Getting Things Done

How to Take Success-Building Action Every Single Day Even If You Don't Feel Like It

empreender

• Publisher: Bibliomundi
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526039781
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

I've got some bad news for you: The world doesn't care about your plans. Seriously. You may have all sorts of ideas, you may be excited about your grand visions, but let me tell you, nothing will come of any of these unless and until you take action.You have to understand that the world only cares about one thing and one thing alone: results.Everything else doesn't matter...

10 Mindsets that Crush Personal Effectiveness

Before I help you become a more effective and productive person, you have to have the right mindset. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to adopt mindsets that trip you up and sabotage your success on your path to optimal effectiveness. You need to become aware of these and eliminate them from your life.

Mindset #1: My potential for achievement will carry me through

Everybody's got potential. In fact, everybody has the potential to become very wealthy. Everybody has the potential to excel at one sport or another. But the problem is, most people never live up to their potential, yet they keep celebrating the fact that they have potential for achievement.

Let this sink in: do not confuse actual achievement for potential and potential for achievement. They are two totally different things. You can't just coast for the rest of your life, thanks to the realization that you have potential. Your potential is not going to do you an ounce of good unless you turn it into actual achievement and results.

Mindset #2: I have achieved stuff in the past, so I can coast now

Please remember that your ability to do stuff erodes with time. I'm not just talking about physical action here. I'm talking about mental action as well.

Scientific studies show that people's mental abilities decline with age. In fact, your IQ goes down as you get older.

To think that just because you have achieved certain things in the past that you can continue to achieve them long into the future is wishful thinking. It takes more effort to maintain the same reults. And also, you would be required to learn new things so you can produce the same or better results in the future.

Don't entertain the idea that just because you were able to get stuff done in the past that you will continue to perform at a similar level. It doesn't work that way. You cannot give yourself the luxury of "coasting" through life.

Mindset #3: I can achieve the same results without having to change

Just because you were able to do things in the past, it doesn't mean that you only need to continue doing the same things. Conditions do change.

For those achievements to take place, you have to level up your skills, you have to be adaptable, and you have to find yourself at the right time and the right place doing the right things. This means keeping up with the changing situation on the ground.

Otherwise, it becomes so easy to think that since you are unable to produce the same results, then there is something wrong with the activity itself, or the industry you're in, or your career, or other people. It turns out that the only problem is your refusal to change and keep up with the times.

Mindset #4: Success only comes through intuition

A lot of people are under the impression that for them to be successful, they just need to find themselves at the right place, at the right time, doing the right things, with the right people around them.

This is wrong.

Success is a habit. Even if you are dealt a lousy hand and you are dealing with an almost impossible situation complete with toxic people, you can still pull out a victory.

How come? You're not relying on your intuition. You're not relying on your gut feeling. You're definitely not relying on getting lucky. Instead, you're focusing on the personal success systems that you have built for yourself.

You become more adaptable. You are able to spot opportunities as they present themselves. In other words, you learn how to do the right things at the right time to produce a predictable set of results.

This is how you can tell truly successful people who may be down on their luck and people who just got lucky. I'm telling you, if you just rewind history, people who got lucky probably will not achieve the same results.

Mindset #5: Achievement comes through raw insight

A lot of people are under the impression that you really don't have to put in the time or pay your dues to become really good at what you're doing. A lot of people are under the impression that they just need to be at the right place at the right time and all of a sudden this enlightenment about their work, their career and their industry will all fall into place.

This raw insight is like trying to win the lottery. Seriously. You might as well just run out and get yourself a lottery ticket because you are hoping for the same type of result.

You can have all the raw insights you want, but if you don't know what to do with them and you don't have a system for producing the same type of success day after day, week after week, month after month, then you're just setting yourself up for a disappointment.

Mindset #6: No matter how hard I try, success is ultimately random

This thinking actually concludes with another sentence: so why try so hard? If random luck is just going to put you in the same place as you would if you had worked hard, why even try?

I hate to say this, but people who think this way are simply just giving themselves reasons for being lazy. I know that's unpopular and not politically correct, but it's true.

Because you have to understand that people who become successful are not successful 100% of the time. Instead, they're successful enough. Regardless of the conditions and regardless of whatever is going on on the ground, they are able to succeed enough times.

Successful people are able to succeed at a fairly predictable rate. People who play everything by ear cannot say that. Things happen to them randomly. Sometimes they get lucky, most of the time they don't.

Truly successful people don't settle for that. Instead, they have a system where, chances are, they will achieve success more likely than not.

Don't let your belief in the randomness of success rob you of the motivation you need to learn how to build a personal success system.

Mindset #7: Personal effectiveness is hardwired

People who believe this think that some people are just born effective while the rest struggle.

Personal effectiveness is something that you learn. It is not something that you're either born with or you're not born with.

Don't give yourself the excuse that you may not be predisposed to being effective or being all that organized. All this tells you is that you just need to put in a little bit more work and time and eventually you will get there.

Mindset #8: Effectiveness is not as important as efficiency

You can be an efficient failure. Seriously. You can take whatever little resources you have and constantly fail. That's efficiency.

Please understand that effectiveness involves managing the quality of the results you do. It also directly impacts whether you are able to produce results at all.

