http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/success/success-strategy-do-you-have-a-success-plan.html http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/success/success-strategy-do-you-have-a-success-plan.html Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500 Do you have a success strategy, a success plan? You wouldn’t build a house without a blue print, or take a trip without a map, yet every day many people strive to achieve success without a real plan. Having a plan for success helps you to obtain the clarity and focus needed to avoid the pitfalls and traps that happen when you lack a plan.

Your success strategy starts with a clear plan of your desired future. Start by clearly defining what success looks like to you. Imagine your life from the moment you awaken until you go to bed when you have achieved success. The more detailed your thought process the clearer your plan will be, and the easier it will be for you to achieve it.

A success strategy considers both the personal and professional aspects of your life. When you focus on just the personal, or just the professional aspects of success you end up with a life that is out of balance. A life out of balance isn’t fulfilling or rewarding. Ultimately you want a successful life that is both fulfilling and rewarding, or it isn’t successful.

A success strategy has to identify the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. What is the ultimate result you’re striving for? Identify what has to change in your current life to achieve the success you want. Once you know the ultimate result you want, and what has to change to get there, you can begin to plan step-by-step how to make those changes happen.

A success strategy must expect and plan for the challenges you’ll face along the way. If there were no obstacles and no challenges you’d be there now. Try to identify what things could get in your way and brain storm some solutions for how to get around those things. That way when problems and challenges pop up you’re prepared. Being prepared means you are better able to continue your forward progress toward success and achieve that success sooner.


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Start your journey to superior success with the Success Model.

Do you have $1 to invest in your future? Give Coaching a Try.


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/success/success-strategy-how-to-be-a-goal-getter.html http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/success/success-strategy-how-to-be-a-goal-getter.html Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500 Getting the goals you set has to be a part of any success strategy. Many people set goals, but few people actually accomplish the goals they set for themselves. There is a simple reason most people don’t get there goals. They don’t know how to formulate goals that are achievable.

If you’ve ever listened to or read about successful people you know successful people are good goal getters. One reason you may not be getting your goals now is because the goals you set are too vague. For example, setting a goal to take a vacation is vague. It isn’t very motivating, and it doesn’t provide any clear direction for how you would go about actually taking the vacation. A real goal would be to take a vacation starting and ending on specific dates to a specific location.

Making things measurable is an important part of your success strategy. The more measurable your goals are the better. When you set measurable and quantifiable goals you can track your progress toward the achievement of those goals. It makes it much easier for you to then develop action steps for achieving incremental steps toward the final goal. For example, if you income goal is $10,000 a month you then can define the actions you must take to obtain $2,500 a week and $500 a day if you’re working on a 5 day week.

Bottom line you don’t have a success strategy unless it involves action. Nothing happens without action. When you don’t have action you’re just dreaming, and dreams alone will never get you success. You can’t dream something into reality. You can only make it a reality by taking action.

You not only need to take action, but you need to take right action. The more right actions you take the closer you’ll come to achieving your goals and success. Success doesn’t happen in one giant step it happens by taking millions of little tiny ant steps on a consistent basis guided by the goals you set and get.


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Start your journey to superior success with the Success Model.

Do you have $1 to invest in your future? Give Coaching a Try.


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/success/goal-personal-planning-setting-success-guard-your-time.html http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/success/goal-personal-planning-setting-success-guard-your-time.html Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500 Guarding your time is critical for your personal goal planning and setting success. Do you give your time away freely putting the needs of others ahead of your own? While this demonstrates a kind and generous spirit, it’s killing your ability to achieve success. You can still do things for others, but only have you have made a conscious decision to do so and you decide when on your terms.

You can’t achieve success if you don’t use your time to get you there. If you don’t respect and value your time neither will others. They will interrupt you and call upon to do things for them at will. All the time you’re giving away is time that you aren’t using to achieve success. If you really want to achieve success you have to get yourself the time you need to get there one way or another.

Success doesn’t happen without a plan. Include time for planning in your plan for success. At some point you need to set aside time to develop your big picture plan for where you want to go with as much detail as possible. Once you have the big picture you then want to break that down into all the things you’ll have to do to get there. These become your goals that you prioritize and work on each and every week. Without a plan you don’t know what you should be doing and consequently you never get to your ideal of success.

Each of us has a peak time for productivity. For some it’s first thing in the morning and for others it’s late at night. Whenever your peak time is guard your most productive time for your most important things. Make it a habit to work on your most important things during your peak times every day. Doing so will incrementally move you close to success.

Guard your time and make your time work for you on your journey to success. Putting yourself and your needs last will make for a very long and very unlikely journey to success. Setting aside your peak time each day to work only on the things that are most important in getting you to your desired success will ensure that each and every day you are moving closer to your ultimate goal.


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Start your journey to superior success with the Success Model.

Do you have $1 to invest in your future? Give Coaching a Try.


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/success/personal-goal-planning-setting-success-focus-on-today.html http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/success/personal-goal-planning-setting-success-focus-on-today.html Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500 Focusing on just today will help you to make progress in your personal goal planning and setting success . Right now you’re probably feeling lost in all the stuff that you have to deal with each and everyday. You’re allowing others to determine your destiny by giving them the power to change your plans at will. Take back control and get on track for success.

What could you do today to make today a success? The best way for you to know the answer to that question is to start with a clear plan for the direction you’re headed. Take the time to plan where you want to get and then identify the steps you will need to take to get there.

