What does it mean to be effective? Simply put, it is the art of doing that which produces the desired result. If you want to be wealthy, learned, socialy adept or healthy then you need to be effective in doing the things that will achieve the results you desire.
There is no simple formula for being successful, but one can develop habits that enable you to amplify your individual effectiveness on any task you choose to focus upon. When I was in my early teens my mother gave me a book by Napoleon Hill, who himself was inspired by the legendary businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. In this book I was fascinated to learn that there are, in fact principles which anyone can apply in their daily life to truly attract wisdom, friendship and success.
The book taught me seventeen principles of success. I was only fourteen years old at the time, but I recognised great wisdom in the words. I wrote the principles down on a piece of paper and carried them with me in my wallet wherever I travelled. They still accompany me today, fifteen years later, and though I rarely look at them today, they serve to remind me of the inspiration I felt all those years ago. It was an inspiration that stuck with me, and that I strongly feel helped shape the life I leed today.
I feel it only fair to share with you these principles in the hope that they might encourage you to achieve all your goals and to live out all your dreams. I will present them in no particular order and encourage you to reflect upon them and to critically ask yourself if you could, or should be applying them in your daily life.
1. Definiteness of Purpose
Do you have goals or dreams? If you do then ask yourself ‘what am I doing to make these dreams a reality?’ Do you have a definite purpose behind your day to day living? For example, most people desire wealth. If I asked you if you dreamed of being rich you would probably answer in the affirmative. But what are you doing to make yourself rich? are you just going to work everyday, hoping that someday you will be promoted to CEO? Are you hoping that you’ll win the lottery, or that some long lost uncle will leave you some huge inheritance? All these things could happen, but the chances of them happening to you are infinitesimally small. So small that I can confidently say that it won’t happen to you.
So what are you really doing to make yourself wealthy? Are you joining entrepenerial website or clubs? Are you constantly on the lookout for business opportunities, and if you find them are you willing to act on them? Are you using wikipedia, for example to read the biographies of Forbes richest people in the world to try and discover how they became so wealthy? If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’ then why not? Do you really want to be wealthy, or are you happy that wealth is nothing more than a daydream for you?
If you really desire something sit down with a pen and paper and make a plan on how you plan to effectively achieve that desire.
“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”
Proverbs
2. Going the Extra Mile
If you always give 110% you’ll never fail. Whenever you do more than what is expected of you your rewards will surpass any expections you may have had. If you are going to do something, never approach it half-heartedly. “If something is worth doing it’s worth doing well.” That’s what my mother used to tell me (and probably three quarters of all the mothers and fathers on the planet!) But that simple mantra, put into practice will earn you a reputation for being dependable and tremendous at whatever you choose to do.
Whatever path you follow you will always have to work with other people. No man or woman is an island and we all live in perpetual contact with other human beings (unless you are a hermit and live in the Himalayas). How you interact with, and treat other people will play a huge role in your overall success in any endevour you follow. People come to conclusions as to the type of person you are very quickly. The type of person you are percieved to be will effect the opportunities that come your way. If you come across as lazy, or as the type of person who rushes through theire work, making sloppy mistakes then you will find very few opportunities coming in your direction. Alternatively, if you are percieved as the type of person who will work 10 hours, when they have only been asked to work eight, or the type of person who will stay up the entire night to finish some project, then opportunities will come to you thick and fast.
Your reputation is so very important, and if you are seen as the sort of person who will always go the extra mile, then you will be percieved as dependable and hard working. People will want to work with you and not against you.
“Do more than is required. What is the distance between someone who achieves their goals consistently and those who spend their lives and careers merely following? The extra mile.”
G R. Blair
3. Self Discipline
‘Rome wasn’t built in a day.’ Such a trivial saying, but how terribly applicable to the individual. Mastering the self can sometimes be one of the hardest habits to achieve, but in a sense iit s one of the most important. Why is self discipline so hard? Well, it’s very easy to procrastinate on a task, and even easier to become disheartened when your goal seems so far in the distance.
