Here are the three essential requirements for you to be able to manage your daily time for greater control and improved productivity.

Plan your day: Before diving deep into a task, step back and plan for what you need to accomplish on that day. First off, list down everything that you need to get done as well as everything that you’d like to get done. Based on this, you can now chalk out what tasks can be chunked and how much time needs to be allocated for each task. Allocation of the scarce resource of time is something where most people go wrong as tasks get under-estimated or over-estimated significantly. Getting a clear idea of what needs to be accomplished and building a clear understanding of your own abilities as well as other resources required to accomplish a particular task will make you better at allocating the right amount of time per task.

Prioritize: What separates a lot of successful people from others is their ability to prioritize. They know the difference between what is important and what isn’t. The importance of this vital decision making skill cannot be over-emphasised. Remember, effective time management is NOT about getting everything done; it is about getting the right things done within a stipulated time frame. Prioritization involves understanding the dependencies of the choices you make and it often requires you to look beyond you, depending on where or what you are prioritizing. Another thing that you must remember while prioritizing is to not fall into the trap of prioritizing the easy things on the to-do-list ie. don’t make priorities on the basis of how easy or difficult a task is, but prioritize on the basis of the order in which something must get done. In fact, it often helps to get the harder or more challenging tasks out of the way first – after evaluating that they are indeed the most important things that must get done.

Persevere: To succeed in becoming a good time manager, which is often the pre-requisite for success in almost any field, it is critical to persist and persevere. It is easy to get distracted while in the middle of a task and do something else; or to give up trying to master time after a couple of failed attempts. Make a commitment to not get distracted while you are working on something important- unless it is some sort of an existential threat- and ensure it gets accomplished before you move on to something else. Not only will this heighten your productivity, but the benefits of the rise in self-esteem and the personal fulfilment you will enjoy are immeasurable. What’s more, your steadfastness in sticking to your guns will have a positive influence on people around you too.

Here’s to your time management efforts!

- Jeet Victor

Jeet Victor is an inspirational writer who writes on a range of topics related to winning, success, motivation and self-actualisation.

If you want to be financially successful and become rich at some stage, the most fundamental thing you can do is to live within your means. Whether you are fresh out of college, a salaried employee at an organisation or even running a business, this simple lesson can stand you in good stead. The success coach, Brian Tracy has written about this in his newsletters and books related to tips for financial success and I couldn’t agree more.

How to live within your means
Living within one’s means requires discipline, especially when there are so many temptations in the form of numerous credit instruments to lure you away into spending more. This discipline can be developed and reinforced with constant practice. To do so, mentally “forego” or “eliminate” at least 25% of your income. For example, if your monthly income is $3000, believe that your income is only $2250. That is your “means” within which you decide to live. Control all your expenses within this upper limit that you have set yourself. Within 3 months, you would have created a full-month’s buffer for yourself! You can then choose to invest the savings you make each month to increase your income and building up your reserves. Depending on your risk appetite, you can determine how much liquidity you wish to have and how much you will allocate to what type of investment vehicle. The important thing to remember is that you will have this freedom and flexibility to think about investing your assets only if you have built these assets over a period of time.

Very often, I find a lot of people live well beyond their means. In fact, they claim to have an income that is 30-40% more than their actual income by taking into account cash value of various perks or by ‘internalising’ the gross compensation/ “cost to company” figures that companies give them. I feel that certainly gives a temporary ego boost, but doesn’t add much to your asset balance. And you can’t achieve financial success and freedom without continuously increasing your asset base!

- By Jeet Victor

Ability to manage/control time
Time controls most people; the extreemely successful people instead have a way to control time. Remember Murphy’s law-work expands to fill the time available to complete it? People who are driven towards success will instead get the work done in whatever time it actually needs to take instead of stretching it to fill the time available. They are able to get work done effectively and efficiently, so that they have much more time at their disposal to do more and get more out of what is done!

Choose the people around you
Most people think they have limited control over the people around them– but that’s far from true. Successful people have a knack of being attracted to as well as attracting people who are like-minded. It is about recognising who you are able to learn from, who you can emulate and ensuring that is the company you want to keep.

Stop feeling ‘entitled’
Each person has to pay his/her dues, regularly! There are no short cuts and there are no ‘entitlements’. Sow and you will be able to reap – it’s as simple as that.

Experience is what you learn, not the number of years you put in
Very often, people equate “experience” with the number of years that they have been doing something and therefore begin to expect returns purely based on that, be in terms of compensation or rewards. Actually, experience should be a reflection of what you have learnt new and the added value one brings to that task/job. Key questions that one should ask regularly are: how am I able to bring greater value with the time I have spent doing this and the knowledge I have acquired along the way? How am I developing myself, intellectually and professionally, and how is that contributing to the results?

