Tag Archives | goals

Review: “The Art of Accomplishment” by Nicholas Townsend Smith

By on September 8, 2011 in Good Reads

I was thrilled to be asked to review this book! I love reading…well…anything really, but I especially love reading something I can share with my readers that is 1. useful and 2. affordable. 

Art of Accomplishment“The Art of Accomplishment” by Nicholas Townsend Smith is both. From the book:

I know if you apply my methods, your life will change, as it has for me and so many others. If you follow these methods, you will become one of those people who reaches his or her goals.

Let me ask you this: what do you think it means to accomplish?

I”ll tell you what I think it means. If I could give you one take away from this book and nothing else, it would be this: to accomplish something is simply to complete it. If you start finishing what you start, amazing things happen.

However, I will warn you that accomplishing anything requires effort. If you picked up this book thinking it would be a get-successful-easy methodology, you picked up the wrong book.

Put it down before you actually EARN something!

Nicholas delivers his insightful information with analogies we can relate to and useful strategies we can all apply.

Read an excerpt from one of my favorite chapters:

REDEFINE PERFECTION

How many times have you thought to yourself that if you did not do something perfectly the first time, then you wouldn’t do it? If you looked like some kind of an idiot, you wouldn’t even try?

The word perfect originated from the Latin word perficere; per meaning ‘complete’ and facere meaning ‘to do’.

To do something perfectly never meant to do things flawlessly or without defect; we redefined it to mean that. The original meaning of the word perfect was to do something and to finish it.

As you now know from the Certainty Cycle it is really hard to know if something does or does not work if you never finish it. It is in finishing things that we discover the results. If you finish what you start, then you are performing perfectly even when the results are not flawless. Perfection is what allows you to make adjustments and continue on to flawlessness.

As a little bonus, I want to share with you the process of perfection. This is a five step process and will help you accomplish every goal you set:

  • 1- Intention – What is it you are stretching toward? What is the goal you would like to reach? Establish your target and determine the high probability path for reaching it.
  • 2- Trigger – Establish a trigger that gets the process started. You could have an intricate goal and system put together, much like a Rube Goldberg machine, but nothing to trigger the next action, so it really doesn‟t matter. The trigger is the item or action that gets you moving toward your goal.
  • 3- Perform – Now that you have the goal, the system, and the trigger, the next step is to do your system; to act.
  • 4- Complete – Finish what you start. Perform to completion because this is the only way you will know if your system works or not.
  • 5- Adjust – Make adjustments to your system and actions until you are getting the results you want.

The process of perfection is a simple tool that will assist you in reaching your goals every time. Do you want to perform perfectly? Do what you say you will do and finish it! That my friend, is perfection.

 

Nicholas Townsend Smith is quickly becoming the most powerful performance trainer in America. His transformational style and commitment to individuals has generated lasting change in business owners, organizational leaders, executives, employees and individuals across America and into Canada. His clients’ results have been astonishing; from establishing high paying contracts to increasing health, each person has used concepts from Nick’s seminars, webinars, teleseminars and group and individual coaching to accomplish his or her desires. More information on Nick and his work can be found at http://clearpathtraining.com.

 

 

 

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Keys to Your Most Productive Life

New eBook – “Keys to Your most Productive Life” Will

By on September 7, 2011 in Productivity, Success, Tools

I’ve just released my first ebook!

Keys to Your Most Productive Life  is a brief, but valuable guide packed full of tips that will help you - Learn how to maximize your time and energy to live the most productive life possible!

Keys to Your Most Productive Life

Figure it out, Clean it up, Get it done

Do you never seem to have enough hours in the day?

Are you buried under piles?

Do you get to the end of the day and ask where did my time go?

Are you perpetually running behind?

Do you have projects, dreams or goals that you never manage to get to?

Do you feel that how you spend your time is out of sync with your life and work values?

It doesn’t have to be that way! Change is possible…

An invaluable guide at an affordable price – $4.99    Add to Cart

If what you’re currently doing isn’t working or maybe you’d just like it to work even better, then this short, but value-packed ebook will offer some simple steps to maximize your productivity, increase your effectiveness and get clear about what you really want. We all know the old adage; the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Clearly most of us are not insane, but for some reason we think this rule doesn’t apply to us. If we can just work faster, harder and be more determined we can whip ourselves in to shape.That’s just not reality.

