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Focus on things under your control

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Often, we focus on things that don’t matter and things that are beyond our control. In times of crisis, organisations often forget about their sales and marketing strategies because there’s so much else to focus on and this results in wasted time and wasted opportunities. For me it’s all about customer satisfaction, giving good advice and solving customer problems to improve their customer’s lives. 

 

I think knowing which things we should focus on is key to getting what we want. From my perspective, customer loyalty is truly satisfying and many of my customers have become real friends. Focusing on the human side instead of the sales and marketing side helps because visibility to attract new customers is key to expanding my customer base as I work in human-to-human industry. 

Was it worth it?

Time management is very important and we have the ability to manage our time. When we talk about time management there’s usually the ‘tips to be more efficient’, but that’s not the point of time management. It’s not all about being more efficient and productive, as it may lead to stress and overworking. It’s about embracing our freedom to choose what we want to do with our time, being able to understand that time is limited and that it’s up to our own judgement as to how we want to spend it. We have this tendency to trick ourselves into thinking we’re not free because being free to use your time as you please, means that you have to make a choice and live with the consequences of that choice. In reality, we do have time and time can be managed, it’s just that we don’t have a lot of it so there has to be sacrifices.

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give life a meaning.”
— Jean Paul Sartre

Research shows that whenever people start thinking of time as money, they become greedy, less happy, and more restless. When time is spent without consideration, it becomes a persistent source of regret. How many times do you catch yourself ‘wasting time online,’ spending hours on Facebook not learning anything? I think that when it comes to time, we can either make excuses or sacrifices but only one of them will allow you to live a meaningful life.

Repetition is the key to success

To drive lasting productivity, make assessing your progress and enjoying the fruits of your labour part of your routine. I think life and work will always be messy, therefore, trouble shooting, firefighting and problem solving are how we spend a lot of our time so let’s make sure we enjoy it! Contact me via e-mail for practical, actionable tips, which will guide you to achieving even more throughout each day.

“For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”
— Alfred D’Sousa

Peaks and troughs

The Day Reconstruction Model (DRM) measures how people spend their time and how they emotionally experience the various activities and settings of their lives, combining features of time-budget measurement and experience sampling. It looks a little like this:

PEAK - Usually in the morning and is the ideal time to do your heavy analytical work.
TROUGH - Early afternoon, here I would advise you to do adminstrative work.
RECOVERY (also known as the rebound) - Late afternoon/early evening and is the perfect time to do your insightful work.

Negativity is on the rise in the afternoon and falls during the evening. Understanding this pattern will have a very direct impact on the work you do and also when you schedule important meetings.

“We need to start thinking of breaks as a part of performance rather than a deviation from performance.”
— Daniel Pink

Timing is a science

According to my dictionary, when you say something is perfect it means it’s as good as it could possibly be. Timing on the other hand is used to refer to the time at which something happens or is planned to happen, or the length of time that something takes. 

 

There is an emotional pattern to our daily lives. There is a genuine mood of positivity that peaks during the morning, drops during the afternoon, and then climbs back up in the evening. This prevailing cycle of moods happen every weekday to everyone, regardless of race or nationality. Behavioural scientists from Cornell University using the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) and going hour by hour through people’s lives found the same pattern. 

Designed to help you increase productivity

It’s essential to learn and practice time management if you want to increase your productivity and efficiency. Rather than feel you are at the mercy of your schedule, you can become a strategic master of your time and calendar, which empowers you to enhance your productivity. No one can create extra hours in the day, but you can manage your time well and create the sense that you’ve got all the time you need. 

“As it is not one swallow or a fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.”
— Aristotle

Would you like to increase your productivity and achieve more? Do you already have feasible strategies to make better use of your time? Contact me via e-mail to arrange a time management workshop which are tailor made for you and your team.

Leading clients through the process

We only have 24 hours in a day, and we always try to steal from the health part (sleep, training, etc.) and give it to the working hard part. Working smart = doing the same number of sales and at the same time by getting rid of the low productivity activities and focusing on the high productivity activities. We have to get big deals; we have to get deals that provide revenue now. I help companies solve problems, by getting into the nitty gritty and changing how companies do things. Are you aware about what is the smartest way of doing things? Have you learned how to anticipate what is going to happen with a deal?

 

I’ve spent the last few years in consulting and it’s a huge advantage to be able to connect with people and use psychology and understand who you are dealing with. I think it’s all about people and I take a therapist’s approach to dealing with whomever is in front of me. Contact me via e-mail to arrange a meeting.

There are only 24 hours in a day

There are only 24 hours in a day and our productivity is based on what, and how much we do per day. Time management are the tools we use to make most of our time. As humans, it’s natural to want to constantly improve and set new personal records and when it comes to time management, many of us hit roadblocks. Research suggests that the average worker is only productive for around three hours a day.

