time management

Bridging The Gap Between Knowledge and Action

By

Chances are, you already know what needs to be done. You know you need to stop procrastinating. You know you need to watch less TV. You know that you need to set smart goals and intelligent deadlines. And hopefully, you know you need to track your work, track your results, and put more of your effort into the aspects of your business to give you the strongest results.

But there’s a very big gap between knowledge into action. Think of all the money that’s spent on knowledge: whether it’s a large companies trying to improve their efficiency, or housewives and stay at home dads trying to get into better shape. They know the adjustments they need to make, but they always fail to set habits and follow though.

Let’s look together at some of the gaps that keep you from turning knowledge into profitable and useful habits.

The Fear Of Change

Failure can be comfortable. It represents a continuation of a routine that, at least on some level, has brought us a lot of pleasure. Now where this breaks down is that pleasure and happiness are two very different things. Pleasure can be bought with a cookie, it can be found in the bottom of a bottle, you can get a short rush of it with a few minutes on Facebook.

Happiness is harder, and the road towards it is longer, winding, and littered with distractions. The constant pursuit of pleasure, ironically enough, keeps more more people away from becoming happy.

You Won’t Learn By Doing

There are too many people who tried to do by learning instead of learning by doing. Talking about problems to death rarely solves them. People talk too much already. It’s natural to want to go into a scary situation with knowledge at your back. But once you’ve learned the basics of a skill, start acting on it. Then look for new information once you’ve run into a serious roadblock, or have a smaller aspect of the skill that demands your attention.

You Rely On Motivation Instead Of Habit

It’s okay to “feel unmotivated” sometimes, to hit a roadblock and need something positive to dig you out. But you’re always needing to be motivated for any kind of positive action in your life, it’s a sign that you haven’t really put the energy you should into setting habits.

Habits aren’t subjects that need motivation. Habits are things that we just do, whether it’s a good time or a bad time. If you can devote one month to establishing a positive habit, chances are much better that you do it for a long time to come.

Accepting “Life Excuses”

Too many people take “life happens” as an excuse not to do the things that they should. It’s almost like there’s no effort to leap the obstacles that life puts in front of them. It’s important to set uninterrupted times and uninterrupted places for the most important priorities cannot be violated. When you give yourself a choice between any two things, there’s a chance you will take the less beneficial choice.

Set up at daily routine that eliminates those choices.

Going From Zero To A Hundred

When it sinks in how far behind we are on our goals, it’s easy to try to do too much at once and destroy our desire to improve altogether. While there are people who can handle this sort of drastic shift, for most people it’ll be best to start small, focus on repetitive action, and scale up from there!

No More Excuses

The time for learning and not doing it over. Step up and start making a serious change in the way you approach problems… right now!

You May Be Interested In:

Are You Busy Being Busy?

By

Imagine this: you’ve been filling out applications for weeks and weeks looking for a new job – and finally you get a callback. They’re excited about your application and they want to meet you tomorrow at noon!

You can barely sleep the night before, and when the time comes, you’re burning with energy. You hop the bus to get there and rush in the building, only to find the elevator is broken.

But you don’t let that stop you. You rush up the stairs, and by the time you make it to the top, you’re completely out of breath. It’s only then, when you look at the sign hanging above the receptionist, that you realize you were in the wrong building the entire time!

Now you’ve both late AND worn out. You might have been busy, but you didn’t DO anything.

We live in a culture that empathizes hard work over everything else. Rarely do we stop to ask whether we’re working hard on the right things for the right reasons.

If you feel like you’re climbing a whole building’s worth of stairs in the wrong building, chances are that you’re not working very effectively.

First: Take a couple of days off.

This can be a very tough decision to make, especially if you’re hanging on by your fingernails. But the fact is that you need to have a clear head when you analyze your business. That’s very difficult to do when you’re burned out. Give yourself a little time to emotionally and physically reboot, even if it’s only for a weekend. You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel.

Second: Are you being a perfectionist?

Too many people try to do everything perfectly because they’re afraid of being “caught” or looking bad, or they have a “personal standard” they feel they need to live up to.

Drop the idea that all your work needs to be flawless, because it will explode the amount of work you need to do. Chances are that you need volume, more traffic, more customers, and more buyers.

So start going after it!

Third: Give Yourself An Audit

Take a look at the time you used for the day – rate their activities on a scale of 1-10, with a 10 being very helpful to your business, and a 1 being something very counterproductive. What were the reasons for doing the low-rated tasks? Can you attack them and get rid of them?

Remember, your goal isn’t be be busy, it’s to accomplish more. Work less and spend more time thinking about how to improve your efficiency, and you’ll love the results you get.

You May Be Interested In:

Three Ways to Recapture Your Motivation

By

It is extremely easy for anyone to embark on the pursuit of a worthwhile goal. However, maintaining the momentum and motivation to ensure you accomplish the goal is another issue altogether. When you lose your motivation, your determination, commitment, and passion are quickly tested. The motivation you had when first embarking on the pursuit of a goal can be affected by many factors. When your motivation dwindles, you must do everything you can to rekindle the fire if you want to reach your goals. Here are three ways you can recapture your motivation and continue on the path to achieving your goals.

Readjust Your Focus

Imagine that you have a lot going on in your mind. Despite this, you decide you want to watch an excellent movie that completely absorbs you. As you are watching the movie, you notice that your anxieties and worries about your job or business dissipate. Depending on what you’re watching, you find yourself laughing, crying, getting excited, or even agitated. That which you are focusing on is having an impact on your mood. While your personal circumstances haven’t changed, your new focus is changing how you’re feeling. When you readjust what you are focusing on, you can recapture your motivation.

Celebrate Your Successes

No matter how big or small they are, celebrate every single success. Create a culture that enables your motivation to grow. When you celebrate your wins, it can help to inspire you to keep moving forward. Build on the excitement when you succeed, on the positive feedback you receive and good results you experience. Don’t spend too much time focusing on and worrying about what didn’t work. Learn from the experience, make improvements to the process, and move on.

Identify Places that Unlock Creativity and Energy

When you are in an environment that awakens your enthusiasm, you feel more motivated because of what you experience and see. Maybe you feel inspired when touring a museum, attending a concert, or browsing a bookstore. Spend at least two hours a week in an environment that motivates you or engage in activities that inspire you, like dancing, mentoring or hiking. Then, use that new found energy to work on accomplishing your goals.

 

It is both possible and necessary for you to regain your motivation when you’ve lost it. Taking simple steps to remain enthusiastic and committed to every step of the journey will help you accomplish the goals you’ve set for yourself.

X