Keys to Your Most Productive Life will help jump-start your productivity and guide you toward your most productive life… higher efficiency, organization, clarity, focus, success. This ebook will both the nudge in the right direction and the guide on how to get there!

Buy the ebook for only $4.99 now! And get started living a more productive life!  Add to Cart

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Use “Fun Goals” to Improve Productivity, Happiness and Success

By on August 18, 2011 in Life Balance, Personal Growth, Productivity, Success
laughing woman

Image via Wikipedia

Must all of your goals have a valid purpose, a tangible ROI, or contribute to your bottom line?

Well, usually…but not always.

Sometimes it’s OK just to do something, reach for something, achieve a goal, just…well… because it’s fun or because you always wanted to try it or maybe you just felt like it for no reason at all.

Go ahead. Choose some “Fun Goals.” It can be anything you want. As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, who cares? Don’t just think outside the box, step right up on top of the “box” and look around at everything else that’s going on in the world.

Maybe you want to learn how to be a gourmet chef or dance the Tango? You always wanted to learn to juggle or play chess. Why not?

My first “Fun Goal” was not as imaginative or mind-altering as all that, but I’m new at this. I’m a reforming rule follower and rigid planning devotee, so I understand how hard it can be for us to justify time spent on something that doesn’t serve some kind of purpose or isn’t contributing to our productivity or success.

If you’re curious about what I chose, you can follow along on my other blog. I just had a thought one morning that I’d like to beat “The Colonel” in an upcoming race and decided to pursue it. Why? I have no idea. Not because I need to lose weight or to improve my health or get more money or success…just for fun.

Next, I think I want to learn about rocks. Yes, rocks. Quartz, moonstone, jasper, you get the picture. All those colors, all those shapes and textures. I’m curious. Just curious and that’s enough of a reason for me.

What will your “Fun Goal” be?

*Hint – If your reason is, “Just because,” then you are on the right path.

If you need help, you know where to find me…

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No TV

My TV experiment: Successful Results

By on July 29, 2011 in Life Balance

No TVIn the interests of full disclosure…It actually wasn’t an intentional experiment. I didn’t set out to give up TV, it just happened that way. Over the last month I was so busy with work responsibilities, wrapping up employment obligations, launching new career opportunities, dealing with life changes, transitions, and unexpected obstacles that I was forced to be very frugal with my time and energy.

Some things had to go. Since I have never been a big connoisseur of television, only a casual watcher at most, it wasn’t a big sacrifice for me to make. I chose to use that time instead to write, spend time with my family, read, (and sometimes work yes.)

My results – I found that without my weekly television shows and trying to catch up on my DVR episodes of my favorite programs I was able to accomplish so much more in far less time. This should not have come as a surprise.

Does that mean I’ll never watch television again? No. What it means is that if I want to accomplish more in my life, to get more done, to focus on those things that are truly important to me, then I need to make conscious decisions to minimize those activities that are not very important to me.

Those activities may be different for you. We each have activities that feed us, activities that drain us, things that make us laugh, things to help us de-stress and things that waste our time. For some it might not be television, it might be computer surfing, it might be social media, it might be gaming, it might be socializing and might even be doing useless work that doesn’t need to be done.

Whatever it is; to the extent that you can minimize the useless activities and wasted time in your life, you will find that there is a direct correlation in the increase of your productivity, your achievements, your forward progress, your satisfaction and a corresponding drop in stress and anxiety.

What can you experiment with?

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Nicer office (3)

Take Care of Your Anchors and Move Forward

By on June 10, 2011 in Life Balance, Sanity Savers, Success
Nicer office (3)

Image by Jeff Henshaw via Flickr

What do you want to get done this weekend? Do you have any lingering projects hanging over your head or physical areas that really need some organizing or cleaning attention?

Unfinished work, professional or personal, weigh us down like anchors keeping us stuck and prevent us from moving forward. And sadly most of us have many of these in our lives; projects we never completed, tasks we never got around too, cluttered and messy spots that taunt us.

If you tackled just one of these unfinished “jobs” each weekend you would be amazed at how much lighter you feel and how much easier it is to have time and energy for the things you really want to do with your time.

