Please be assured that I will not refer anything even remotely related to that book titled ‘7 habits of highly effective people’. Not at all, but in contrast, I will be talking about my personal learning’s from many successful people I have interacted with or continue to interact with. These points might sound very generic in isolation but when practiced simultaneously it produces fantabulous results. The fun is not only in reading but in doing as well! Here we go.
1. Sleep tight but Get up early: I get questioned for getting up early, even on holidays. I know many who can sleep all day long, given a chance. Many working class individuals still sleep until late in the morning, almost touching 12pm and many continue doing so even in their 30’s. I wonder how people can digest the guilt feeling of wasting such precious time.
It has been proven long ago that mornings are the most productive time of the day. I also strongly agree to the fact that you should not do your office work when you get up early. There are a lot many things that can be done but mostly it’s suggested that you do what you like the most enjoy. A hobby perhaps.
Almost everyone who sleeps so late would tell you that they are covering up for all the sleep they lost during the working week. I say just an excuse for being lazy. Your body needs a good 6 hours of sleep each night and beyond that its luxury you can afford at the cost of doing something worthwhile. There are many things you can do instead of sleeping your day off. Read a book, take an early morning stroll (trust me this will amaze you), read newspaper (online or offline) with tea/coffee in your balcony/ garden, ride a bicycle or best would be to do what you have writing in your resume under the section ‘Hobby’ but never did it. Give it a start!
2. Read Books but not just any: Be it digital or the real ones, read them. A lot. Surfing the books to buy, reading reviews and getting them into your hands these days is just a click away (thanks to Jeff Bezos). So not having access to the right books of your interest is no excuse any more.
But out of zillion books in this world which ones are for you to read and make a difference in your work and personal life? This question does not get answered for the majority of us and hence we end up not reading anything or the ones who are hell bent on reading something lurk towards the fiction section (Indian fiction takes the cake). But don’t you worry, there are simpler ways in which you can get a solution to this perennial problem of reading the ‘right’ book:
a. Get in touch with that one friend/ junior/ senior/ peers in the office (or from your school days) who has always been a book junkie. Keep in touch. Tell her/him about your professional profile and ask her/him to keep referring you books.
b. Be on a constant prowl for great titles in your area of interest. Eat Live Sleep at amazon.com or whenever you feel like looking out for books. Save all tiles under the ‘wishlist’ and buy one by one. Look for Autobiographies and True Stories to start with (or in the section of your interest).
c. Ask your boss. Simple. If you work with the right person, you will not have to do any more research. After a few books, you will get a hang of it.
I have read quite a few with such help, heres a short list (ask me for more):
a. Surely You’Re Joking Mr Feynmann – Richard Feynmann
b. Rich Dad Poor Dad –
c. One Click – Story of Jeff Bezos
e. Velocity: The 7 new laws of the world gone digital
f. The Snowball: Warren Buffett
h. The Wide Lens: A new strategy for innovation
i. Losing My Virginity: Richard Branson
3. Read on the internet: Cultivating a reading habit is good but just reading books might keep you aloof and mum for long hours. In addition you should also keep surfing the net for the latest. Create an account at feedly.com and get all your interesting content/article websites set up here. Google Reader was the best thing on this planet but then they shut it in July of 2013. Feedly is the next best app around – desktop and mobile. I suggest Mashable, TechCrunch, Business Insider, All things D, Wired, NYTimes, Economic Times to start with. But again everything depends on your area of interest.
4. Never Stop Learning: You might be a salesperson, running behind monthly sales numbers is what you are good at and that’s what you do best is what you think. You also love your job; you self-admire your passion and zeal to outperform all the time on that sales board. Great, but is that all? You expect company to increase your pay every year but what more are you bringing on the table every year? Higher target achievements? Not enough I say! Never stop learning. With that am not suggesting you always be at school or college. In fact I have a few suggestions which are completely opposite.
a. Sit with your colleagues who have experience in something other than what is common on the floor. Try understanding few things daily, post which make notes for 5 minutes. Just to revise what you heard and for later use.
