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productivity

4 Ways To Wake Up Feeling Great

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Wake Up Call

Your first hour after you wake up dictates how the rest of the day is going to go. If you are happy and feel motivated during the first hour you wake up, you will have a great day. If you feel horrible about yourself within that same time frame, you are bound to have a bad day. That means it is as important as possible to start the day off right. Here are four ways to do that.

  1. Read a motivational book. What you read when you wake up has the potential to change your entire mindset for the day. That means it is ideal for you to read motivational books that provide valuable insights into life, success, and anything else that is valuable to you.
  2. Listen to your favorite music. Listening to your favorite music will fill a part of your soul. That sounded deep, but listening to a favorite song feels much different compared to listening to an ordinary song. Make sure your favorite song is not a depressing song because listening to a depressing songs is the wrong way to start the day.
  3. Do a workout. I am not asking you to squat down and give me 100 push-ups and then get up right from that and run 10 miles. The ideal workout for the morning is a quick 10-20 minute stretch. That means nothing strenuous, but at the same time, walking around for 10-20 minutes is not the right kind of stretching either.
  4. Get some fresh air. Work outside for a change. The fresh air will make you happy to be alive. Getting some fresh air will also refresh you (see what I did there). However, you should not get some fresh air if it is raining, hailing, thunder showering, or anything like that.

Wake up at your best so you can be at your best for the entire day. Highly successful people wake up early and feel great. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional ways to wake up feeling great? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

The First Hour You Wake Up Controls The Rest Of Your Day

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Start Of A New Day

There are a fair share of people who are productive, but there are more people who want and need to boost their productivity. While there are several methods to keep you productive throughout your day, the power of those methods are dependent on what you do on the first hour you wake up. Your first hour is the make or break point of your day. If you utilize this first hour properly, then you will be productive and happy throughout the day. If you do not utilize this first hour properly, then you will not be as productive or happy for the rest of the day.

Now that you know the first hour is by far more important than all of the others, you’ll definitely want to know how you can utilize that first hour properly.

One method is doing a 20 minute workout. Doing a workout makes you feel happier, and working out has a powerful impact on success. Another option is reading motivational books. Brian Tracy, the master of productivity, reads a motivational book for 20-30 minutes to start off his day. Those are the best two options you have. My recommendation is to either alternate between the two or do both of them within the same hour (reading the book and then working out).

The first hour sets the tone for the rest of the day. What you do in the first hour determines how much you can do for the rest of the day. Make your first hour count!

 

6 Characteristics That Every Successful Entrepreneur Has Part 2

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Think Like An Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurs are individuals who break out of the status quo to pursue their own dreams. Even if they may not make a lot of money in the beginning, entrepreneurs pursue their dreams instead of looking for survival jobs. All entrepreneurs have several characteristics. In an earlier blog post, I mentioned six characteristics that every successful entrepreneur has. Since then, I have learned more about entrepreneurship, and I will continue learning about it. As a result, I have been able to come up with six completely different characteristics that every entrepreneur should have.

  1. Have an optimistic attitude. Every entrepreneur faces obstacles. An entrepreneur’s success is dependent on how he/she responds to the obstacles. If the entrepreneur remains optimistic about their journey, that entrepreneur will make enough mistakes to get one thing right, and getting one thing right can be the difference between a survival job and a multimillion dollar business.
  2. Risk taking. Entrepreneurs need to be willing to make risks. The safe game is no longer safe because there are too many people playing that game. In order to stand out as an entrepreneur, you need to take risks so people see you as a remarkable entrepreneur.
  3. The desire to experiment. There is no rule book for your niche to break from the norm. There are several ways to break from the norm, but the only way you will know whether your method worked or not is by giving it a try. You may need to conduct numerous experiments before coming up with the one that works.
  4. Entrepreneurs accept that failure happens but don’t get stopped by it. Successful entrepreneurs realize that failure is inevitable, but they also realize that success is inevitable. After failing so many times, entrepreneurs learn enough about their niche that they get it right. Getting it right and having the product or service deliver the way you expected it to is when the magic starts to happen.
  5. Entrepreneurs are willing to work for 80 hours to avoid working for 40 hours. Shark Tank’s Lori Greiner came up with a humorous but true statement about entrepreneurs. We work more to avoid less work. The only difference is that after everything pays off, entrepreneurs are able to live in a way that most people can’t.
  6. Entrepreneurs utilize their leverage. We have more leverage than we realize. Technology has torn away communication limitations, information-obtaining limitations, and even the age limitation. Even in a world with more leverage, not every entrepreneur is utilizing that leverage. The successful entrepreneurs are utilizing the leverage around them to thrive and create superstar products.