  • How about clearing out that extra room
  • Cleaning out your car
  • Getting rid of those piles in your office
  • Writing that article you wanted to submit
  • Finishing that business proposal
  • Purge that closet, drawer, basement

Whatever your anchors, try crossing them off one at a time.

What am I going to do? I am going to finish up my book proposal so I can move forward with getting my book published. I am also going to prepare my desk supplies and portable “desk” so to speak so that I can readily move my work station to be able to work outside or off site as I often do during the summer season.

Here’s to a  happy and productive weekend for both of us!

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Don’t Give Up on Your Dreams

By on June 3, 2011 in Personal Growth

If we have not achieved our early dreams, we must either find new ones or see what we can salvage from the old. If we have accomplished what we set out to do in our youth, we need not weep like Alexander the Great that we have no more worlds to conquer. There is clearly much left to be done, and whatever else we are going to do, we had better get on with it. – Rosalynn Carter

Take a look at your dreams and accomplishments. Do you need to revise and adjust based on where you are in life and the experiences you’ve had? This doesn’t mean give up, just regroup. And as Rosalynn so clearly says, “we had better get on with it.”

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calendar space

Make an Appointment with Yourself

By on May 31, 2011 in Life Balance, Productivity

Weekly challenge:

Make an appointment with yourself for distraction-free time. Take out your daily or weekly calendar and block out periods of time each day when you close the door, silence the phone and turn off the email notifications. You need to have solid chunks of time to be able to focus on projects, catch up on overdue tasks, organize your space or contemplate and plan the future. You can literally accomplish twice as much if you aren’t forced to constantly shift your focus.

Bonus: The best ideas and inspiration occur when you have quiet time to yourself!

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Try a Daily Wrap Up

By on May 23, 2011 in Success

Weekly challenge:

At the end of each workday this week, whatever time that is,  take 5 – 10 minutes to go through a daily wrap-up routine.

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What worked?
  • Where was your focus and what did you get done?
  • Where did you get distracted and what can you do differently tomorrow?

Finally, review the next day’s calendar, ongoing project statuses and tasks that are either due tomorrow or overdue. Set your top three priorities for the next day (three works for me; any more than that and my focus is scattered.) Now you already have a head start on the next day. Try it and see if you don’t find you are much calmer each morning.

This is one part of my 18 minute daily focus and planning routine. For a refresher read 18 Minutes to Managing Your Day.

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Have You Discovered Your Passion?

By on May 18, 2011 in Personal Growth, Success

Some people ask. “What if I haven’t found my true passion?”

It’s dangerous to think in terms of “passion” and “purpose” because they sound like such huge overwhelming ideas. If you think love needs to look like “Romeo and Juliet”, you’ll overlook a great relationship that grows slowly. If you think you haven’t found your passion yet, you’re probably expecting it to be overwhelming.

If you find yourself glued to Photoshop, playing around for hours, dive in deeper. Maybe that’s your new calling. If you keep thinking about putting on a conference or being a Hollywood screenwriter and you find the idea terrifies but intrigues you, it’s probably a worthy endeavor for you. You grow (and thrive!) by doing what excites you and what scares you every day, not by trying to find your passion.

Instead, just notice what excites you and what scares you on a small moment-to-moment level.

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Are You Ready for Change?

By on May 11, 2011 in Life Balance, Personal Growth, Success

“It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.” ―James Gordon

Are you ready to make changes in your life? To move to a  more fulfilling, productive and purposeful type of existence?

Don’t be ashamed to answer no! This may not be the right time in your life. You may not be ready to examine what you have been doing. You may not have a burning desire to accomplish something more than you have so far. You may not feel that it’s important to know where you’re going in life or sort out the meaning and purpose behind your life and work.

That’s OK. Really. Just briefly consider that clinging to your old habits and attitudes may be costing you more than you think. It can be physically and mentally freeing to let it all go and try something different.

Consider a career shift if you don’t feel fulfilled.

Examine your family roles and dynamic.

Analyze your routines and habits – both personal and professional.

Evaluate the health of your relationships.

Assess or re-assess your goals and priorities.

Look at your health patterns.

Move toward a mindset of generosity, kindness, forgiveness and gratitude.

You may find many areas where it’s time for a change. What would you like to do about it? Change is inevitable. Why not make it a considered change rather than a forced one?

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