Image courtesy of Hamed Masoumi

Everywhere on and off the web, people talk about the benefits of planning. Plans help you define your goals, help you determine what tasks are needed and when you need to do them. And plans help you stay on track when distractions set in. So, what’s not to love about plans?

Lots.

When you overplan, you live in the future instead of the present, plan instead of do, and lose adaptability. All three of these mean you lessen your chances of reaching your goals. Instead you fumble around in the plan, wondering why despite all the hard work you’re doing, your business isn’t growing, your house renovations aren’t going anywhere, you aren’t losing weight, or you’re not reaching whatever goal you’re pursuing.

Fortunately the solution is easy.

1. Create a mental sketch of the future you want.
2. Work backwards to get where you are now.
3. Go step by step forwards again noting down the crucial steps.
4. Start implementing the plan, and
5. Let the details fill themselves in as you get to them.

On his blog 6weeks.ca Brett Legree has a great take on the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of our actions are unnecessary detail he says. If you can figure out the 20% that’s mission critical, then your plan becomes easy to fulfill.

But before we go into too much detail about the solution, let’s look at the problems of overplanning in more detail.
Click here to continue »

Have you ever noticed how important it is to have a solid start to your day? This morning I started this article and I woke up feeling full of energy. Deep down I knew that today was going to be an awesome day. I’m sure you’ve had days like that too.

Think back to the last time you did something exciting. Maybe you were on a dream vacation, getting a fresh start to a new job, or even went to visit someone you hadn’t seen in a long time.

Have you ever had those feeling deep down that everything was perfect? Kind of like when you were a kid on Christmas, waking up at 5a.m. to see what Santa brought?

Well that’s exactly how I felt this morning. I felt fantastic and it all began that minute I woke up.

Now I might be totally off here. You might not be a morning person. You may wake up at the beginning of the week and say to yourself, “Not another Monday.”

And the moment you do that you’re focused on what is not working and how crappy things are. You’re focused on the things that you don’t want!
Click here to continue »

Whether you are an aspiring rock star or not, this list will help you achieve success in your field. It will also show you how some timeless ideas are still vital in your new-fangled social networking environments.

I Was A Teenage Rock Star … kind of …

As a younger dude - sans cell-phone and computer oblivious - during the “upside-down 60s” (AKA the 90s) I had the weird experience of being the lead singer in the biggest indie band in my home city.

Admittedly, it wasn’t a big city – Adelaide, population 1.1 million - but conquering that molehill was an intense trip nevertheless. (After that it all went pear-shaped, but that’s another story.)

Step 1: Don’t Just Dream – Obsess

When I was a pre-teen bookworm, I wanted to be a writer, but at 12 years old I heard the squeal of a heavy-metal lead guitar solo and my focus shifted instantly to becoming a fully-fledged, card-carrying “Rock Star”. It was obviously way sexier. (Pfft! Writer. What the hell was I thinking?)

From that moment on, while my musical tastes matured, my chosen career path remained fixed. It was Rock Star or bust. School was useless to me, so I just stared out the window and obsessed about becoming a Rock Star. Church was useless to me, so I refused to go anymore and lay in bed listening to this month’s flavour and obsessing about becoming a Rock Star.
Click here to continue »

Image courtesy of Sir Mervs

The only reason people ever really do anything is due to motivation.  It may be our work, our hobbies, our relationships or even our chores, but one way or another, there is motivation that drives us to do the things we do.  This article is about finding out where this motivation comes from and how to develop it internally.

Two types of Motivation

There are only two types of motivation. You can label them whatever you like, but one type is positive and one type is negative.  I’ve learned to consider them to be even more basic than that: pain and pleasure.   EVERYTHING we do, think and believe has some kind of foundation in pain and pleasure. 

Each person has, of course, a completely different view of what pain and pleasure is. But the same factors exist to steer and motivate us based on what we think we can get out of it.  Most of these associations with pain and pleasure are buried in our subconscious minds and, unfortunately, most people never realize this. Instead, they go through life on autopilot.

Despite this, you can easily learn to shift the associated pains and pleasures in your favor and put more attention to the ones you want to change.  So, how you do that is important to explore…
Click here to continue »