It’s never too late to be who you might have been. It is never too late for reinventing yourself, is it? Or looking for ways to improve work habits. If you believe otherwise, you may want to consider hanging it up. Knowing yourself is the key to Neil Patel work habits and undertaking life success lessons, isn’t it?
Are you aware of the impact of awesome habits for success and positive thinking on your personal development? But how to best build work habits and this positive attitude is another matter, isn’t it?
New goals don’t deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is a process, not an outcome. For this reason, your energy should go into building better habits, not chasing better results.
How you ever used checklists to improve your productivity … or perhaps your positive mental thinking? How well did they work for you?
We often use checklists to achieve our goal to refresh and reinforce habits and attitudes critical to our success and ability to see opportunity in every difficulty.
Related: 10 Life Lessons You Need to Learn Early
After college, I spent almost two years training as a naval aviator. An important element of that training was the use of checklists in the learning and refresher process.
Checklist utilization remains an important part of my business life. It is always a good idea to have a helpful checklist for reminders of improvements for your business or your personal life.
You will perhaps have heard this very old story illustrating the difference between positive and negative thinking:
Many years ago two salesmen were sent by a British shoe manufacturer to Africa to investigate and report back on market potential.
The first salesman reported back, “There is no potential here – nobody wears shoes.”
The second salesman reported back, “There is massive potential here – nobody wears shoes.”
This simple short story provides one of the best examples of how a single situation may be viewed in two quite different ways – negatively or positively. And it is not difficult to see which one you want, eh?
I keep a stack of 10 or so checklists that I rotate and update occasionally. I pull out one checklist to read and contemplate for 5-10 minutes as a way to start each day. I find it puts my thinking in the right frame of mind.
Here is one checklist example on simple reminders to improve the odds of success in any task that my team or I may be doing:
Neil Patel work habits … arrive early
Always come in early (at least 15 minutes). Getting organized for your day’s priorities will help your performance as well as your reputation.
Listen well, but always be thinking of adding your opinions and value to the team.
Single-task
Select 1 major project to focus on each day. Keep other smaller efforts to a minimum.
Neil Patel work habits … play to strengths
Select tasks that play to your strengths as much as you can. Delegate tasks related to your weaknesses to someone with strengths in those areas.
Networking
Never be done with your networking efforts, and it takes lots of effort and persistence. To build relationships, keep in touch with friends in meaningful ways.
Pay attention to things like stress which impact your attention and concentration. Avoid multitasking and take short breaks every hour to two hours.
Good work ethic traits.
Neil Patel work habits … take a real lunch
Make time for a real lunch, where you should avoid business topics. Go to lunch with different people, preferably ones with whom you are building relationships.
Find things to make you laugh
Don’t take things too seriously … find time for smiles and a little laughter. Learn to laugh at your own mistakes.
Your estimates
Pay attention to your estimates and avoid being aggressive at all cost. Estimate with success in mind. This is a hard one to learn as it will usually not be in your total control.
Neil Patel work habits … note accomplishments
Always pay attention to how well you are doing against your goals and accomplishments. Take note of accomplishments at the end of each day.
Key takeaways
As I examine these lessons at the tail end of my career, it is easy to recognize how little I thought about most of them through at least the mid-career timeframe. And, of course, I wish I had. From my perspective, I was most vulnerable to the lessons of networking, attention, laughter, and estimating. I should have spent a lot more time on these lessons.
What about you?
Remember to work on all the lessons … it is another great way to show people a positive mental attitude.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of great leadership. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
It’s up to you to keep improving your ability to mentor and coach. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, history may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
It’s up to you to keep improving your coaching and experience from all around in your environment.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
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