The Blog
A Deeper Look at Building Self-Discipline
Still looking back at my last year and inspired by a post by Manal Ghosain, I wanted to reflect on why I wasn’t fully happy with my personal productivity last year. I think it can be really revealing to ask deep questions about what I did in the past. My goal is always to get new insights and to profit from them now and in the future. And I think there are patterns that apply to all of us.
Not being as productive as I could comes down to not spending my time where I should, according to my set priorities.
Why am I doing that? Because I lack self-discipline. It means that still I’m saying “yes” to things that are not important.
Plan Next Year with My 2-Step Yearly Review and Planning Process
The time right now is among my personal most enjoyable times of the year. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day is the perfect time to really reflect back on the last 12 month and then go ahead and plan next year.
And in fact, if you haven’t done a yearly plan so far, I would highly recommend that you start doing this review & planning process now for this and the coming year. You will be amazed at what this reviewing & planning can do to your overall sense of direction and practical achievement. It will take under 1 hour and it will be way worth it.
For me, this process is one of the biggest sources for what I would call my personal successes. It is a 2 step process of I. Reviewing and II. Planning.
Building Healthy Family Habits: A Guide for the Busy Family
We live in a busy world where multi-tasking is the norm. This is especially true for today’s parents, who must juggle work, childcare, extracurricular activities, exercise, errands, housework and playtime. It’s really no wonder that parents feel stretched for time, especially in a society that views intensive parenting as the norm. The journey to a healthy lifestyle begins with habits. Building healthy routines doesn’t necessarily take extra work, but it does require extra attention.
Simplicity is Your Key to Brilliance
For a while now I try to keep things simple. That means I try to avoid unnecessary additional overhead to what I do, have or I’m in relationship with. I feel like this is one of the very best productivity habits to have. It takes a lot of intelligence to reach that essential state from where things just flow. But I noticed that in order to build the simplicity habit, you have to develop one particular skill.
How to Keep Going Even If You Don’t Feel Like It
It’s a very common thing: You set out some nice plans and started very motivated with something that seemed so important to you at the time. But then, somehow, it wears off. The initial drive is gone, things seem to be tough again, it’s no fun anymore. And somehow it doesn’t look so interesting anymore, anyway. What happened? The simple answer: You didn’t follow through. But why?
Don’t think. Do.
This is kind of my mantra at the moment. It’s amazing how much time I can waste trying to over-think a situation sometimes. There is a name for that: paralysis by analysis. So lately I deliberately prohibit myself to do excessive over-thinking and analyzing of a situation. Instead I force myself to just act… Here are the 5 best hacks to stop over-thinking and take effective action again.
How to Read Books & Understand and Use New Knowledge
I personally love learning new things. Well thinking about it, that’s not entirely true. I love learning relevant new things. Having to learn irrelevant knowledge (as in my university) is not only boring and a waste of time, it almost feels like torture. This post is inspired by a comment on my article about the 10 best self help books ever. Thanks to reader Suhel I’m discussing the topic of how to read books.
The Right Mindset: Change Your Mindset in 6 Steps
Developing the right mindset is really crucial to succeed in anything. When I was switching my career in 2009 from my co-founded company to my new personal business, I knew that there was a way for me. I kept looking, getting educated, testing, optimizing – and I knew it would pay off eventually. I had a gut-feeling of it. And it did. I was on the right path. I had developed the right mindset. Here are the 6 essential keys to change your mindset and by that developing the right mindset.
Is No Goal the Better Goal?
I personally believe in the power of setting the right goals in order to make difficult changes in my life. But I also enjoy my time of feeling just in flow with what I do and create really good results this way. Can you only get what you want and be really productive by setting goals or is there also a way without goals? Let’s see if the no goals approach has any merit to it and if even the goal-setting idea is something of the past…
Build a Powerful Vision for Your Life by Answering One Question
After I posted about asking yourself the right questions I noticed how powerful questions really can be. They have the power to shift our way of thinking to a different level. Especially when you try to make a change in your life or you want to define some new goals to go after, coming up with strong questions helps a lot.