Those are the six other characteristics that every entrepreneur has. You can see the other six characteristics here. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any other entrepreneurial characteristics you would like to share? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

Case Study: How Keeping Score Increases Productivity

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A very long time ago, I wrote about keeping score, and I wrote about the results of my first score card. I have been using the score card for months, and I do not plan on stopping. Score cards enhanced my time management and productivity, and score cards continue to amaze me today. Before I created a score card, I thought it would have been impossible for me to write 25 blog posts in one week. Not only did I do that, but I also finished reading an entire book and created the blueprint for my upcoming membership site, Total Social Media Domination. The following week, I was able to accomplish 12 different goals which all required a good amount of work. Some of the things I did that week were:

  1. Write 20 blog posts
  2. Finish reading Blue Ocean Strategy from start to finish
  3. Write 5,000 words for an upcoming book, Unlock Your Potential

There were 9 other goals similar to those three, and I got them all done in one short week. What once looked impossible has now become a routine of accomplishment.

The main reason the score card works is because you have to write down what you plan to accomplish for the week. If you think about the things you have to accomplish, it is easy to forget about some things and reduce expectations for other things. If I thought of write 20-25 blog posts every week, I may think at some point in the week that writing that many blog posts is too challenging. Thinking about it could have resulted in me lowering the bar to 16-18 blog posts for the week. Writing everything down forces you to be accountable, and making yourself accountable gives you no one else to blame but yourself for anything that goes wrong on your score card.

It is the desire to get a perfect score that motivates me as I continue creating score cards and getting tasks accomplished. You may not get a perfect score when you create your score card. In fact, I almost never get a perfect score. It’s not because I am not productive. Instead, it is because I raise the bar very high. I could easily get a perfect score on every score card if I only assigned myself 10 blog posts every week, but then I would not be able to publish two blog posts in one day.

If you want to get better time management and increase your productivity, you need to use a score card. Write down the goals you want to accomplish and use tallies to indicate how close you are to accomplishing a goal. Then, draw a big checkmark next to any goal that you accomplish. It’s that easy, but it is going to make a big difference in your time management and productivity.

 

You Can’t Do It All By Yourself

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I am not the person to use pessimistic headlines to get people’s attention, but I knew that I needed to make an exception in order to make my point.

For a very long time, I believed that I would be able to do everything all by myself. I believed that I would be able to publish books without anyone’s help, create training courses without anyone’s help, and optimize my social media presence without buying any tools. The problem was that I was giving myself too many things and not enough time to do those things (this comes from someone who writes 20 blog posts and 5,000 words for his books on a typical day of high school).

I thought I could quickly send out queries and respond to everyone on HARO. I was wrong. In my defense, I was able to quickly send out the queries, but responding to everyone was the difficult part. Then, I got sidetracked from all of the work I put in for HARO and the book I was writing because nothing seemed to be working.

I also thought I could create my own book cover and learn how. However, spending $25 to get a Kindle eBook cover and a CreateSpace book cover is much easier than learning how to create the covers and create the images.

Do you want to know why big companies are successful? It’s because they are big. WalMart is run by the CEO, but there are millions of people who allow the WalMart stores around the world to function properly. The people who founded big companies realized that they couldn’t do everything by themselves. C. Douglas McMillon can’t be in every WalMart store at the same time.

It is okay to ask for help. It is okay to hire virtual assistants to help you with the things you cannot do or simply don’t have the time for. If you have to read this blog post multiple times before you are convinced that you can’t do it all by yourself, then go for it. You don’t want to learn this lesson after you lost time because you thought you could do everything by yourself.

Get a marketing team. Get a support team. Hire assistants. If you don’t have the money to hire assistants yet, look around for assistants anyway and hire them when the money comes in. Whatever you do, don’t do it alone.

 

How To Accomplish Bigger Goals

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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.