Have you ever noticed the difference in habits of people who have a substantial amount of money and those who don’t?
I’m not talking about the appearance of wealth with material possessions. A lot of people can use credit, loans, cash advances to acquire possessions. They may appear to be wealthy and yet not have the financial, emotional and time freedom that comes with true wealth.
I’m referring to actual financial independence that allows someone to have greater latitude with the decisions they make regarding their daily living arrangements and long-term goals. An increase in the number of choices they have on a daily basis.
Some of the habits that may not necessarily indicate how they earned their money or acquired their wealth may help us understand a significant difference in their mindset.
For instance, although they may have a lot of “projects” going on at once, they only work on one project at a time. They sort their competing demands, prioritize them and schedule uninterrupted time to concentrate focused energy on each project one at a time. It’s a sort of serial multi-tasking behavior.
They make decisions that help them perform each task associated with a project in a more efficient and stress free manner. Hence the title of this blog.
If you lead a hectic life, as most of us do, and you try to take short cuts like using a drive through food service establishment to save time on your way to your destination, you most likely end up eating in your car.
Not only is this ultimately inefficient, because it may distract you from driving safely, it also makes it harder for your body to digest and assimilate the nutrients in the food. Nutrients that are much needed to sustain your energy level to continue facing competing demands.
Habits, either acquired or developed help us achieve our goals or create barriers to the achievement of those goals.
If you are interested in knowing what habits you have that might be interfering with your productivity, you can do the following.
Set aside ten to twenty minutes each day for a week to log your daily activities.
Examine the patterns you discover at the end of the week.
Determine if those behaviors are conducive to healthy living and free up time for income producing activities.
If not, decide what habits need to be changed, eliminated or explored further in order to allow more time for focused activities.
Choose one habit at a time to alter. Choose an alternate behavior and implement it for another week to see if it makes a difference in the amount of time you have freed up.
Be kind to yourself and consistent. Perfection is not necessary, just persistent action toward improvement.
Move through your list as you become more adept at establishing each new healthier, more productive habit and you will see improvement in your ability to perform at a higher level.
Here’s to Your Success!
Linda C Ridenour