Make sure to grab my handy booklet the Guide to Leading Fulfilled Days: 7 Simple Habits to Make Every Day Productive so you can easily record, reflect, plan, and make every day wildly successful!
Get it here:
https://milewalk.leadpages.co/leadbox/1433d9dc3f72a2%3A17fd80be1346dc/5761512987688960/
No skills or much time required…
I’ve got some great tips today. They’re an orderly set of tips and habits you can implement. The greatest part about these habits is they require no skills and very little time to put in place.
What happens between the time you wake up and the end of the year?
I want to bring you back about a year and a half ago. I wrote a blog post about my two morning tricks to eating the frog. That was about how you get your morning going. You can get off to a great start regardless of your morning routine. It’s all about your mindset.
Toward the end of last year, I did a video and a post about how to reflect your way to success. It was really designed help you look back at the end of each year, reflect on what you learned and what you accomplished. But, the special part about this process is—no matter you did during the year—you will feel great about yourself and all you have accomplished. Yes. It’s that bulletproof a technique. Check it out. (There’s even a great planner download.)
What happens in between your mornings and when you wake up toward the end of the year? You live each day!
How do you ensure you can look back at the end of each year and say, “Wow, what a great year (or great day or great week or great month)?” That’s what today’s session is all about!
The 7 Habits…
Here are seven simple habits to make every day productive.
The first two, in fact, start the night before.
1. Identify three goals you want to accomplish the next day?
Think in advance about what you want to accomplish. The most important aspect when identifying these goals is to make sure there’s an element of completeness.
You don’t want your goals to be goals such as “make progress on my project.” It’s too loose. Focus more on what you need to complete in step one of the project. If step one is too big to complete in one day, then identify the portion of step one.
Whatever it is, just make sure there is some conclusion you can draw and that there is an element of completeness to it.
Also, don’t have too many goals. If you have too many goals, you’ll be chasing too many rabbits and won’t catch any. You get the gist.
2. Schedule your entire calendar for the next day (the night before).
Schedule your day. I stress the word your day.
You will be far less likely to get interrupted by other people’s issues or other people’s requests if you’ve made your plan.
Never ever—I repeat never—check your morning email before your day is scheduled.
If you do that, you’re likely going to run amok and other people’s issues will interrupt your intentions. You won’t be able to work on the key projects or goals you identified.
Also, I recommend scheduling every single minute of your day. If you don’t know what you’re doing between 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM, schedule “open time” or “buffer time” or “recovery time.”
That will give you a chance to catch up or handle unexpected issues that arise during the day.
3. Identify three things you’re grateful for as early in the morning as possible.
However you start your day, whatever morning routine is, be grateful. Be deliberately grateful.
I get up. Take care of my dogs. Go to the gym to exercise. I come home and meditate. I eat. That’s my routine.
Whether you just get up and take a shower or stretch and have a cup of coffee or dance or whatever, spend a moment to be grateful. It takes a mere minute to write down three things for which you are grateful.
It is physiologically impossible to be stressed and grateful at the same time. You’re giving yourself a chance to be stress-free even if it’s for mere seconds.
Put yourself in the right mindset.
There is another aspect to gratitude. You can be assured gratitude is a wonderful place where there is a force greater than you and greater than I that is always available to you in a positive way.
You will feel better and better things will happen to you and for you. It’s just a wonderful way to start your day.
4. Identify what you accomplished during the day.
After you work your day, write down what you actually achieved related to those three big goals.
Note how that positions you for tomorrow. This will help you plan tomorrow.
5. Consider your lessons of the day.
Write down a couple or three lessons you actually learned for that day.
It’s really, really important to take a few minutes to think about what transpired over the course of the day and what you actually learned.
What did you learn about yourself or your projects or the people you work or what to do or not to do?
If you don’t identify these lessons, you’re not going to feel accomplished and you’ll make the same mistakes.
6. Celebrate your victories.
Write down your three wins for the day.
Give yourself a little brag zone. It’s okay to say, “Wahoo, I accomplished goals one, two, and three!” or “I sold my first project!” or “Our marketing project is complete!”
It could be anything you feel great about accomplishing that day. Just make sure your celebrate something.