Embrace failure and learn from it
The average person shies away from and acts defensive in the face of failure. He is not willing to take responsibility for it and finds any number of reasons for not succeeding. The successful person on the other hand is willing to look failure in the eye, accept it, learn from it so as to avoid repeating it, move on and be successful. Every failure is one more lesson in how not to do something, and therefore an opportunity to do something better!

Volunteers win
Call it initiative. Call it the drive to move forward and the ability to stretch more than the average person. As Jeff Haden writes in his article: “Success is based on action. The more you volunteer, the more you get to act. Successful people step forward to create opportunities.” The next time there is an opportunity extended to you, you can think of it in two ways. “This is more work! Why should I do it? I might not even be given more compensation?” Or, “This could be interesting— I think I can learn a few things here, acquire some new skills and work with more people. I could become better and stronger!” . The choice is yours to make, of course, but it’s a choice that can determine the limits of your success.

Go the extra mile
Similar to the point above, those who are willing to go the extra mile end up breasting the tape ahead of the others. It’s a proven fact in almost every sphere of life. That little bit extra push, the effort that overcomes all barriers including those from your mind and body which urge you to stop is what will propel you across the finish line. It isn’t easy, of course, but then who said success comes easy?

– Contributed by Jeet Victor

Adapted from an article by Jeff Haden on Inc.com.

Image courtesy: CreatingYourBeyond.com

In a recent interview, Rahul Dravid – one of the greatest cricketers produced by India- addressed the topic of talent and put it in perspective. Afterall, he was not considered a naturally gifted player, but went on to become one of the game’s legends through sheer hard work, grit and determination. He said that we tend to define talent incorrectly, or may be incompletely ie. we focus too much on ‘natural ability’.

My interpretation of what Rahul Dravid said is this: optimising talent and putting it to best use is also an important talent, perhaps more important than raw talent. That is why we have underachievers and overachievers. People who go beyond what everyone’s assessment of their talent is, are called overachievers. We look at them with awe. While those who don’t, are the underachievers – we look at them with mixed feelings of pity, of regret, a perennial question mark on “What might have been” , “what should have been”.

Talent is as much about sharpening the saw, of continuous improvement and betterment. It is about maximising potential and optimising the diverse skills and innate abilities that we are all gifted with or acquire as we grow in life.

If you are committed and work hard enough at a goal, you will be sure to uncover a host of hidden talents that you didn’t know you possessed!

- Contributed by Jeet Victor
Jeet Victor is an inspirational writer who writes on a range of topics related to winning, success, motivation and self-actualisation.

Image courtesy: RhythymofSuccess

Even winners lose sometimes; great champions are known to have bitten the dust and have been humbled by defeat. However, what separates a true champion is the innate tendency to shrug off the occasional defeat as a mere obstacle in their quest for the ultimate victory.

Take for example, Roger Federer. He has crossed the age of 30, an age when most would expect tennis players to go downhill; he hadn’t won a Grand Slam for a couple of years and was becoming a lot more used to defeats at the hands of other top notch players on the men’s circuit. Increasingly, Roger Federer was being branded a ‘has been’ – an all-time great of the game, nevertheless- but someone who was past his prime and unlikely to be a serious championship contender at the Majors.

But, beware the man who truly believes! Beware the man who is prepared, who continues to put in loads of hard work with total commitment, dedication and unflinching determination– victory is never too far for such a person. A person like that hardly fits in on the side of the vanquished; it is inevitable that he will find himself a victor, sooner rather than later.

That is precisely what happened at Wimbledon 2012. Roger Federer overcame sceptics to win his 7th Wimbledon championship, in the process dashing not just the hopes of Andy Murray but also of entire Britain. In his post-match conference, Federer made a telling statement, “I never stopped believing.” He said he always knew that he was good enough, he was preparing hard, putting in the hard yards and playing great tennis too; so, it was only a matter of time before victory would be his.

That is the power of belief. Even when one’s confidence may get shaken at times, a strong foundation of belief provides the requisite strength to hold everything together and take one towards success.

Chant the “I Can” mantra
“Yes! I can” is one of the most important mantras for a winner; an amazingly powerful mantra that can propel one to the seemingly unscalable heights of success.

- Jeet Victor
Jeet Victor is an inspirational writer who writes on a range of topics related to winning, success, motivation and self-actualisation.