b. When you go for your meetings there would be many words, meaning of which you would not understand. Google them up when back.
c. Be a regular visitor to slideshare.com, keep looking for stuff related to your field, go through such slide decks. When you do this regularly, you will learn a lot.
d. Eat up your boss’s head, ask question. Keep a growing kid in mind and ask like there’s no tomorrow. Take tips and search and read all about it. Apply these ideas/thoughts/concepts the next time you get a chance to.
e. Be on the lookout for various types of professional talk sessions in your area of interest/profession. Participate or just be the audience. Assuming there are experienced people talking on the stage, there must be atleast 5% that would be worth a take away.
f. Keep Googling what are the new concepts coming up in your area of interest. Look out for reading materials on the same and start learning about it.
e. Be on the lookout for various types of professional talk sessions in your area of interest/profession. Participate or just be the audience. Assuming there are experienced people talking on the stage, there must be atleast 5% that would be worth a take away.
f. Keep Googling what are the new concepts coming up in your area of interest. Look out for reading materials on the same and start learning about it.
5. Socialize/ Network: Many of us do not like abruptly talking to strangers. I totally agree. That would be the worst advice I would give to anyone for enhancing socializing skills. But when you are on a common floor or a platform where you are sure there are common interest between you and the other parties then it’s a crime to not socialize. For some it’s not in their nature to have an outgoing personality or they are not extroverts (they have mentally made up a picture of themselves that they are so). These thoughts are the real clutches that keep you from moving forward, socializing and networking are the basic essentials in today’s professional world for you to learn and succeed in life. Unless you are happy with your annual 10% salary hike at the same job and you enjoy doing so.
Also, networking not necessarily means that you got to meet people in person to connect with them. You should be active on the virtual world as well. Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Google+ are the places where you can make the best of friends and connect with the right people for the right opinion/ suggestion or general gyaan from the thought leaders.
6. Discipline: Now this might sound very basic hence too boring to be reinstated here. We have been told about this from the day we started understanding rules and then quickly got reinforced when we joined school. It was always been told to be on time for class, prayers, exam, games etc. We used to get penalized if we did not be on time for these things, in various ways. But guess after that majority of us start taking things lightly and slowly and steadily the discipline loses itself by the time we get to our professional careers. Or don’t you?
The fact is, many of us still do not take time ‘seriously’. Do you reach office on time, daily? Do you go for meetings and arrive late, mostly? Do you commit for a work and end up requesting for more time for delivery?
You cannot, I would like to emphasise here, you cannot get up the career ladder if you lack in this department. Discipline is something you should enforce on yourself, enough of others telling you to do inculcate this behaviour, all your life, its time you stop having a casual attitude and start respecting what can truly work in your favour instead of against you.
7. Get away from TV: In today’s world age, whatever you need to know/ watch is all there on the internet. You can search for you kind of news, videos, music etc. Research has proven this fact time and again that majority of the people who watch TV waste most of the time switching channels as nothing interesting really comes up when they really want to enjoy watching TV. Unless you are a real ‘live sports’ fan. Smart TV‘s penetration in India has not made much headway as of now. What am trying to say is that you can use your time in a better way that just being a couch potato watching something that you never wanted to see at the first place!
All in all, my point is that our time is precious and we should use it effectively. These are a few things I have learned to practice regularly from many successful people I interact very often. Hope I made sense. For feedback please leave a comment here or write to me at adi@perfios.com Thank you for reading.
Very interesting points…Loved the first point (Sleep tight but Get up early) & Socialize/Network point the most…Keep the good work 🙂
Thank you for your kind words Dipashri! 🙂
Good insights Adi, helped for realizing self actions. You may consider making FB group for all your posts.
Thanks for writing 🙂
Thanks man. Too many pages, posts I would not be able to handle it man 🙂 I am trying to make this into a website with different sections so that its easier to spot such topics, hidden between movie reviews! 🙂 Glad you liked it.
Well written ! Valuable insights to use time productively and be a better u!
Thank you Thank you! 🙂
Nice one adi
Thank you!!
Very nice, informative and inspiring article