Tag: blogging

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Daily Organizational Habit: Make Your Bed Each Morning

Developing daily habits that take care of your environment keeping it uncluttered is useful for multiple reasons. One, because your home and office will generally be cleaner if you’re committed to daily organization, but secondly because the action creates a transition for your day that can trigger more good behavior all day long, thus increasing your happiness and satisfaction level.

 

  • The Action Creates Transition in Your Mind – When you take the time to clean your room in the morning and make your bed, the action will serve to give you a little more of a wake-up than just leaving the bed messy.

 

  • You’ll Feel Accomplished – The ten minutes it takes to make your bed well will also make you feel more accomplished, and when you start your day feeling like you’re succeeding, it sets you up for even more success.

 

  • Productivity Will Increase for The Day – When you do something productive right away, the feel-good hormones will take over a bit, thus helping motivate you to do even more useful stuff the rest of the day.

 

  • Less Clutter and Mess Means Less Stress – Science has already proven that no one thrives in a cluttered environment. While we can debate what constitutes clutter and disorganization, if it feels organized to you and less messy, it’ll serve the same effect of making you feel less stressed.

 

  • Everything Will Become Cleaner – When you start cleaning things for five or ten minutes at a time, like with bed making, it’s just natural that you’re going to clean other things around the bed. You’re going to put your night clothing away, put anything dirty in the hamper, and probably even notice the dust building on your headboard sooner than if you did not make your bed daily.

 

  • Bedmaking Gives a Reason to Perform Useful Body Movements – Many people are worried about exercising, but some of your workouts can be completed by doing housework. It’s good for your body to stretch to make your bed and bend and pull to get the sheets on. It’s a great two-minute morning workout to wake you up and get the blood pumping that serves dual purposes.

 

  • The Habit Starts a Pattern of More Good Habits – Human nature is such that when you make good choices, more good choices seem to come easy, but when you make one choice, your brain deems ‘bad’ it’s harder to get back on the horse. Start your day positively, and you set yourself up for more positivity.

 

  • Your Home Should Be Your Retreat – So often, especially if you have to work a full-time job under someone else’s hours and rules, we forget that our home is supposed to be our safe place to fall and let it get disorganized and even dirty. But if you want to feel better about yourself and your life, no matter what type of home you live in now, organize it and keep it clean, and you’re going to feel better about everything.

 

To make it more fun to make your bed each morning, make your bedroom a retreat from the world. Invest in the best bedding and mattress you can afford to buy and make it beautiful and comfortable according to your desires and needs. You shouldn’t need to go to a hotel to have an amazing sleeping experience, and making your bed is just part of that effort that will improve your life in amazing ways.

Organization Is A Daily Requirement

 

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Daily Educational Habits: Discover Something New You Did Not Know About Each Month

Learning something new as often as possible is usually the advice the biggest thought leaders, gurus, and grandmas tend to pass down to generations after them when asked what changed their life and made their success possible.

 

This advice to keep learning your entire life can be misconstrued as a call for higher education, but in reality, it’s a call to be open-minded enough to always keep learning the new things about the world and yourself and not to close your mind or doors in the process.

 

Because learning new things keeps you young of mind if not of body, and that’s the best way to arm yourself. Education is required to navigate the world of the future. Because whether you like it or not, the future will come. Keep on learning.

 

  • Improved Self-Confidence – When you keep your mind informed about the world and the new things being discovered depending on your interests, even if you didn’t discover it, your confidence in yourself to understand and know things makes you not only appear self-confident to others but makes you feel confident inside.

 

  • Keep Your Mind Sharp and Your Brain Healthy – Neuroscientists know that when it comes to the brain, it’s a case of losing it if you don’t use it. The more you can use your brain and challenge it to make new synopsis, the healthier your brain will be even if you’re older.

 

  • Learn Useful Life Skills – When you want to know how to do something, it’s easy to learn these days. Whether it’s fixing your own sink or learning coding, you can do it from the comfort of your home using sites like skillshare.com or YouTube.com.

 

  • Boost Your Mental and Emotional Health – When you can do more things for yourself, it feels good, and due to it, you’ll be a lot more emotionally healthy. For example, instead of wringing your hands about something, you can learn all about it and learn how to help.