Efficiency is important, but you have to focus on being effective first. Because if all you focus on is efficiency, it's very easy to just do the very least to produce barely passable results.

Mindset #9: I don't have to build learning systems

Sustainable effectiveness can only come about if you have a system for learning what you need to learn to produce the results you want to produce.

Unfortunately, if you can't be bothered to put in the time, effort and energy to build such a system, you're going to have to settle for surface learning. You're basically going to be focusing on the tip of the iceberg and nothing more.

This is a serious problem because if you really want to become an authority or expert in any kind of field, you have to scratch beneath the surface. You have to put in the time, effort and focus. This requires sacrifice. This requires paying your dues over an extended period of time.

Mindset #10: I can't rely on others to boost my personal effectiveness

Whatever struggles you may currently have with your personal effectiveness is actually acquired through ‘mental inheritance.’ Seriously. You picked it up at some earlier point. I am, of course, referring to your parents or family members.

Regardless of whatever habits you may have, you can bet that you have learned it from somewhere. It's not something that you were born with.

Do yourself a big favor, learn from the right people to boost your personal effectiveness. Just as you can learn from others how to be lazy, unproductive or unimaginative, you can be inspired by other people to really stretch your limits so you can become the most effective person you can be.

Make sure you don't subscribe to any of these mindsets because if you do, your chances of success are greatly diminished. What I'm going to teach you in this book requires that you free yourself from these ideas.

This is no time to be in denial. Don't feel embarrassed if you believe in these. Just own up to them and get rid of them. At the very least, neutralize their effect so the information that I'm going to share with you sinks in and changes your life.

 

Life Rewards Action

As I've mentioned in the introduction to this book, there's only one thing that the world cares about: results. I think we could all agree on that.

It doesn't care about your feelings. It doesn't care about your intentions or motivations. It doesn't care about any of that. All it cares about is what it actually sees.

The world is objective. Do you earn $100,000 a year or not? Do you have a big house or not? Do you have a Ferrari or not? Can you dunk a basketball or not?

These are the very basic black and white questions that the world asks. Everything else is just fluff. If you are able to wrap your mind around this, let's take things a little deeper.

Success is defined by what you do. Please understand that results are only possible when you take action. Everything else is empty talk. Accordingly, if you want to be successful, you have to do things. You have to take action.

Success is defined by what you do, not what you dream about, your potential, your hopes and wishes. Everybody's got those. Anybody can daydream. But to actually achieve your dreams, you have to do.

Similarly, to live a life of purpose, you have to do. You can't live a life of purpose doing nothing except hoping and wishing. Believe it or not, to achieve happiness and joy, you have to do. You have to take action.

This is a big problem for a lot of people because most of us are afraid to take consistent action.

Most of us can wrap our minds around the need to take action. Most of us can manage to do that. Unfortunately, we think that we only need to take action one time in a big way and the rest will follow. It doesn't work that way.

If you've ever worked on a big project like, getting a college diploma or building a successful business, you should have noticed that it takes consistent action. You don't just get the reward the first time you press the lever or the first time you swing the bat. It doesn't work that way. You have to keep trying over and over again, despite the fact that there are obstacles in the way.

Consistent action trips people up because we are afraid that the road ahead is long and hard. We tend to focus on the obstacles. The more we look at the obstacles, the more we lose sight of our ultimate destination. We get taken aback by the stuff we need to let go.

Remember, if you are on the road to success or to great riches or wealth, the road or the process changes you. You have to sacrifice. You have to change. You have to let go of certain parts of your personality.

This is painful because most people fear change. We've grown accustomed to doing things a certain way or thinking about things a certain way. It's very scary to let go of the things that we are familiar with. We end up worrying about what we stand to lose.

The more you hang on to the harmful mindset that you can "coast through life" relying on your past successes is an illusion. Your skill sets erode over time. Eventually, you reach a point where you don't even know what to do to produce any kind of result. That's the path that you're on.

The way out of this dilemma is to understand that the world rewards action right here, right now. Not tomorrow, not the day after, not next week, but right here, right now.

I need you to do one thing right now. If you want to proceed with this book. I need you to decide to get things done...

NOW! If you have decided to do things right here, right now, meet me in Chapter 3.

 

Decide to Be More Effective Now

A lot of people downplay the importance of making decisions. In fact, a lot of us think that decisions are automatic. We only need to see where we are and the benefits that we stand to gain and the decision will flow naturally.

This is why most people assume that they have decided to change when they go on a diet or they apply for a new job or they apply for a promotion. It is no surprise that most of these people fail.

Why? They completely assume one of the most powerful steps to personal success and effectiveness: decision. You have to be as conscious as possible about your choice.

Your power of choice is one of the most important personal powers...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 10 Mindsets that Crush Personal Effectiveness
• Life Rewards Action
• Decide to Be More Effective Now
• Rework and Reorder What You’re Currently Doing
• Creating and Following a Personal Effectiveness Ritual
• Use the Power of Emotional Ownership to Get More Stuff Done
• Achieve More by Working More Purposefully
• Challenge Yourself Daily
• Document Your Journey for Maximum Control
• Best Practices for Getting Things Done