Hi there! This is the admin of the site writing his first post. I hope the editors will approve it and you’ll find it useful. 🙂
The reason I’m writing this is to give you simple guidelines to improve yourself in anything and everything. Whether you want to improve at work, spend your free time better or just remove the repetitiveness and boredom from your life, these simple guidelines will help you get there.
I could have made this post anyhow I want, but to urge you to take action, I wrapped it up with a weekly challenge.
Later I’ll publish the second part of this post, again with the same purpose – boost your motivation and keep you on track.
The ingredients
Having a developer’s approach, before I start, I need to define the “ingredients” which will help you improve.
- The main ingredient – TIME!
To achieve or improve at anything you must spend time. The amount of time spend depends on the goals you’ve set. Here you must remember that greater goals require a greater investment of time. Mastery of any skill requires time, a lot of it. So before you start you should be 100% sure that you are willing to commit.
- Motivation – the “ignition spark” to start
Motivation is the starter of everything, every change, every improvement. Just imagine yourself where you want to be in the near (or far) future and why you want to be there. Visualize the desired results of an activity or event. Imagine yourself becoming a better person, a person who improves at work and get a pay rise, a person who is never bored of life, a person who is willing to grow in every aspect of their life in order to be happier and feel fulfilled. Then imagine yourself being there, achieving these goals… Would feel great, right? So use this technique to improve your motivation and work on your issues.
- Discipline – to keep you going
You must remember that discipline gets things done, not motivation. Having said that, you need motivation only to start going, then you need discipline and good organization to keep you going and reaching your goals.
- Focus – to get daily tasks done
You need full focus on whatever your daily/weekly tasks and long-term goals are. Without full focus, you just can’t be sure you give 100% to make it work. So my advice here is: don’t multitask. Multitasking is a myth that will only split your focus into many tasks at the same time. It is always a better choice to work on just one task at a time. Be committed to your goals and the tasks you need to finish to accomplish them.
- Patience – because life itself is about the long run
Whatever your goals and tasks are, you must have patience. The second most important thing you must learn here is that the investments made in yourself compound. That’s right, they stick one on top of another. Let’s take LeBron James as an example. The skills he possesses are made with years of everyday training. That’s hard work guys, but it compounds, day after day, year after year, getting better and better. So you see the end results only after years of hard work. That’s why you need to be patient on the results, it takes time.
The right mix for success
Having the main ingredients defined, I would say that the right mix varies depending on your goals. Anyway, some things stay the same never minding the goals, so I would like to point them out.
Write it down – The reason you are starting this journey, why this is the best moment to do that and the motivation ritual that will get you there. Also, write down the starting day – whether you are learning a new skill, fighting old habits or losing weight. Just write your current state of the issue. This way, you can easily track improvements down the road. As you see the improvements, no matter how big or small they are, you’ll gain more motivation and boost your spirit to continue. The rest is just pure discipline, trust me.
Learn new things down the road – this is where your focus needs to kick in. Be focused on your tasks. Here I mean constantly looking for ways to “hack it”, speed it up and improve it. Maybe with some little change in your approach, work or whatever, you’ll get better results? Remember mastery takes time and focus. You just can’t expect excel at anything if you keep doing the same things repeatedly, but only if you focus on improvements. This is scientifically proven, you can read more here.
Don’t give up – the right mix of discipline and patience. I know this is the hardest part, but if you know that your foundations are true, that you’re on the right path, you just need to keep trying no matter what. Maybe work a little harder and smarter or try some new approach that’ll get you to achieving the same goals.
The most recent example I can think of here is my friend and his goal of losing weight. Yes, I’m not talking about some super famous athlete or rock star, with plenty of cash to try new things and dozens of advisors around him. I’m talking about a “normal” guy, whose goal was to lose weight. He tried different diet and workout plans to reach his goal, and it wasn’t until the 5th or 6th diet plan he changed, over the course of 1 year, when he finally succeeded in losing his weight. Yes, you read that right, 1 year of trying with little to no results, yet in the end he reaches his goals by following the diet plan he describes here.
So that’s persistence and the reward after many failures tastes even sweeter. Marc Cuban sums it up perfectly in this picture:
The Challenge
So here we are, the challenge part. As I said before, this challenge is meant to get you into action, instead of just taking the information, agree with it and do nothing. My weekly challenge to you guys:
- 1 TED video
This will help to broaden your horizons, learn a bunch of new stuff and change your point of view on many topics. I recommend starting here. Yes, with the first video, a talk by Ken Robinson.
- 1 Psychology article
Here I recommend – brainpickings – They have a bunch of great articles, made on actual case studies, which will help you understand human psychology, reasoning and actions in certain conditions. Start with this article, then move on.
- 1 DIY article
These articles (or videos) will help you learn how to make new things, in most cases from very simple stuff found in your surroundings, sometimes even from stuff meant for the waste container. They will help you acquire some crafting skills that might come in handy every now and then. Here I won’t recommend any specific site, just google DIY and you’ll find many interesting stuff and opportunities you’ve never imagined of.
- 1 Short science video
You can start with this youtube channel.
- 1 Simple facts video
These will keep you entertained and teach you interesting stuff. I’ll recommend this youtube channel, their videos are short, fun and educational.
Having in mind that this is a weekly challenge, it’ll take you only about 15 to 45 minutes of your day, depending on the subject. That kind of time all of us can afford to spend on learning new stuff and improving ourselves right!?
Well, this is the end of my first article and I got to say it was a very interesting and exciting challenge for me to put myself in blogger’s shoes for once. Remember, accepting new challenges is a good thing and it may be exactly what you need right now. I’ll leave you here guys. Try to do this challenge for a month or two and then I’ll get back at you with the second part of this post. In the meanwhile, I’ll be glad to read and reply to any comments on this post. 🙂
P.S.
I almost forgot, please look at this scene:
Now I beg you not to repeat this. Just don’t do this. I know you’ve done it like gazillion times. But from today on, just don’t. Start responding to the information you get, instead of just agreeing with it and do nothing. Get out of your comfort zone. Use the information for your personal benefits and get to the action, now!