 

  • Stay Connected to Society – The more you learn about different topics, the more people you will begin to relate to. Being able to relate to more people helps prevent you from feeling isolated and alone. For example, immersing yourself in the Japanese culture will teach you that we’re more alike than we are different.

 

  • Experience a More Successful Career – When you have a basic understanding of how life works, it’s easier to be more successful because you’ll know in advance the basic steps to take to get what you want. For example, if you want to learn more about SMART goal setting, you can devote the time to it, improving everything you do from that day forward due to your superior goal-setting skills.

 

  • Become Happier and More Satisfied with Life – When you have a more open-minded view of the world and a more realistic view of the world, you end up happier and more satisfied because you know the truth that over time the world becomes a better place for everyone – and it doesn’t matter what the sensationalistic media says because you’ve studied the history, know the stats and are focused on truth.

 

  • Have a Longer Life – When you know more about topics you need to know, such as nutrition, money management, and so forth, you’re likely to live a much longer life because you’re more likely to implement it when you know something for sure.

 

Lifelong learning doesn’t mean you have to go to an accredited university to learn. You can learn in more informal ways and still be considered a lifelong learner. As long as you’re committed to learning something new that you wanted to know or need to know each month of your life, you’re always going to stay aware and current, making you feel more successful and satisfied with your life.

Start Investing in Experiences

 

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Disconnect Yourself from Distractions and Notifications

One problem with the modern world is that it’s almost expected that people are supposed to multitask. The problem is no one can actually do it. It’s actually impossible for over 99 percent of humans to multitask. If you don’t believe me, you’ll need to look up the studies because it’s not something that is disagreed upon among social scientists.

 

Humans Cannot Do Two Things at Once

 

In reality, instead of true multitasking, you’re just splitting your attention between tasks – and not always evenly either. Trying to multitask is a productivity killer and also a mood killer. There are rare humans with superhuman ability who can multitask, just like there are rare humans who can perform superhuman athletic feats; some people are born with brains that are different from the norm.

 

More than likely, you are not one of those people. More than likely, you also cannot actually multitask. Trying to multitask is not just killing your productivity it’s probably even making you feel bad about yourself because you can’t live up to your own expectations, much less anyone else’s.

 

Multiple Studies Show People Cannot Multitask

 

Studies conducted by universities around the world have concluded that multitasking is not possible. Imaging shows that it takes most of us an average of 15 minutes to switch tasks and become reoriented to a primary task once distracted. There is no scientific argument that these things are true. After 50 years of research, scientists agree that trying to multitask is poorly affecting our productivity and our memory and, sadly, creativity.

 

Make The Commitment to Give Up Trying to Multitask and Start Focusing

How And Why You Must Remove Distractions

So, try this out for yourself. Turn your notifications off and stop being available 24 hours a day. You don’t owe it to anyone to be available to them at all times of the day and the night. And honesty, can you really be that much help at all hours of the day and night? When you don’t sleep enough, is your work done to a high enough standard?

 

Set specific times and block out your schedule for each activity and task you want to do each day. Whether it’s surfing Instagram or watching YouTube or commenting to your friends on Facebook Groups – or going for a game of Tennis with friends – get it in the schedule so that you can focus on it 100 percent.

 

When you get good at scheduling and actively shunning the idea of multitasking, you’ll feel so much more satisfied with your life and feel as if you have more time for doing all the things that make you happy and successful in life.

 

 

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Daily Habit for Health: Stand Up At Least Once Every 30 Minutes

The smallest action, when done regularly, can make all the difference. If your life or job is sedentary, you can improve your health substantially simply by adding just one thing to your day. Add movement every 30 minutes and do it by making it a habit.

Exercise For 5 Minutes Each Morning

This micro habit of movement can make all the difference in your chances of developing cancer or having circulatory issues like blood clots, and even improve your mental health – and all you have to do is stand up, get up, and stretch your legs once every 30 minutes.

 

No special equipment or clothing is needed. Just get up and stretch and then sit back down and continue working. This habit will improve your circulation, help you maintain your weight, cut down on anxiety, and make you feel more awake and productive all day long.

