths and talents is the best way to reduce stress, increase productivity, and feel happy and fulfilled.

For the study, researchers had 577 volunteers pick one of their signature strengths and use it in a new way for one week. After this week, the volunteers reported feeling significantly happier at work and their levels of happiness remained high for a full month after the initial experiment.

Of course, it’s important to realise that loving something and being good at something aren’t necessarily the same thing. You might love painting, movies or music, but if you lack talent, it’s unlikely that you’ll gain much satisfaction or fulfilment from working in these areas.

2. Look for work that challenges you

Although you might think that a low-stress job would make you happier, research shows that dealing with some stress at work can be a good thing because it helps you feel challenged. If you have no stress whatsoever, you’ll likely become bored with your job and as a result, you’ll be less productive.

Moderate and short-term stress, on the other hand, can actually energise you, improve your job performance and increase your overall job satisfaction.

One study even found that workers in stressful jobs are a third less likely to die than those with easier jobs, as long as they’re in control of their own workflow. So the key to using stress productively is to find a job that challenges you, but also gives you the freedom to set goals and decide your own schedule.

3. Find a supportive work environment

If you want to be happy at work, one of the most important things to look for is a supportive work environment, because studies show that social support is one of the top predictors of job satisfaction.

Of course, you can’t and won’t become friends with everyone you work with, but a supportive work environment is less about having a lot of friends and more about knowing that you can count on your colleagues and supervisors for help when you run into difficulties or need feedback.

So when looking for a new job, focus on the workplace culture and find out whether or not you’ll be able to get help and feedback when you need it.

4. Look for ways to help others

Although it might seem like a cliché, a number of studies have found that when you’re able to help others in some way, your job will seem more meaningful and satisfying. But this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a doctor or social worker in order to be happy at work.

Some research indicates that employees can “craft” their own jobs to become more satisfied and engaged, and one way to do this is to work on consciously changing the way you view your job and the tasks you perform on a daily basis.

For example, one study found that although zookeepers aren’t usually very highly paid and often perform menial tasks such as scrubbing animal enclosures, they’re passionate about what they do because they view it as a way of helping animals, which makes it more meaningful to them.

5. Don’t try too hard

Finally, try not to put too much pressure on yourself to be “happy” in your job, because if this is your main focus at work, it may actually become harder to achieve it.

One psychological experiment found that when people were asked to read out a statement about the importance of happiness in life before watching a positive film, they felt less happy than those who simply watched the film. The researchers speculate that when being happy feels like an obligation, people will feel worse about themselves if they are unable to feel that way.

In another study, researchers had volunteers keep a detailed diary for two weeks and found that those who placed more value on happiness tended to feel lonelier and more disconnected from others.

So while it’s great to pursue a job that will challenge you and allow you to use your strengths, it’s also important to remember that work is work. If you’re constantly trying to be upbeat about your job, you’ll only be putting unnecessary pressure on yourself.

Marianne Stenger is a writer with Open Colleges. She covers career development, workplace productivity and self-improvement. You can connect with her on Twitter and Google+, or find her latest articles here.

You’ve read 5 Ways to Craft Your Own Happiness at Work, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

http://ift.tt/2plMjPN