Let’s take an everyday example. What if you were forty pounds overweight? It is very easy to look at yourself and say, ‘I will lose forty pounds.’ But the reality of losing that weight is far more foreboding. To lose that kind of weight takes months upon months of hard work. You need to get your diet into shape, find time to exercise and repeat that same process everyday for hundreds of days. You need to say no to every cheeseburger, to every ice cream, you need to watch yourself when you go out to eat at a restaurant, you need to go for a run even if its raining, or 100 degrees outside! Its so much easier to say, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow!’. It’s amazing how many people enter into a diet with their lofty goals, only to give up within a week or two of trying.
What if we take another example?” Let’s pretend you have $10′000 of credit card debt. You know you need to pay it off, but you know it’s going to take forever! Even if you put $100 of your hard earned cash, every month into paying the debt off, it will still take you 100 months. Thats over eight years, and not even including the interest! How many of you have said, ‘I’ll just pay the minimum this month and try and put extra in next month.’ Do you ever put the extra in the next month?
It is far easier not to do something, than it is to do something. But without ‘doing’ things you will never achieve anything other than cynicism and regret. Your regret may not manifest itself for years, but trust me, you will eventually wish you had grit your teeth and done something. Lets say you are thirty years old and you have that $10′000 debt, well chances are you will still be alive at thirty eight! When you reach that age (it will come!) will you be thanking yourself for paying off that damn credit card? Will you be glad you can start helping your kids out, or looking into buying that new car? Or will you still be worried if you can make the minimum payment?
In a sense self discipline, or lack of, is a question of selfishness. Do you live for the day, or do you begin to build bridges into he future? If you live for the day, or for the moment, then you won’t care about eating that half-pound cheesburger because it won’t be the ‘you of now’, that has to deal with looking in the mirror at the end of the night, or feeling depressed about being overweight next week. The ‘you of now’ gets to be happy at the taste of all that fat entering your mouth! People who are self disciplined are very unselfish people. Who are you but the you of this very moment? Is the you of this moment prepared to make a few sacrafices, so that the you of tomorrow can be happier?
I find one of the easiest techniques to master my own self discipline is the technique of breaking every goal down into little chunks of ‘mini-goals’. Each time I acheive a mini-goal I will reward myself in some way. What do I mean by this? Well, first take a pen and write down what you want to achieve. Lets say you want to lose forty pounds. Write at the top of the page ‘Lose forty pounds’. Then underneath your goal write down the steps you plan to take to achieve this goal. For example ‘Week 1, work on healthy eathing plan and aim to lost 1 lb.’ Then keep going, ‘week 2, begin walking 1 mile a day and aim to lose a further 1lb.’ Keep going like this, slowly building up your own expectations of yourself. Perhaps by week 5 you will write ‘Run 2 miles a day and aim to lose 2-3 lbs a week’. If at the end of each week you have acheive your goal then reward yourself. Take your friends or family out to a nice restaurant. Spend an entire weekend doing what you enjoy doing, fishing maybe, or reading. I promise you will enjoy your reward so much if you feel you’ve really deserved it.
I have been rewarding myself for years. If I plan to study for six hours, I promise myself an hour of watching my favourite science fiction show at the end of the night. If I spend a sixty hour week working at the university, I promise myself a relaxing weekend. Always push yourself, but always give a little too.
“In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves…self-discipline with all of them came first.”
Harry S. Truman
4. A Pleasing Personality
People skills are important to success, and your personality is your ’shop front.’ Are you difficult to deal with, always getting into arguments, arrogant or just rude? If you answered yes to any of these, then you will likely find success harder to achieve than someone who answered no.
How do you know if you have a pleasing personality? One day this week take a real look at the way you interact with people, and take note of how they respond to you. Take note of what you say, and how you say it. Let me first outline some traits of someone with a displeasing personality.
Do you fit into any of these bullet points? If you do then I’m afraid to say that there are aspects of your personality that many people would find displeasing. Maybe you and your friends sit around and gossip about co-workers or ‘friends’. Maybe you feel it’s ok because everyone else does. In this sense you’ve found a niche. You’ve found other people with displeasing personalities and you’ve clung to them for ’safety in numbers’. My guess is that these people are not particularly successful, and your friendship with them will be detrimental to your own success.
Lets take a look at some attributes of someone with a pleasing personality.
