10 Habits Successful People Give Up to Increase Their Productivity
What
are you willing to do in order to reach success? It is common among
people these days to be average and not stand out too much. But those
who are successful do not fall under this category.
In order to
stay on top of your game and reach the level of success you want, you
need to follow a certain set of self-induced rules. Success is not
something that happens by accident; if you want it bad enough, you will
get it. Learn the habits that successful people have given up in order
to reach their own success.
1. They don’t work in their comfort zone.
What is your comfort zone? Your comfort zone is defined as
“A psychological state in which a person feels familiar, at ease, in
control, and experiences low anxiety.” When you get outside of your
comfort zone, it doesn’t mean that you should strive for a constant
state of anxiety and stress. It simply means that, in order to grow, you
should try new things and expand your horizons.
The reason we are
comfortable in our comfort zone is because we are not taking risks when
we are in this state. When we live in our comfort zones, we are living
life like hamsters on a wheel, going around and around in a constant
cycle, but going nowhere in our lives.
Famous motivational
speaker, Les Brown, said it best with, “If you put yourself in a
position where you have to stretch outside your comfort zone, then you
are forced to expand your consciousness.”
2. They don’t do without first learning.
Learning
is what we do best. The greatest thing about learning is the benefit
that we receive in all aspects of our lives. Successful people strive to
continue learning new things and expanding on things that they already
know.
If we stop learning, then the only thing we can do is settle
with what we already know; if we settle for that, then there is no way
to expand our minds. Expansion is essential on the path to success.
Since our minds require learning for expansion, we must never stop
seeking new knowledge.
Imagine what would have happened if Bill
Gates stopped learning and growing. The internet would be much more
primitive than it is today. But because he followed his dreams and
continued growing, he founded one of the biggest companies in the world
and it is still flourishing and growing today.
3. They don’t fear asking for advice.
Richard
Branson, a famous entrepreneur, stated, “When you need to make hard
decisions, being able to discuss your ideas with entrepreneurs and
business leaders who have solved similar problems can make all the
difference.”
Asking for advice is not always easy. We think that
we have the same opportunity as everyone else and sometimes feel
insecure and dependent, so we decide not to ask for advice, and try to
figure it out ourselves. But this could be greatly limiting us from
reaching our full potential, because the advice we might be seeking
could be something that somebody knows very well.
4. They don’t get lost in the small details.
When
life gives us seemingly endless opportunities, it is very easy to get
lost in the small details. The small details are very easy for us to
become focused on, thus causing us to miss out on the overall vision,
also known as the “big picture”.
Focusing too much on the smaller
details constricts your ability to see how everything ties together.
Much of our lives hinge upon the connections that we make with others
and with ourselves. If we get lost in the small detail, it is like
having missing pieces to a puzzle. How are we supposed to solve that?
Imagine
what would have happened if Henry Ford only saw the small details. When
building the company that Ford is today, he knew that he must do
something different if his company was to succeed. After many people
told him it couldn’t be done, his company continued improving upon the
smaller details until they got it right.
Henry Ford didn’t focus
too much on the small details, which were the hundreds of times he
failed; he saw the overall goal and knew that it could be accomplished.
It required seeing the bigger picture to make it happen.
5. They don’t multitask.
Multitasking
is typically viewed as a skill that only certain people possess. But
truth be told, nobody actually has the ability to multitask.
Multitasking is known to actually decrease productivity. Those who are
successful focus on one specific task and do that task to the best of
their ability without interruption.
When you multitask, you limit
your ability to fully focus on one specific task at a time. Successful
people utilize the talents and abilities that they have by focusing it
on one task and one task only.
Emma Watson said, “I just dropped
my iPhone in my soup. I think it might be time to tone down the
multitasking..” This demonstrates how destructive multitasking is
highlighting the fact that when we multitask, we are greatly limiting
ourselves.
6. They don’t lie to themselves.
Lying to
yourself is one of the easiest things for you to do. It is much more
difficult to accept the problems that we have without make excuses for
them. Successful people understand that we will encounter problems, both
internally and externally.
But it is important to accept the
problems that reside in our lives, rather than not dealing with them and
lying to ourselves about them.
As Steve Maraboli said, “Stop lying to yourself. When we deny our own truth, we deny our own potential.”
7. They don’t procrastinate in asking for feedback.
Feedback
is important, because it gives you a different perspective on your
current situation. Sometimes you are not able to see the answer that is
right in front of you. But when someone gives you feedback, it allows
you to see something from the perspective of someone else.
If you
procrastinate asking someone for feedback, you are missing out on time
that could be put towards accomplishing your dreams. The longer you
wait, the harder it is to utilize advice that others can give you.
“I
think It’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you´re
constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it
better,” entrepreneur Elon Musk once said.
8. They don’t follow, they lead.
You
have probably heard the phrase “lead, follow or get out of the way.”
There are two types of people in this world: leaders and followers. The
ones who are successful are the ones who are leading the pack.
Successful
people are not successful because they got there by chance. They did
not follow somebody to the finish line. They paved their own path in
life to get where they needed to be.
Just as the great Robert
Frost stated, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less
traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
9. They don’t let the past dictate their future.
The
past is something that we will never change, nor should we want to
change it; because without it, we would not have learned the lessons we
needed to learn. Therefore, we would wind up making the same mistakes
over and over again until we learned the lesson that life is trying to
teach us.
At one time, businessman Shahid Khan washed dishes for
$1.20 an hour. His humble background did not prevent him from thinking
bigger though. With a net worth of $3.8 billion dollars, he now owns
Flex-N-Gate, one of the largest private companies in the U.S., the NFL’s
Jacksonville Jaguars, and Premier League soccer club Fulham.
10. They don’t hang around negative people.
Negative
people are very destructive to be around when it comes to achieving
success, because there are so many situations that life throws at us and
causes us to get down on ourselves or our situation. But some people
like to focus on this aspect of life the majority of the time.
When
you are around negative people enough, you start to see things
negatively and you begin to lose sight of your dream. Success is more
about mindset than anything, and if you always have a negative mindset,
life will reward you with negative outcomes to deal with.
Joel
Olsteen once said, “You cannot expect to live a positive life if you
hang with negative people.” So if you wish you be successful, don’t
focus on the negativity that others bring.
To be successful
requires focus and determination. It seems that every successful person
follows similar patterns. Therefore, it’s easy to see why they are where
they are. They knew what they had to do in order to achieve their
dreams and they didn’t let anyone or anything stop them from getting
there.
You have the power in yourself to become one of those successful people you admire and look up to.
Set a goal for yourself
"Time is limited. If I can make good use of it, I'll be much more successful. So I'm going to be more productivity
