Stories

Brian Tracy’s 5 Rules for Greater Productivity

Everyone wants to be more productive to feel more successful and to achieve their big goals in life. While many people have covered the topic of productivity, there is one person that is often overlooked because people don’t automatically think of him when you mention productivity and time management. This man is Brian Tracy. He has written numerous books on topics such as wealth building, success, and time management. Here is a collection of his quotes on productivity that will help you put things in perspective and teach you how to be more productive.

1. “A great life or a great career is built by performing one task at a time, quickly and well, and then going on to the next task.”

You might think multitasking is an efficient way of getting work done, but it’s not. Your brain is hard wired in way it can only focus on one thing at a time, so to maximize your productivity you want to single-task everything you do. Your focus is fragmented and not fully harnessed when you multitask. Just think of calling and driving at the same time, it can be done but it causes many accidents because people aren’t fully focused on driving. So whenever you get a task at hand attack it with laser focus and once finished, move on to the next one.

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It’s Okay to Change Your Mind

By Ali Luke / 18 Comments

How often do you change your mind?

There are some little things which you might flip-flop on every day. Perhaps you decide you want tacos for dinner, but when evening rolls around, you’re hankering for a pizza instead. Or you switch your usual latte for a cappuccino. Or you change your workout at the gym.

But when it comes to big issues – like your career plans, your beliefs and values, your hopes and aspirations – you probably change your mind rarely, if ever.

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How to Get Started When You’re Stuck

By Cara Stein / 7 Comments

How many times have you sat in front of your computer, or your mess, or your appointment calendar, knowing that you needed to do something but were unable to make yourself do it? There’s always something more compelling or more urgent: the phone rings, or you remember an email you need to write. Suddenly you look up, and hours have passed.

What’s really going on?

Well, for one thing, work is hard. It takes effort. Some days, that alone is enough to send us off to one interesting blog post after another.

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How to Help Others Cope with Change

By Deborah Fike / 15 Comments

When I moved away to college, I had the trunk space of a Dodge Colt to hold all of my worldly possessions. I took a few suitcases of clothes, a box of childhood stuffed animals, and a hand-me-down TV. Both of my older sisters had lugged that ancient 13″ TV to their college dorm rooms, and they were passing it on to me. I remember staring down unconvinced at that beaten up black box and saying, “Do I really need this?”

“Yes, you need it,” my sister told me, shutting the trunk of the car. “Trust me.”

Turns out she was right. That TV became a focal point of how I dealt with living on my own for the first time. I watched the same news my mom watched every morning, which staved off homesickness. My room became a hub for Friday night movie parties on my dorm floor. When my college boyfriend broke up with me, I bought an old video game system and whiled away many lonely hours as I got over him. My sisters had not just given me a TV, they had given me a coping mechanism for a transitional period in my life.

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Why Craving “Results” Gets Us No Results

By Christopher R. Edgar / 20 Comments

One of the most common concerns I hear from people I work with is that, when they’re trying to focus on a project at work, they find themselves worrying that what they’re doing won’t get them any meaningful results.

For example, perhaps they’re writing an article, and they find themselves worrying that no one will read it. Maybe they’re concerned that the marketing strategy they’re working on won’t create sales. Or perhaps they just keep getting the nagging feeling that there’s something more important they could be doing.

Usually, to get rid of this anxiety, people switch tasks, jumping from drafting that presentation to writing that long e-mail. Yet somehow, shortly after they start their new task, they often find the same worry arising. So, they move to yet another project.

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How to Unleash Your Confidence

By Vlad Dolezal / 10 Comments

A few weeks ago, I contacted Peter (the guy who runs this blog) about a book I’ve been writing for the last couple of months. It’s called Unleash Your Confidence and it deals with… (shock, horror!)… building confidence.

I thought Peter might like the book. And he did. In fact, he liked it so much, he asked me if I could write a guest post for you, sharing some of the material from the book.

At the end of this post, you’ll find a link to Unleash Your Confidence, in case you want to know more.

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Weeding out Toxic Relationships

By Mariana Ashley / 41 Comments

Part of my own journey toward change has involved recognizing that the power to change lies within myself, and I can’t place blame on any other person for what I choose to do with my life or choose not to do with my life. That being said, my own experience has also shown that the people I surround myself with play a major role in supporting me in my desire to change, accepting the person that I am or dragging me back toward the person that I used to be.