Weight loss

To lesson your chances of blood clots or other cardiovascular issues:

 

  • Take a break to stand up every 30 minutes – All you have to do is stand up, stretch for a few seconds, and then sit back down—no need to go on a stroll or anything like that. Just get up, stretch, and sit back down every 30 minutes. Set up a reminder to get up and move.

 

  • Stand and move while watching Television, YouTube, or Movies – Instead of sitting to start with, don’t sit. Stand up and get moving while you watch your favorite shows. You can stand up and march in place while watching just as easily as you can lay down and watch.

 

  • Work at a standing desk – Invest in a sit and standing so that you can either sit or stand during different periods of activity. The change will really help you avoid problems.

 

  • Use a desk treadmill – One way to beat the system entirely is to invest in a desk treadmill that fits under your desk so that you can keep moving as you work. Peddling away while you work at your desk in a sitting position will help a lot.

 

  • Start fidgeting – If you really cannot get up and sit back down due to work policy or flow, start learning to wriggle while working. Fidgeting by moving your legs back and forth can keep the blood flowing, so you’re less likely to develop a blood clot from being sedentary.

 

Even if you are a person who exercises every day, if you don’t get up every 30 minutes or so when sitting, you could be putting yourself at greater risk of poor health outcomes. According to studies conducted by the Mayo Clinic, sitting even 90 minutes at one stretch without moving could be detrimental to your health even if you regularly exercise.

 

 

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Daily Habit for Success: Manage Your Money

A daily habit that will propel you to success is learning to manage your money. This isn’t really about investing. Although you should definitely set up regular investments and plan for your future, this is more about the idea that you should always know what’s coming in and what’s going out (and from and to whom) any moment of any given day.

 

To manage your money every day, you’ll want to:

 

  • Develop Plans for Your Money – What you do today with your money has everything to do with the plans you’ve created for the money you have. If you are not planning for big expenditures, you may overspend, or you might even miss opportunities that you would have taken otherwise.

 

  • Track Your Spending – Even if you spend a buck on a candy bar at the checkout, you need to track what you spend your money on. If you make it a habit to track every single day, it makes it easier than having to do data entry later after the fact. Use apps to help you automatically track your spending.

 

  • Track Your Income – It’s also important to track what is coming in on a daily basis. Don’t worry. This is not hard if you’re using a good online bank that offers the ability to categorize your income as it comes in. When you habituate glancing at the results once a day to stay up to date, it becomes easy.

 

  • Know Your Income Streams – Most wealthy people have about seven income streams on average. Knowing how each of your streams is working out, whether investments or something else daily, is imperative. What you track grows.

 

  • Create a Realistic Monthly Budget – If you are having issues sticking to your plans, redo your budget. If it’s not realistic, you won’t stick to it. Make your budget work for you by using real numbers and deciding what to do based on reality. For example, if you work until 9 pm, the idea that you’re going to cook from scratch every day is a pipe dream.

3 step plan

  • Pay Your Bills on Time Every Time – Paying your bills late accounts for billions of dollars in income to corporations that charge these fees. Don’t give them more of your hard-earned money for nothing. Instead, set up automatic payments and then double-check by using text alerts when the money comes out of your account so you don’t ever miss a payment.

 

  • Kept Consumer Dept Reasonable – The fewer payments you need to make, the less work you’ll have to do keeping track. Consumer debt has a place, but it should be used to buy appreciating assets over depreciating assets and kept to a minimum.

 

  • Track and Manage Recurring Payments – Everyone has recurring payments set up these days, but it’s important to be mindful of them and not just ignore the money coming out. Please pay attention to it coming out of your account so you can check whether you really need that item or not based on how you feel about the payment in comparison to the value you receive.

 

  • Save For Emergencies – Having fast cash available in case of an emergency, whether something tragic or an exciting opportunity, is a great way to cut down on decision paralysis. Try to have at least six to nine months of emergency money available in cash at all times.

 

  • Build Your Future Long-Term Savings and Investments – Using many automation methods, start investing in your long-term future using automatic payments or benefits to clubs or cards, or jobs.