Put all your focus on just those 1-3 things that would make this day successful. Each night before you go to bed identify the 1-3 top things that would make the next day a success for you. Prioritize them and then systematically work to accomplish each of the most important things. Be ruthless about not allowing others to interrupt you or get you off track. Don’t let up until you’ve got those high priority success making things done.

Only after you’ve made your day a success should you turn to the other things cluttering your life. Once you’ve accomplished your top 1-3 things then and only then can you turn to all the rest of the stuff that clutters your life. Keep a list of these things and prioritize them so you immediately know what to tackle once your important things are done. You will be amazed how energized and excited you’ll feel knowing that you’ve accomplished the key things that make that day a success already.

Put your personal goal planning setting success into high gear one day at a time. You can’t do anything about yesterday, and you can only plan tomorrow, but you can take action today. Taking action today on your most important success making things will put you on the fast track for success and keep you there.


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Start your journey to superior success with the Success Model.

Do you have $1 to invest in your future? Give Coaching a Try.


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/small-business/is-time-your-greatest-enemy.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/small-business/is-time-your-greatest-enemy.html Mon, 09 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500 Nearly every business owner and professional service organization I know lacks one major thing, time!

Do you feel like you are always running short on time? Do you feel like time is the one thing you seem unable to control? If you somehow had more time, do you have a list of things that you would do or dreams that you would fulfill? If you were able to better use your time would you feel more successful, less stressed, and overall happier than you do right at this moment?

If I asked you to throw a $20 bill on the ground and walk away you would look at me as though I had a third eye. Yet every time you 15 minutes uselessly and without a conscious decision to do so that is exactly what you are doing, if you are currently earning a little over $160,000 a year. Ok, you say well I don’t earn anywhere near that but if you earn even about $40,000 a year you are throwing a $5 bill away. Would you throw $5 on the sidewalk and let the wind blow it wherever? I seriously doubt it, yet you are easily distracted from something you really want to do for 15 minutes frequently throughout your potentially productive and income generating work day and so are the people who work either with you or for you. According to a new survey by America Online and Salary.com, the average worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per 8-hour workday, not including lunch and scheduled break-time.

Research indicates that the internet is a frequently used time waster, but the real question is why do you waste so much valuable time in your work day? One major reason is the attitudes you hold about the value of time. You may currently use, or have used in the past, some form of time tracking system such as Day Runner or Franklin Covey. The system you use isn’t critical just find a system that you like and run with it. The system, however, doesn’t address the true reason that time is such a limited commodity in your life. The truth is you have the same 60 minutes to use each hour as everyone else you just don’t necessarily that 60 minutes in a way that holds the most long-term benefit for you. The reason you your time so effortlessly is that you value your time differently than someone who seems to have time for the things in life that they view as important.

So how can you live your life with the time you want to do the things you want? Start by changing how you think about time. Think of time as a valuable commodity that you choose to rather than an elusive substance that slips away. Recognize that as an adult you choose how you will spend your time at every given moment. Currently you may be allowing other people to decide how you spend your time, if you don’t want to change that then contact me and let me choose how you will spend your money. You wouldn’t dream of doing that so why do you let everyone but you decide how you will your time. Develop a big picture plan for what you want to accomplish, what you will need to do to accomplish it, and what you absolutely must accomplish each day to get there.

Why aren’t you managing your time well now if it’s so easy and you know what you are supposed to do and how to do it? Until your lack of time becomes truly painful to you it is just easier to do what you’ve been doing and keep getting the results you’ve been getting. You may have never stopped to realize just how much a little time here and a little time there is really costing you not only in dollars, but in your ability to fulfill your dreams and reduce your stress. You may have started with some time tracking system previously and found it too difficult to keep up with or you didn’t see an immediate reward for doing all that additional tracking. You may even think that tracking your time is something people who are entirely too anal do and something that a free spirit like yourself wouldn’t be caught dead doing.

When you gain control of your time you feel more successful, you have a whole lot less stress, and your level of happiness increases dramatically. Do you remember those smart kids in elementary school that had time to play after school, time to watch their favorite TV shows, helped with chores, and still got straight A’s in school? If you weren’t one of those kids you probably internally resented them and blamed genes or their natural aptitude for everything in life. Well the hard cold truth is that those kids probably weren’t anymore genetically favored than you were they just had an early role model that helped them to develop time conscious attitudes. As they enjoyed the benefits that those time conscious attitudes provided them they got re-enforcement to continue with those attitudes. This will happen to you once you begin to work on your attitudes as they affect how you use your time. It’s really simple. Your attitudes determine your behaviors and your behaviors determine your results. You really do have that much control over how you will use your time.

So when will you take action to make your time work for you? As you think of how 2 hours that you are currently letting slip away could be used, how would that benefit you? Does 2 more productive hours each day translate into an extra $38,000 of income? Does it mean time to attend your child’s ball game or school event? Does it mean more time to plan your business so that you are working smarter rather than harder? Does it mean working 30 hours a week rather than the 60+ you are working now? Does it mean that you are happier and are more relaxed when you are with the people that are important to you? Sometimes we confuse being busy with being important and successful rather than confessing to the truth, being overly busy just means that I am not using my time wisely and I am short changing myself, my organization, and the people around me. Start today changing your attitudes about how you your time. Time’s a wasting.


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Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis and find out where your opportunities for improvement are.

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