I write this to discuss the types of people we may have to weed out of our lives if we want to move forward in a positive direction. Keep in mind that I’m not discussing all difficult relationships; some challenging relationships are well worth keeping. I’m specifically discussing toxic relationships, which are characterized by the following:

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The Essential Guide to Stress Relief

By Aaron Gaul / 53 Comments

Stress is bad, right? Or is it good? Well, if you talk to the experts, they’ll say both are true. You need some stress to just get out of bed in the morning. And when you drive to work in your car, you need stress to stay alert and respond to what is in front of you. So stress has its place. But what if a high level of stress goes on and on? The doctors tell us that ongoing stress becomes Chronic Stress. Chronic Stress is bad news. It shuts down your immune system so you are susceptible to illness, and it robs you of a good night’s sleep.

Fortunately there is a solution. The key is to learn how to inhibit the Stress Response and enter into the Rest Response. If you want to change your stressful-ways, you need to develop and use new stress relief skills. Learn the techniques to direct your mind and body away from stress and into a restful state. Notice I said, “Learn.” That is because stress is automatic; it comes with the human operating system. However, rest and relaxation need to be learned and practiced — they do not come naturally.

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Overcoming Fear and Nervousness

By Nate Damm / 11 Comments

We all know of certain situations in life that make us nervous. No matter how we prepare for them we always find ourselves becoming anxious and stressed out. These situations could be anything from going to the doctor’s office to having a meeting with your boss at work. In this article I want to discuss something known as a ‘comfort challenge’ and how this amazing strategy can help you overcome your worst fears and insecurities.

Here’s a fact that I’ve come to realize in my own life: If you want to become comfortable in situations that usually make you nervous, then you need to deal with some serious discomfort for a while.

In other words, putting yourself directly into situations that make you extremely uncomfortable is the only way to truly get over them and make any progress towards overcoming your nervousness, worry and stress. In today’s society where everyone wants the quickest and easiest fix possible, this idea doesn’t usually flourish. Avoidance of the problem(s) usually requires the least effort, so it makes it seem like the top choice. The problem with this way of doing things is that it sets a very bad precedent for the rest of your life and the other uncomfortable situations that will come in the future (and yes, they will come).

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Getting Loved Ones to Understand Your Decisions

By Deborah Fike / 9 Comments

When my husband (then-boyfriend) and I first started dating, we really hit it off. It took less than a month for us to spend all of our time together. Before long, we had two sets of everything : one for his apartment and one for mine. Then his apartment lease came up, and we decided to move in together. We were eager to take this next step in our relationship.

Having grown up in a conservative household, my boyfriend knew his parents would not approve. He decided to write an email to his folks explaining his decision to move in with me. He took an afternoon off to write it down and didn’t show it to me until after he sent it. When I did read it, I nearly fell out of my chair. It started, “Mom, Dad, I love Deborah, and I don’t care what you think. We’ve moved in together.” The email continued to get more aggressive in tone, ending in the ultimatum, “You will respect her when you meet her next month.”

That’s right. Worse than the email itself, I had never met his parents. Needless to say, when I shook their hands at the airport, I felt like the harlot who had stolen their little boy’s innocence.

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The Futility of Belief

By John Ptacek / 19 Comments

What I believe isn’t important. The fact that I can put order to my thoughts, sort them into opinions and fan them into beliefs is hardly impressive. In fact, such thinking is unavoidable. It’s what our highly evolved human brains do. They compare and contrast and judge in an endless attempt to make sense of the world around us. Believing is as automatic as walking or talking or sneezing, and about as noteworthy.

There was a time when I considered my beliefs to be something more than just an assemblage of thoughts. I mistook them for something much more important. I thought they were me.

At various times in my life I believed I was a Catholic, a Unitarian, an agnostic and a secular humanist. I was a liberal, a feminist, an environmentalist and a pacifist. I took on new identities in search of a higher self and, down deep, I think, to distance myself from certain vulgarities that characterize the human condition – qualities like greed and aggression. By connecting certain thoughts, by cobbling together new identities, I convinced myself and others that those unwholesome human traits couldn’t possibly define me. They defined thieves and rapists and murderers. I was above all that, and had a portfolio of beliefs to prove it.

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