 

When you know what you have coming in and going out, it’s a lot easier to make judgment calls when opportunity knocks. Paying close attention every day to your expenditures and keeping track of savings as you plan for your future will ensure your success in the future.

How to Be Realistic About Time

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Daily Habit to End Clutter: Throw Stuff Away

The daily habit of getting rid of things you’re not going to use will help you cut down on clutter, ensure you think twice before buying something new, and make you feel light and free. Holding on to old stuff just because you hate to get rid of it is just clogging up your home with dust magnets, making your office look cluttered, and it might even be causing brain fog which cuts down on your productivity.

communication

It really doesn’t matter what any guru or so-called expert says, if your 1000 book collection brings you joy, even though you have to dust it, and you rarely read the books again – it’s not wrong to keep them. However, don’t let an illogical attachment to stuff keep you trapped in an environment that is not conducive to reaching the goals you’ve set for yourself.

 

So, if you read this title and thought, “Not another lecture on minimalism,” don’t worry, it’s not. In many ways, the ability to even call oneself a minimalist is pretty privileged to start with, and minimize is really in the eye of the beholder. This is more about keeping your spaces less cluttered and doing it by simply making it a habit to clean up right away. Practice throwing away, giving away, and ending clutter on a schedule to help turn it into a habit.

 

  • Set Up a System – Everyone has paperwork and mail coming in. The best way to handle this is to set up a system. Try only to touch the paperwork once. Get the mail, open it by the trash and organize each piece. Every year when you do taxes, toss out the tax year that no longer needs to be saved per your accountant’s advice.

 

  • Trash, Process, or File – If you got a medical bill you need to pay, process it, and file it. If you got a letter from your congress person, you could throw it away; if you got a letter from the IRS and there is no need to do something, file it. The idea is when you do what needs to be done immediately, you have less clutter around.

 

  • Get Rid of Those Clothes – If you have clothing you’ve not worn for a season, socks with holes, and other things you never use, don’t save them. All they are doing is attracting dust and taking up space. Make this easy by keeping a donate bag in your closet that you fill over time and donate when full.

 

  • Throw Away Old Electronics – You may need to find a safe way to dispose of these through your city offices, but there is no reason to keep old electronics forever collecting dust and taking up space. Instead, find a place to donate them and make it a habit to do so yearly.

 

Keeping these things causes dust and clutter in your home or office, but studies show that physical clutter in your space causes anxiety and even depression. People who keep their environment less cluttered tend to get more done and report feeling more successful. You don’t have to be perfect but make it a habit to toss things you’re not using every single day.

 

Stay More Focused with These Five Simple Steps

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Say No At Least Once a Week

As you work building in daily habits that will make you more successful, one of the skills you need to practice and habituate is saying no more.

For the next month or so, start saying no to something at least once a week.

say no

The way to choose what to say no to is to check your goals, look at your schedule, and ask yourself what you really want. If an action leads you to reach your goals and fits your schedule, saying yes is fine, but if it does not provide any value to you or does not fit into your schedule right now, say no.

 

When you do say no, you don’t owe anyone a reason with few exceptions. However, here are some reasons and ways that you can say no more often.

 

If You Already Know Say So

 

Sometimes you simply know that you don’t want to do something no matter what. Instead of putting people off or saying yes just to avoid the issue, start saying no right away. For example, if you have a friend involved in an MLM and constantly asks you to come to parties or buy things, and you have but resent it, start saying no and ask them to stop asking you.

 

Say I’ll Think About It

 

You don’t have to give people answers right away about anything. This can help you reduce the pressure on yourself to say yes to anything. Start making it a habit always to say, “Let me check my schedule. I’ll get back to you by 3 pm on Friday with my answer.” This way, they can wait patiently, and you can ensure that you want to say yes or no.

 

Always Check Your Schedule

 

Even if your first thought is that it’s something you want to do, you must always check your schedule before saying yes. You may be over booked already, and even if you’re going to say yes, you need to say no. Doing this will ward off burnout. Stretching yourself too thin is bad for you and everyone else that depends on you too.