- Modest
- helpful
- constructive
- confident
- calm
- kind
- smiles while he/she talks
- listens to others
- offers advice only when asked
- loyal and faithful to friends/partners
There are probably many other attributes that I’ve missed here, but you get the idea. I’ve been a physicist for many years now, and something I’ve noticed is that the smartest scientists I’ve ever met always seem to be the most modest, and helpful. When I worked in the UK for the government, we had the office guru. He was a few years older than me and seemed to know everything about everything. He knew physics, he could computer program, he knew all the office hardware and software and was the guy you always went to when you needed help with something. Something that always amazed me about him was his remarkable modesty and willingness to help. He never seemed bothered when anyone asked him a question, and would really take the time to help you. There were numerous times when he would sit with me for hours to show me how some piece of code worked. And then at the end, when he was satisfied I understood, he would smile and tell me to just ‘give him a shout’ if I needed any more help. He was also the most successful scientist. Opportunity always came his way, and with good reason. Develop a pleasing personality and the world is your oyster.
“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become personality. Watch your personality, for it becomes your destiny.”
Anon.
5. Positive Mental Attitude
A positive mental attitude is the indomitable belief that, if you keep trying, you will always succeed. Maintaining optimism in the face of adversity can be challenging for many people. When faced with failiure some of us feel that ‘it just wasn’t to be.’ But the truth is that failiure is good. Nothing in this world will ever come easy, and ‘failiure’ is merely the process of learning a new way not to do do something. failiure helps you to shortlist the correct way to do something correctly. One really shouldn’t use the term failiure as it is so very negative. I prefer the term experience.
I have a very positive mental attitude. I don’t walk around with a smile on my face all day long, or sound like an evangelical preacher when I talk. I just refuse to see the bad in anything. For me ‘every adversity hides the seed of a greater benefit.’ I try to learn from what, on the face of things seems ‘bad’ and never to make the same error again.
A positive mental attitude is all about the way you view an event or experience. If you let something get to you, or dwell on something for long then you are letting the experience overcome you. If you file away that experience in the back of your mind then you have attained a piece of wisdom.
“We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb.”
Thomas Edison
6. Maintaining Sound Physical and Mental Health
I spent some time discussing the benefits of a healthy body in my section on diet. In short, a healthy body will keep you energized and attentive throught the day, allowing you to focus 100% on any task. Physical health is achieved through diet and exercise.
Another key to your own success is your mental ’sharpness’ or clarity. We all have the same brains, some of us just choose to train them to be more effective than other. One key to maintain sound mental health is to apply the adage ‘everything in moderation’. Although I reccomend against drinking, if you do drink, don’t get drunk regularly. Your days will suffer as you experience the debilitating effects of a hangover which will always cloud your mental clarity.
Try to always get a good nights sleep. Too much and you’ll feel groggy and tired all day, too little and you will lose your mental edge. Drugs obviously have a very negative effect on your mental health.
There are numerous ways to improve your mental health. Try reading book instead of watching television. Experiment with listening to different forms of music to broaden your horizons, travel more, learn a new language or sign up for a night course at your local college. If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it!
“The higher your energy level, the more efficient your body. The more efficient your body, the better you feel and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results.”
Henry Maudsley
7. Accurate Thinking
What does it mean to think accurately? If I want to be a scientist then I should read the works of Einstein, Newton or try to understand quantum theory. I should stay away from the Ptolemaic Earth-centered universe model and I should not attend the ‘flat earth society’ monthly meetings! If I want to be a good businessman I should learn my business first. If I want to make money in the internet field, I should know the difference between HTML and C++. Put simply, my thinking should accurate and, thus effective.
The key to accurate thinking is targeted education. Before entering any new endevour, determine what you need to know before you jump in at the deep end. You may just find yourself unable to swim out of the current.
The world is full of information, and now, in the 21st century we have a vast reservoir of information available to us at the touch of a finger with the widespread use of the internet. An accurate thinker is one who is able to separate facts from information. Once the facts are filtered from the information, the accurate thinker sieves the important facts, from the irrelevant facts. In essence, an accurate thinker gathers information, extracts the important facts, listens to the opinions of others, but reserves for him/herself the decision making process.
