Mindset

How To Accomplish Bigger Goals

July 6, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

goal achievement

There are some people who struggle to write 1 book within a year while other people are able to write a high quality book every month. There are some people who can accomplish big goals while others find it difficult to get the smallest goals accomplished. Some people wish they could get more accomplished faster while others want to go from the big goals they are accomplishing right now to accomplishing even bigger goals.

Getting better time management will give you the time you need to get the bigger goals accomplished. After you find more time in your day and manage it more effectively, you need to create a weekly scorecard. As you get more better at creating scorecards, you need to raise the bar higher for yourself.

When you raise the bar higher for yourself and accomplish bigger goals, it is important to gradually raise the bar higher. If you immediately go from writing 10 blog posts every week to writing 30 blog posts every week, it will be overwhelming. Instead, go from writing 10 blog posts in one week to writing 15 blog posts in one week. Then go up to 20 blog posts in one week and continue to work your way up until you are able to write 30 blog posts every week.

Raising the bar higher combined with effective time management and accountability will allow you to accomplish the bigger goals. What are your thoughts about the list? Do you have any additional advice to achieve bigger goals? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

10 Ways To Get More Organized

July 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Organized Desk

Organization is the key to being productive. If you work in a workplace where papers are scattered everywhere, then you are not being as productive as you could be. Not only can being organized prevent your productivity from dipping lower, but being very organized also has the ability to enhance your productivity. In order to get organized, follow these 10 steps.

Look at what is on your desk and see what can be removed. You don’t need to have a vase on your desk. Your desk is a place to work, not a place for clutter.
Have sticky notes at all times. If you don’t have a lot of clutter on your desk, then sticky notes get more attention. Sticky notes are a great way to stay productive and identify what you have to do for the day. Here’s how you can optimize sticky notes and get the best results possible.
Put inspirational things on your walls instead. It’s great to have an inspirational quote of Vince Lombardi, but why not put it up on a wall instead of leaving it on your desk? The more things you have to look at on your desk, the less work you will be able to get done. Your goal is to be able to look anywhere on your desk and either find a sticky note, a scorecard, or the material that your desk is made of.
Move all of the clutter to one room. There is even clutter in the best of the clean freaks’ houses. In order to prevent this clutter from getting in the way of your productivity, you need to place all of this clutter in one room that you almost never visit anyway. Moving all of the clutter into one room will make all of the other rooms in your house–including your office–much cleaner.
Record important data. Don’t you wish you remembered how much money you made four months ago? Recording the important data will allow you to remember how much revenue you generated in certain months. There are also other types of data that you have that are important enough to be recorded. Instead of trying to find your important data in the data hairball, you need to record your data using Word/Pages documents on your computer. Choosing to record this data on your computer also prevents it from getting lost or becoming a part of the clutter.
Everything on your desk needs to have a purpose. Some people have iPads on their desks for no apparent reason. Those are the types of iPads that need to be taken off desks. Other iPads are on desks because videos are getting sent from an iPad to a Mac. Those types of iPads are the ones you need to have on your desk.
Have more folders. Even if you don’t get clients and have to keep track of their reports, you still need to have folders. I use folders to store all of my scorecards so I can look back, learn from my mistakes, and identify my big strengths. There are plenty of creative ways you can use folders to store data. Just make sure there aren’t too many folders that end up on your desk.
Have more envelopes. Envelopes can be used to store data and information that folders cannot store. I store all of my past sticky notes in envelopes. Although this particular use of envelopes is a clever idea for a giveaway, there are other ways that you can use envelopes to your advantage.
Have a notebook. Instead of having 10 pieces of paper scattered on your desk, you can write on 10 pages in your notebook. All of that information stays in one place so you don’t have to search for it later. You can also get a subject notebook so you are able to separate different sections in your notebook for different topics.
Have a desk with drawers. If your desk has drawers, then the likelihood of clutter developing on your desk decreases. However, you cannot just think of desk drawers as a way to remove clutter from your desk. You need have organized desk drawers so you can access more information quicker.