 

What we can accomplish in a day dictates how quickly our projects will progress. The more distractions and time-consuming tasks, the less actual progress we make. Those of you that have been working from home over the past 2 years will recognise the most popular unproductive office activities:

-       Reading news websites 
-       Checking social media
-       Discussing non-work-related things with co-workers
-       Searching for new jobs
-       Taking smoke breaks
-       Making calls to partners or friends
-       Making hot drinks
-       Texting or instant messaging
-       Eating snacks
-       Making food in office

The biggest influence in life is habit

Habits shape our attitudes, actions, and decision-making abilities, and they affect every aspect of our lives. Before we can build good habits, we need to understand what habits are and how they’re formed. We also need to know what mistakes we should avoid in the process as it’s easy to say, “to get better results, adopt better habits”.

 

Every single day I blog about a point of view, something I see, an assertion and this has rewired my brain. I’m continuously thinking about what I am going to say tomorrow. This act of public journaling is risk-free, all the rational parts of my brain know that nothing bad can happen. I can’t tell you precisely what narrative will help you undo your own narrative, but you are welcome to contact me via e-mail to arrange a meeting.

What habit would you like to change? 

In my experience everyone can change their habits, but there is one condition: you to have a reason to make a change. Don’t worry about how you will change, just focus on what habits you want to form and why. If you have a hard time keeping and maintaining good habits, you may be thinking “too big,”perhaps you need to break them down into smaller steps. For example, if you are struggling to focus on work when you are in the office, try turning off the notifications on your smartphone.

 

According to Wendy Wood (social psychologist professor), there are three main principles to consider when effectively changing habitual behavior. First, you must derail existing habits and create a window of opportunity to act on new intentions. The second principle is remembering that repetition is key. Studies have shown it can take anywhere from 15 days to 254 days to truly form a new habit. Lastly, there must be stable context cues available in order to trigger a new pattern. "It's easier to maintain the behavior if it's repeated in a specific context."

We are all creatures of habit

c/o Medium

In his book, “Change Your Mind, Change Your Results”, Shawn Shewchuk highlights that the roadmap for success is printed on the outside of the box you put yourself in. Putting on my clothes and tying my shoelaces are so firmly placed in my subconscious mind they have become habitual. Everything is a habit whether you admit or not. As children we are taught that practice makes perfect, but many of us have been practicing the wrong things for far too many years.

“There are no high-performance people, there are only high-performance habits.”
— Burrellism

There is a huge difference between waiting for orders and taking initiative. Statistics show that 90% of the western world is waiting for someone to do something for them. The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself as it will deliver the best return on investment. Where will you be in 5 years? Contact me via e-mail for a meeting if you want to improve the quality of your life.

Action comes before motivation

Nowadays so many lives revolve around instant gratification and dopamine addiction, and this control stimuli are the breeding ground for bad habits. Are you aware that your morning habits sets the tone for the day? Your discipline, faith and perseverance in your vision will give you the energy and drive to execute as habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. Good habits become easy habits when you learn to find joy in delaying gratification. The delaying is all the joy, and the gratification is just the consequence. Your habits shape your reality. I think the price of your good habits are seen in the present and the cost of your bad habits will be revealed in the future. Systems are simple habits as small, daily seemingly insignificant improvements done on a consistently over time, yields staggering results.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems. ”
— James Clear 

Start a good one

c/o Getty Images

How can we create new habits and stick to them?
We all have habits that we wish we didn't have, but don't feel as if we can change. There are ways to help you change habits and I think the best way is to replace it with a new behaviour as you cannot break a habit; you must replace a habit! It’s really a case of willpower, motivation, and then repetition.

 

The question I frequently ask to people who are risk-averse is, “What’s the biggest chance you have ever taken?” It’s amazing how many people react with a defensive answer when they realise what “safe” lives they have chosen to lead. Small daily habits are unparalleled predictors of long-term objectives, and this is true for both individuals and organisations. 

Habits change behaviours

Humans are usually focused on the right here right now, whether it is about what to wear today or what we are going to have for dinner. This does not serve us as businesspeople as we are always looking ahead. Everybody has a little bit of self-doubt whether you want to admit it or not and I like to work with high achieving entrepreneurs who experts in their field. Decide about where you want to be and not about where you are, as more of the same gives more of the same. 

 

“The E-Myth Revisited” is a book by Michael E. Gerber where he states: …the entrepreneurial myth suggests that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs, and most entrepreneurs are not entrepreneurs, they are technicians having an entrepreneurial seizure. Controversial or facts? When we are clear about where you want to go then we focus on that without any outside distractions. And then we reverse engineer that, “this is where you want to go” - Let’s put a timeline on that, and because of the timeline (reverse engineering), we can say this is what you need to be doing monthly/weekly/daily or even hourly. Contact me via e-mail and let’s look at where you want to be and then figure out how to get there. 