“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.”
Oscar Wilde
8. Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm is contagious. It inspires people and attracts them to your cause, your message or your business. Enthusiasm animates the souls of all it touches and helps you to embrace your task with vigour and overflowing zest.
I have been in education for some time now and have experienced a number of professors and teachers in my time. I remember always enjoying being taught by enthusiastic lecturers, and always falling asleep with the boring ones. I not only enjoyed the enthusiastic lecturers classes, but I learned far more in them. That enthusiasm touched me and now I teach classes myself I always inject as much excitement and conviction into my lectures as I can (while trying to appear sane). I find many of my students enjoying my classes and they seem to learn an awful lot at the same time too!
What is Enthusiasm? Well, it is a combination of physical intensity and mental liveliness which is rarely found in a feeble body. It thrives wherever there is an abundance of health and begins with the development and maintenence of the health consciousness.
“Life’s blows cannot break a person whose spirit is warmed at the fire of enthusiasm.”
Norman Vincent Peale
9. Budgeting Time and Money
There are resources we come across in our day to day lives that are simply irreplaceable. Time is a commodity which we all have, but can never replace. Once it is used it can never be recaptured, the ebb and flow of time is ceaseless. For this reason it must be used wisely. We all know people who seem to be perpetually busy, but never seem to be really doing anything. And then there the others, who calmly but purposefully walk through life with direction and apparant focus. The latter are calmer than the former because they have a plan, and plans breed confidence.
I like to start my days with a ‘to do’ list. I sit down first thing in the morning and write down all the things I need to do. My lists are usually quite varied and include and go something like, ‘grade labe reports, pay electricity bill, read Sakharov paper, work on field theory calculation, enquire on health insurance, phone bank, work out, buy more oatmeal…etc. etc. I never miss anything out of my lists. My ‘latest field theory calculation’ will sit next to my ‘fill car up with gas’. The reason for this is that when I sit down first thing in the morning I just let the things come to me for a few minutes and the tasks usually have no logical continuity to them, they simply need to be done.
Once I have my list I take a look through and have a think about what needs doing urgently, and what could wait until later in the day. Usually things like ‘grading’ take priority. I leave the list on my desk within arms reach, and cross off once a task has been done. Its a very satisfying feeling to cross things off the list, and thats why I like to include things like ‘pay bill’ as this task can be done in minutes, but leeds to that satisfying ‘cross off’ that I can look at when the day is over and be happy that I have achieved something productive.
I started writing ‘to do’ lists about six years ago, and found them to be such effective tools that I don’t even consider doing them a chore. With the list, and the crossings off I know that I am being productive with my time. And when once thing is crossed off and can scroll down the list and see if there is anything I’m in the ‘mood’ to do. In a sense this helps to keep my day varied. I would strongly recommend getting into the habit of a ‘to do’ list.
Budgeting money can be far harder for some people than others because some people just have less than others! If you are on a tight budget then clearly one needs to pay what has to be paid first (rent, bills etc) and then see how much you have left. What you do with the remainder of your money will really define how successful you become. Let me tell you what not to do with your spare money: buy alcohol, buy nicotine, buy flash cars, buy flash jewellry, eat out at expensive restaurants…you get the idea. What should you do with your money it you want to be successful. Well, first decide what you mean by success. If you want to be well travelled then decide where you want to see next (India perhaps?), figure out how much you will need and start saving! If you want to be economically successful then you could start thinking of ways to invest. You might want to follow the traditional route of stocks and shares, or you might want to start channeling that money into some entrepreneurial route.
In essence, a good way to budget your money is to focus on what you want to achieve (being well travelled, being rich etc) and start making any surplus money you might have actually go towards that objective.
“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”
Carl Sandburg
10. Teamwork
There are few cases of success achieved by single men or women with no interaction or teamwork involved. Learn to be a good teamplayer. Many job require you to work in teams as either a manger, or a managed employer. But teams beyond extend the workplace and can involve scientific teams, sports teams, news teams, writing teams and a cornucopia of other fields.