Being organized is one way to boost productivity. By implementing these 10 tactics, you will have a more organized workplace which means you will be able to get more done faster. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips on getting and staying organized? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

7 Habits Of Highly Productive People

July 3, 2014 by Marc Guberti 16 Comments

Completed Checklist

There are some days when we get our work done, and there are other days when we do not get any work done. While most people go through not getting their work for a majority of the time, others are able to get their work done on most days. These are the highly productive people. Those are the people who others envy when they can’t finish a project on time. Productive people come in many shapes and forms, but they all share these seven habits that allow them to be more productive than the average person.

They plan their day out the night before. Remember when it was bad in high school to start the big project the night before it is due? That problem does not apply to productive people when they plan out their days. Most productive people plan out their days right before they go to bed. If you plan your day in the afternoon, then you are losing time that you can be productive in. Your productivity wanes as the day goes by, and since productivity is at its lowest at nighttime, productive people use this time to write down their goals for the next time.
They give themselves closer deadlines. Highly productive people give themselves 1 week to accomplish the same goals that take a month or two for the typical person to accomplish. A closer deadline gives these people less time to procrastinate and make mistakes. This allows highly productive people to realize how valuable time truly is. You may have read on this blog before that time is our most valuable resource or heard it from someone else. Giving yourself closer deadlines will allow you to fully understand why time is our most valuable resource, and with less time there is less fooling around.
They write down their goals for the week. Highly productive people take one week at a time. They write down the goals they need to accomplish for the week and then use a tally/checkmark system to indicate how close they got to accomplishing everything on the list.
They give themselves bigger goals. As the goals on the list become easier to accomplish, highly productive people challenge themselves by giving themselves bigger goals and less time to get those goals accomplished. The bigger goals further establish how time is their most valuable resource and gives them less time to procrastinate.
They barely watch TV. Television is productivity’s greatest villain. The average American spends 32 hours every week watching TV. There’s so many things that can be done in those 32 hours other than watch TV shows (and some can be very depressing or teaching immoral lessons), and highly productive people know that very well. They take full advantage by limiting the amount of time they spend watching TV every week so they are able to find more time in their days.
They wake up early. In a sense, productive people start their work “before life happens.” There are not nearly as many things to do at 7 pm as there are things to do at 7 am (other than work). In addition, the earlier someone wakes up, the more willpower that person has. Willpower is a big source of productivity that wanes as the day progresses. Waking up earlier allows you to tap into your full willpower and get the best of it.
They don’t think they have enough time. Highly productive people do not think they have enough time to get their goals accomplished. Highly productive people are continuously raising the bar higher and making it harder for them to accomplish all of the weekly goals. As a result, when something unexpected happens to the time schedule, these highly productive people feel uncomfortable losing all of that time. These highly productive people may be doing seven or more hours of productive work every day, but they feel as if they never have enough time to accomplish all of their goals.

Those are the seven habits of highly productive people. By learning to implement and develop these habits overtime, you will become a highly productive person. What are your thoughts on the habits? Do you have any additional habits you have that keep you productive? Please share your thoughts and your own habits below.

How To Get Everyone On Your Team To Support Your Idea

June 27, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

The Answer Is Yes

One of the common human needs is to get accepted. Before you started your own business or got employed, chances were it was all about getting accepted on sports teams, certain extracurricular activities that have cuts, high schools, and colleges, just to name a few. However, when it comes to ideas, not everyone supports those ideas. In most cases, the ideas that get rejected are not necessarily bad. On the contrary, some of these ideas are extraordinary, but they get presented poorly and do not get the desired result.

There is a way to get everyone on your team to support your idea. No matter what you do, not everyone will support your idea. However, if you can get your entire team or a majority of your team to support your idea, then that’s enough to get your idea in motion. Seth Godin, the bestselling author of numerous books written in over 30 languages described a method in his book Free Prize Inside that you can use to persuade everyone on your team that your idea is worth doing. This method is called the Fulcrum of Innovation.