7. Identify three things you’re grateful for as late in the day as possible.
Repeat habit three. As late in the day as possible, and I stress as late in the day as reasonably possible, identify three more things you’re grateful for. Preferably, these will be three items from that day (but they don’t have to be).
Later in the day is best because if these are your last thoughts of the day you’ll have a better night’s sleep. You’ll go to sleep, wake up a lot more refreshed, and go into your next day in a much better frame of mind.
MORE GOODIES!
Grab my FREE download of the Guide to Leading Fulfilled Days: 7 Simple Habits to Make Every Day Productive and you’ll have a handy checklist of what to record, reflect on, and plan your day!
Like this episode? Please share it via social media and review it on iTunes! I can keep this blog and all future podcasts and videos ad-free and sponsor-free ONLY because you share my work! Please share or subscribe to my podcast and YouTube channel too!
Want more advanced material? Join the milewalk Academy and grab some of the free offerings that support the instruction in this post!
Thanks!
Andy
Help is here!
I’ll tell you exactly how to answer those questions, but let’s first address what’s happening when an interviewer asks you these questions.
Realize no one is smart enough to take your responses from those particular questions and determine whether you’ll be a great employee in their company. It's just too great a leap to connect those dots.
Decisions you made years ago simply won’t help them understand how you're going to fit into their organization.
What’s the question you’re really being asked?
If you are interviewing, whether on the phone or in person, the employer has essentially granted on paper you are qualified for the job and deserving of their time!
The question they are truly asking is, “Why will it be different this time?”
The interviewer wants to know why are you going to make a good decision that sticks…so when you join their company you’ll be a good longstanding, successful employee.
That’s what they really want to know. That’s what they want to be assured of.
That’s the question you need to answer!
Turn multiple job hops into one issue you’ve resolved!
First, take responsibility and own your previous actions.
Second, turn “several” problems into one problem you can address quickly. That is, if you’ve had a handful of job hops, respond to all of them at once. Make it a universal issue you’ve now fixed. You can diffuse it all in one fell swoop.
Third, give your response with a smile and lots of positivity regarding why this will work going forward.
The answer…
“Ya know, you’re right. I do have a few (or a number of) job hops in my history.
I discovered very recently the reason I was having some trouble was due to a common issue. I wasn’t clear upfront regarding all the criteria I needed to be fulfilled in my job.
I did some self-reflection and thought deeply about everything I needed to make me happy in my work life. I hadn’t done that previously. But, now, I took the time. Performed the exercises and reflected.
This has put me in a much better position to evaluate whether any future job opportunity and company will be a great fit for me because I now have a much more complete list of the criteria I need. I have that clarity.
Previously, I wasn’t as skilled at getting the information I need from the employer, but I’m in a much better position now because I’ve gone through this reflection.
I understand specifically what I need to evaluate and how to evaluate it. Now, I’m more confident I can determine whether your company is a good one for me.”
Why this works…
First, you avoid the risk of dragging the conversation on by trying to take one job hop at a time.
When you do this, the interviewer thinks goodness. It's always something with her. It seems like a different issue every time or he's just like Pig Pen. He's got that cloud of rain over himself wherever he goes.
You’ve also shifted a negative question into a positive action you’ve taken!
There are exceptions, but the pattern is what’s important…
I realize people leave jobs for countless reasons. You could have an illness in the family. Your husband or wife could be getting transferred.
But, if you're getting asked the job hopper question, the interviewer is looking for the common pattern.
Take responsibility. Defuse it all at once. Speak positively about the action you've taken to overcome it and why it won't be an issue this time!
Need help with your resume to market yourself effectively. Check out my FREE Ultimate Professional Resume Template.
You can download it here and also check out my post How to Build the Ultimate Professional Resume.
If you want even more training, I have a phenomenal resume-writing workshop that comes with all kinds of goodies related to preparing a killer resume, cover letters, and LinkedIn Profile. You also get additional ongoing coaching and so much more. It's really better if you check out the overview page!
Like this episode? Please share it via social media and review it on iTunes! I can keep this blog and all future podcasts and videos ad-free and sponsor-free ONLY because you share my work! Please share or subscribe to my podcast and YouTube channel too!
Want more advanced material? Join the milewalk Academy and grab some of the free offerings that support the instruction in this post!
Thanks!
Andy