Being a good team player will earn you resect, happiness and allow you to achieve your golas quicker. A teams purpose is collectively endevour to attain some objective, and thus a good team (which requires good teamplayers) will achieve objectives more effectively.
What does it mean to be a good teamplayer. In my opinion, first should come the respect of your other teammates. Nobody likes to be ridiculed, disrespected or to feel useless, so be sure that you support all your teammates. One way to respect your teammates is to be on time to team meetings. If you are tardy then you are signaling that your time is more important than other peoples time, and that they should wait for you. This is the wrong signal to send to your companions. Another way to be a good team player is to make sure you put in ample work to whatever project or endevour you are working on. Remember going the extra mile? Try to be friendly and courteous around your teammates (pleasing personality…). This will cultivate a relaxing and constructive environment.
I remember I once worked under a manager who refused to speak to me in person. He sat a few feet away from me in an open plan office, but communicated via email alone. It wasn’t just instructions on work that he sent me, but he also seemed to enjoy expressing dissatisfaction with some aspect or another of my work. He even complained when I was working extra hard to satisfy him that it was ‘against EU regulations to work through my lunch hour’. The tone of his emails tones were always officious and I used to dread looking at my inbox. Eventually I spoke to a manager higher up the food chain who, to my relief, was aware of this fellow and had previous complaints about him being hard to work with. I was gradually assigned work to another manager who gave me respect and appreciation for my hard work. This encouraged me to work even harder and so we functioned far more efficiently as a team and got a lot more work done. The other fellow was left with a dying project and an even worse reputation.
There are many good books and higher authorities, than me, on the subject of teamwork, but never underestimate a teammate, nor overestimate yourself.
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”
Henry Ford
Learning From Adversity and Defeat
I am not one of those people who gets things right the first time around, and I’m certainly not ’squeaky clean’. I’ve made mistakes in the past, some bigger than others. But I’ve never let my mistakes characterize who I’ve become. I do let the lessons I’ve learned from the mistakes characterize who I become. To be honest, I rarely meet people who don’t make mistakes. I don’t really think they exist. But I do meet people who dwell long and hard on their mistakes, and who don’t seem to be able to move beyond them.
There are many ‘flavors’ of adversity and defeat. There is the death of a loved one, economic adversity, losing an important deal, failing to get a book published, failing an important exam…the list goes on. Actually, I think I’ve experienced most of those I just mentioned. The big question is, how do you deal with such a dramatically negative experience. Here’s how I deal with things like this:
Firstly I remind myself that I’m really not that important in the bigger scheme of things. The sun still shines, the planets are still in their orbit and the birds are still in the sky. My defeat is only something that exists in my own head.I then like to remind myself that I still have my health, my friends and my family and a roof over my head. I won’t be going hungry any time soon. Then I remind myself how much worst it could be. I think of the 90% or so of the entire human population that lives in poverty. I think of the people that do have to worry where their next meal comes from and of the innocent people dying in war-zones around all across the globe. Maybe somewhere a mother has to worry if her child will step on one of the millions of forgotten landmines. Someone somewhere has just contracted AIDS, someone else has found out they have cancer and another has just lost their best friend in a car crash. I know this all sounds pretty extreme, but believe me, if you think you have something to worry about, I am fairly sure that it dulls in comparison to what other people are experiencing right now. When you put things into perspective 99% of your adversity is insignificant.
When I’ve finished realizing just how silly I am to feel sorry for myself, I start thinking of what I’ve learned from my adversity and make sure I never repeat the mistake again. How would I have done things differently? How can I do them better if I am in the same situation. Sometimes adversity is uncontrollable and is just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Don’t worry about it! Everyone gets a bit of bad luck from time to time. If you put things in perspective you’ve probably had good luck aswell at some point in the past. There is usually a balance.
Some people get frustrated when something delays them. When I am delayed (being stuck behind a slow car for example) I tell myself that maybe its for the better. What if I hadn’t been delayed, maybe I would have ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time and a truck might have pulled out in front of me causing an accident. The delay might actually have been a ‘godsend’.
Problems are really nothing more than temporary setbacks. They are obstacles that can be overcome, they are never insurpassable barriers. The only limitations you have are the ones your own mind is creating.
“Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.”
Malcolm S. Forbes