 

Offer Alternatives

 

Sometimes you can’t do what your customer or the person wants, but you can turn your no into a yes in the recipient’s mind. If you know someone who can do the thing being asked of you better, tell them about it. If you can offer some help but not exactly what was asked for, say exactly that to the person.

 

One thing to remember is that you don’t have to be part of everything in your community. Saying no allows others to step up. Suppose you’re the type that runs your PTA, a small business, and more than two or three community organizations and clubs. You’re probably doing too much. Let others shine and take your time back. Your friends and family and you will thank you.

Write Down 3 Things You’re Grateful for Each Day

 

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Write Down 3 Things You’re Grateful for Each Day

One of the very first habits it’s important to incorporate into your daily life if you want to be happy and feel successful is the habit of gratitude. Being grateful is more than looking on the bright side. It’s actually about being realistic about what is good in your life.

I am Grateful

To record your gratitude, use whatever method works best for you, whether it’s to email yourself, using a paper diary, or some other method. The important thing is that you acknowledge in a way that can be tracked at least three things you’re grateful for so that you can look back on it and measure how far you’ve come.

Tips to Help You Practice Positive Thinking

Plus, there are many benefits to appreciation outside of a good mindset.

 

  • You’ll Feel Happier – The saying about what you focus on grows is very true, especially when your focus is on something positive about your life. When you can see the good in your life as it’s happening, you’ll be much more likely to be able to do it again.

 

  • You’ll Be More Satisfied with Your Life – It’s so easy to focus on things when they go wrong. You missed your alarm clock, you got caught in the rain, you spilled food on your new shirt – all seem like bad things until you realize oversleeping enabled you to cuddle with your spouse longer, the rain cooled you down after lunch, and you only spilled the food because you were laughing with your best friend.

 

  • You’ll Become Less Materialistic – When you focus on the positive, it becomes clear that it’s not things that make you happy or successful – it’s experiences. As you realize that your life becomes so much richer and then, of course, you feel more comfortable and experience your life as successful.

 

  • You’ll Be Less Likely to Suffer from Burnout – If you’re aware of yourself and stay mindful, you can avoid experiencing burnout in the first place. Taking the time to record your gratitude lets you concentrate on the good parts, which can calm you down and let you place your focus where it belongs.

 

  • You’ll Experience Better Physical Health – People who can turn their focus to what’s good in their life are more likely to exercise, eat right, and stay mindful about their health.

 

  • You’ll Sleep Better Every Night – Getting everything out on paper before bed is a great time to focus on gratitude. You’ll fall asleep faster as your good mood will result in reduced anxiety.

 

  • You’ll Feel Less Fatigue – When you sleep better at night due to less anxiety, you’re naturally going to feel more well-rested and sharp during the day.

 

  • You’ll Feel Healthier Due to Suffering from Less Inflammation – Sleeping better and being less anxious has great effects in a positive direction on body-wide information thought to be one of the driving factors in disease.

 

  • You’ll Be More Mentally Resilient – Not having your mind clouded with all the negativity of the day is going to help you bounce back when things do go wrong. When you can turn your brain toward what’s good about something, you can usually get back on the path faster.

 

  • You’ll Be More Patient – Not being on edge due to anxiety and bad thoughts will also increase your patients with others and yourself too. After all, there is often something good you can take from almost everything, eventually.

 

  • You’ll Have Better and More Solid Relationships – People like being around those who are more positive than they do people who are always on edge and anxious. If you really want to build strong relationships, focus on the positive more.

 

As you can see, being grateful carries many benefits that will make your entire life better. No one is asking you to be thankful for a bad situation, especially something beyond your control, but you need to look at what is working in your life, analyze why that is working, and then do more of that. The best way to do that is to look for things to be grateful for each and every day.

 

 

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Your Lack of Focus Is Getting in Your Way

Are you constantly struggling to get your work done? You start one project only to find yourself tapping away at another, then the next two minutes, you find yourself doing it again but on something completely different. Even with a to-do list, you can’t seem to get on track and find the focus to finish your tasks. It’s easy to do, but you must change your bad habit before it gets in your way.