We are conditioned

A paradigm is a program in your subconscious mind, it’s both genetic and environmental that’s controlling your behaviour. Your paradigm is your conditioned behaviour, and you have to change your own paradigm, I’m working on mine every day, what about you? 

 

A paradigm is nothing but a multitude of habits that have been programmed into your subconscious mind to control your behaviour. It’s got nothing to do with how smart you are, it’s got nothing to do with what your formal education is, it has to do with your paradigm. You know what your paradigm is, just study your own behaviour - think of your results. If you want to improve your results, then the only way that you can do that is to change your habitual way of doing things. Your results are an expression of the paradigm not your intellect, so until you change the paradigm then nothing is going to change.

Tell good stories

Storytelling is ingrained in our culture, in fact, ever since humans first walked the earth, we have shared stories. The basic purpose of a storytelling is to share a story, message or theme that is understood universally by your audience, even though it doesn’t have to be interpreted the same way by every person. Great storytelling connects our past, present, and future. 

Here are three fundamental keys to creating a good story: 
-       I did this …
-       Then I did this …
-       Then this happened.

I think your storytelling will create a mental image or entice the listener into the story and this requires that the audience be actively engaged. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve moved the audience to tears unless they know how they can make a difference, so remember to add a call to action.

Show and tell

The best storytellers, authors and speakers paint pictures giving the audience something they can visualise in their heads. I help managers and leaders gain clarity in their message so that they can grow their influence and build trust in the workplace. Gaining more clarity about what their message is and then looking at the steps and things that they can do to get even more clarity. Getting managers and leaders pointed in the right direction to help them implement and put things in their lives that can take them and their team forward, for example, journaling, tracking the data, finding out why “X” felt that way, etc.

 

I have clarity about who I am, I have clarity about my story and how to share it in a way that brings value to the people in the room. Do you know what your gifts are and where your talents are best used? Do you know how to build your story so that it elevates others? My mission is to make people great communicators - transmitting their message clearly and concisely so that it is understood - regardless of their field or career path. Reach out to me via e-mail if you would like to learn how you can share better, message better, communicate better.

Follow the leader

I think that there’s a science to storytelling. Good storytellers transport their audiences, making them feel what the characters feel. For audiences to bond with characters in this way, there has to be some sort of arousal response in the brain. I mean that in order to engage the listener, storytelling requires the ability to tell a story with just the right emotion, description, and details… not too much and not too little. 

 

What distinguishes business storytelling from classical storytelling?
Business storytelling has a clearly stated point. Classical stories are enriched by multi-layered interpretations, but in business storytelling, there should be no doubt in the listeners’ minds about what they should do in response to your story. When it comes to business stories, don’t just wing it and ramble. Know the structure that will be easiest for your audience to follow and then they will not only follow the story, but they’ll also follow you as a leader.

The keys to a good story

When it comes to storytelling one of the best ways to draw people to you is not by telling them - you should do this or that, you should listen to me, etc. A much more powerful and persuasive way to do it is to share the same lesson in a story. I think that sharing a good story is a win-win as both the storyteller and the audience are elevated to a higher level. The more you tell, the more you sell, set the stage, start dialogues, and present the point.

 

I think all good stories starts with you taking the audience to a time and place when this happens, and you need to be very specific. Perhaps, I’m mistaken but I remember that fairy tales always start with, “once upon a time.” When I tell stories I always try to set the stage, for example, “many years ago I did…” to create a mental image in your imagination. I like to use dialogues because dialogues are so powerful in storytelling as places the listeners and readers right in the middle of the scenario. For example, how many of you can visualise a 2m tall guy on stage from the back of the room? See, dialogue immediately puts your listeners right into the middle of the action, and this is a very powerful thing to do. What’s the moral of the story? What’s the transformation? What’s the one takeaway that you want the listener to have? 

What is your story?

I think for brand storytelling to work, we have to understand where we’re starting, where it is we aspire to be, how much time we’re willing to invest and how committed we are to executing this consistently. And that’s when we’ll see the relative force behind a brand story jump dramatically. The force is your brand story and what you are able to accomplish by committing to it over a specific period of time.

 

How consistently will you tell your brand story? This usually follows closely on the heels of an organisation’s willingness to change how they approach marketing and how they connect with audiences. Are you trying to accomplish great things but refuse to step away from your brand-centred tactics? Alternatively, are you willing to become customer-centric and shift your efforts in their direction? Where you are right now with your level of sophistication in brand storytelling? Contact me via e-mail fro arrange a storytelling workshop for your brand.