The Fulcrum of Innovation has three parts:

Worth doing. This is the part of the Fulcrum where you explain the benefits of implementing your idea.
By you. This is the part of the Fulcrum where you show people that you are the right champion to lead the implementation process of your idea.
Doable. This is the part of the Fulcrum where you prove that your idea is possible with the team that you have.

By mastering the Fulcrum, you will be able to persuade everyone on your team to implement your idea. Of course, the idea has to be good, but thinking of a good idea is not as hard as it sounds. Implementing the ideas you think of takes a lot more time, but if you master the Fulcrum and get everyone to agree with your idea, then the implementation process will run smoother.

What are your thoughts about using the Fulcrum to convince the people on your team that your idea must be implemented? Have you ever used the Fulcrum to convince people that your idea works? Have you read any Seth Godin books (if not, you should definitely buy one, but be warned, you’ll end up buying more in the future)? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Why The First Time Is Really The Hardest

June 26, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Big Challenge

A lot of people say that the first time is the hardest. It is used in speeches, books, and other places as well. While many people say that the first time is the hardest, few people go into why the first time is really the hardest. In this article, I am going to go into the why part about the first time being the hardest.

In 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day after Twitter was created the social media world went crazy. Twitter’s 1 billionth tweet was sent out. Out of all of the times Twitter sent out 1 billion tweets, the first billion tweets took the most time. Now, Twitter users send out a combined total of 1 billion tweets every 5 days. That’s a lot quicker than 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day.

Neil Patel wrote a brilliant blog post about getting 100,000 monthly visitors for a blog. In that blog post, he also mentioned how long it took for each of his blogs to get over 100,000 monthly visitors. QuickSprout took 4 years and 9 months, KISSmetrics took 1 year and 10 months, and Crazy Egg took 1 year and 6 months to reach 100,000 monthly visitors. The first blog took the longest amount of time to reach 100,000 monthly visitors because the first time is always the hardest. It becomes obvious that as Neil Patel creates more blogs, he is able to reach the same milestone faster.

The first time is the hardest because we do not know everything about the process. It is hard to get the first 1,000 followers because it takes a long time to learn about different methods to reach the goal. What used to take me a few months to do now gets done in 2-3 days. By staying dedicated and going through the journey, you will learn more about your niche. You will learn how to do certain tasks with fewer steps that allow you to save more time. Doing anything for the first time is the hardest. It takes a lot of practice and time to do something the first time. Then, it gradually becomes easier over time as you get more comfortable doing something that at one point seemed very difficult.

What are your thoughts about the first time really being the hardest? Do you have any stories of your own about the first time being the hardest? Please share your thoughts below.

Inspyr Socks Motivates Others In A Different Way

June 25, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Inspyr Socks

People are constantly searching for ways to get motivated to get tasks done and live a better life. There are methods out there such as reading motivational quotes, doing the work, and being happy for the results. However, wearing the right clothing can also allow you to live a more motivated life. Life Is Good did the job with their shirts, hoodies, and other merchandise with the simple message, life is good.

Now there is a new start-up that is gaining momentum that makes and sells motivational socks. Inspyr Socks is a Pennsylvania based start-up that intends to motivate others with inspirational sayings on each of their socks and show individuals that success and living a wonderful life are both in their reach.

Imagine looking down at your socks and seeing motivational messages such as, “Think it, Be it” “Believe, Achieve,” Will Power,” “Work Hard,” and “Step Up.” Wearing clothing with a powerful message is by far one of the most underrated ways to get and stay motivated.

One of the additional perks to wearing Inspyr Socks is that you get to share motivational messages with others. Not only do you get to feel empowered, but people who see your Inspyr Socks will also receive the motivational message. You get to help others get motivated.

I support Inspyr Sock’s message and think it is a powerful message that is going to be heard by the masses. Inspyr Socks is “inspyring” the world one pair of socks at a time.