 

Your lack of focus is affecting your business success in the following common ways:

 

Leads to Poor Productivity and Quality of Work

When you don’t have the right focus and concentration on your work, it leads to mistakes and poor decisions as you don’t have the clarity you need to work at your best.

 

Leads to Inconsistent Habits and Results

You need innovation and creativity to stay relevant and competitive—all of which could be stalled or lackluster without proper focus.

 

Uses Valuable Resources Incorrectly

Ultimately it depletes valuable time and financial resources that could better be used somewhere else. When you don’t do your best the first time, you’ll leave behind mistakes.

 

If you have trouble with focus, here are five things you can give a try right now:

 

#1: Reoutline Your Intentions

One cause of lack of focus is that they forgot what they were going after. Even worse, they chose goals that were unrealistic and didn’t relate to who they really are. It’s easy to lose track if you really don’t want it.

 

#2: Craft A Vision Board

Create a board of pictures, drawings, or objects that inspire your ideal life and dreams. In five years, what are your expectations about your life and your business? Even better, what are you working on in your business right now that will make the most impact on your success as you envision it? Add that to your vision board and put it somewhere you will see every day to encourage you to get right back on track. Often a lack of focus is due to an unclear vision of the future.

 

#3: Play Brain Games

Make it fun and play memory and concentration-building games from Lumosity. Lumosity provides many fun games that include a specific section to improve your focus. The idea is to exercise your brain just like you would do other parts of your body at the gym.

 

#4: Change Your Environment

Create an environment that influences movement and positivity. As you work on different projects or goals, change the setting to fit.

 

#5: Go to Bed

Are you constantly yawning or getting blurry vision? Then you need to get some sleep. If you don’t have the right amount of sleep, you won’t be capable of concentrating.

 

As you can see, focus plays a crucial role in the actions you take for your business and life. Without it, you easily leave behind a messy and disorganized company.

 

Stay More Focused with These Five Simple Steps

 

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Harness the Power of Consistency

Consistency is a skill that is about doing the same habits and routines regularly or repeatedly. It’s about committing to move forward and act no matter what obstacle lies in your way.

 

In other words, consistency is the repetition of the movements that get you closer to your goals. With consistency, you improve your weaknesses, perfect your strengths, empower yourself to accomplish more, and increase your productivity.

If You Don’t Set Hard Deadlines, Plan to Fail

To fully harness the power of consistency, you need to be more accountable, focused, and mindful of your actions. If you don’t, your business will suffer in many different ways.

 

Here are a few ways your lack of consistency is affecting your business and how to improve it:

 

Delays Action and Wastes Valuable Time

Without consistency, you only waste your time and other valuable resources. Your performance suffers, and so does your work.

 

Stalls Momentum

Routines build up the momentum you need to keep going with ease and comfort each day. When you don’t stay consistent, it’s much harder to get your days going as you plan your day unorganized. Consistency gives you a clearer understanding of what you want to do so you can keep going easily.

 

Stalls Personal Growth and Improvement

Consistency allows you to practice, which in turn improves your skills and makes you better. When you don’t take the time to improve or take care of yourself, your business will suffer too as you continue to make poor decisions.

 

Creates Unhealthy Expectations

No success happens overnight. If you don’t think you need consistency to be successful, then you are likely on the wrong path. It takes repeated actions each day over a set amount of time to get there.

 

Unlock Your Resistance

If you want to harness the power of consistency, you must figure out what holds you back. Lack of desire or clearly understanding the direction you want to go in life will create resistance to action. For many, it’s due to fear of success or wanting instant gratification and having an “all or nothing mindset.” Whatever it may be, you need to look deep within yourself and be honest to find the cure and get back on track.

 

Chance Your Perspective and Attitude

Some days, you will not feel the best, and some days, others will get in your way. However, it does not matter what life throws at you. There is always a way to see it more positively and objectively to push forward and get what you want. You only have now, so don’t waste it any longer.

 

Start Small

Find one task or activity that you know you can do every day without a second thought. Then add another step until that action becomes second nature. Test and repeat until you have a full and consistent workflow that works for your needs.

 

Remember, the more consistent you are, the happier you and your customers will be. Over time, the work will become easier, saving you time and energy to create more and be the next leading innovator within your industry.