9 Success Strategies to Get More from Your Time and Effort

Christine Li  0:00  
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode 54. Well, it looks like we've sped through this year. And I want to take a moment now to just congratulate you on making it through. Congratulations for staying resilient during these pandemic times, and these times of societal stress, and for keeping yourself and your loved ones well, despite some pressors that might have caused you to lose some hope, and some energy. I know I've experienced some ups and downs in 2021. And I look forward to celebrating the end of the year and the holidays. And I wish you and your loved ones a wonderful holiday season. 

In this episode, I am going to share with you some of the core principles of success that I rely on. And that come in the form of little behaviors that you can do to to make things go a little bit more easily for you on a day to day basis for me, any tips that can help me stay in flow, and have things go more easily. I embrace them wholeheartedly every day of the year. But before we head into the episode, I want to invite you to get my free resource library. It's actually a compilation of 12 free downloadable tools and templates to help you get your ideas out into the world. And your plans more in order, you can find the free resource library at make time for success podcast.com/library. Again, it's make time for success podcast.com/library This library is going to help you launch yourself into success. And the strategies in this episode are going to too so let's go listen to the episode now.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn a powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy, and how you can create success on demand. Wealth Welcome to the make time for success podcast. So for this episode, I put together a quick hits list of my top nine favorite success strategies to use. Yes, indeed, these are strategies that I use in my day to day life, I find them to be incredibly helpful, incredibly calming, and incredibly easy to use when you get in the habit of using them. So let's get going. The first step that I have for you is to realize that your self doubt is your biggest waste of time. self doubt, never got anyone extra time in their schedule. And self doubt never really got anyone further closer to their goal. So I want you to just make that your number one success strategy. There's a reason why this is number one because we can just decide to eliminate the negativity about ourselves from the get go, save ourselves a time clear our minds of that nasty clutter and get going with our plans, our needs, our wishes and our goals. Let's go get them. Alright, the second success strategy that I have for you is borrowed from one of my guests on this podcast. Her name is Michelle Fernandez. And I think you probably just heard from her in the episode just before this one, she's fantastic. What she taught me is that every day she chooses to fill her mind with positive information. This is not just affirmation saying I am good enough. I am prosperous, I am healthy, which you should do by the way, but this is also information from other people. So that is information from podcasts, from books, from lessons from coaches, from neighbors, wherever you can get this positive information, go there. And then make sure that You start every day with a nice influx of that positive information. So there's much less room, much less opportunity for the negative Nancy in your heart or your brain, that main girl voice, as Michelle calls it to come bother you. So fill your mind with positive information and support yourself in that way. The third success strategy that I have for you is a very important one, we need to understand that we need to plan our time very consciously, we all know that we need to have a to do list to get our things done. And we all have things to do. What we oftentimes forget, is that we need to put some extra time into planning how we're going to use our time that to do list item, how much time should it take you? What time of the day is best for that particular project to be started and taking care of? How do you want your data and all of this can be planned ahead of time, so that your day runs the way that you want it to don't forget that particular tip. Okay, tip number four, is that risk needs to happen in your life. If you want to grow, if you want your business to grow. If you want your self development to improve, you need to start thinking outside of your comfort zone. And so often we feel comfortable in our comfort zone. And then we fail to see what is the next big step I could take? What can I leap towards? What can I learn? What can I invent? What can I create? Who can I connect with? And by avoiding risk, we do avoid our fears, but there may not be any good result that comes from staying small, staying comfortable, and staying invisible. So

think about your own recent activities. Are you playing small? Are you avoiding risk? Are you avoiding the learning that this world has to share with you by avoiding fearful situations all the time, make fear and risk a comfortable part of your every day? All right, on to the next one. Strategy number five, consistency is something to aim for. You know, I talk about healthy habits all the time, I want you to choose one small activity that you would like to build into a consistent habit. And the way to build consistency is one to really believe in yourself. I think without self belief, we can't really get very far with anything. The second thing we want to do is we want to preserve this one chosen habit as the priority for our day. It's not just a priority habit, it's a priority of our day without elevating that activity to important status in our day, it's going to get ignored, it's going to get crowded out, we're going to forget about it. So in order to develop consistency, we need to believe in ourselves. And we need to prioritize the action to be taken. And then what's the result, the result is we get the reward of consistency. And that can be so big, that could be so good. That could be feeling better about yourself that could be feeling relieved. That could be feeling like you're avoiding future problems. That can be so many things, whatever you're wanting from that habit you're going to get because you're doing that habit consistently. Next step for you, is accountability. Now, accountability just helps us to protect ourselves from us, we get to be safe from the main girl, we get to be safe from procrastination, we get to borrow other people's energy and other people's love and concern for us and for our growth. So by accountability, I mean, just have someone who cares about you, and who's not going to waste your time. But who is going to sit there and listen to talk about what you need to work through. Someone who's going to say, Okay, I'll expect that from you. In a week, someone who will gently encourage you to fulfill what you need to fulfill. So trying to think for yourself right now, who is my safe person who can I call or text to see if they have an extra few minutes this week so that we can help each other with our own goals and you don't have to be working on the same thing. You can be working on very different things. But what you do need is care for each other, and the promise to show up for each other and to hold each other accountable to your original task promise. Alright, step number seven is very similar to the accountability point, I want you to learn how to collaborate with others, if that's not a very strong skill of yours. Collaboration is one of my favorite strategies for getting things done. I myself, I'm very much an extroverted person. I love people.

I love talking to people. I love being social. And I love getting things done. So I like to combine all of these activities together. I like to say, would you want to co author this with me? Would you want to do a webinar with me? Would you like to come on to my podcast, this whole podcast is one big project about collaboration. So what can you do in your day to increase the collaboration factor, you might find that you get quicker results, you get bigger results, you get more exposure to things, you find that your work is much more enjoyable, because you've brought on a friend or a colleague. So try this collaboration strategy as soon as you can. Alright, we have Tip number eight. And this is a really important one. This is where I tell you that you want to aim for Schedule sanity, the way we plan our schedules, dictates how our day is going to feel to us and how the day is actually going to proceed. So be mindful of the impulse to overcrowd your schedule, to fill it with things that you really have no business doing, to not pay attention to your schedule. That's also a scheduling mistake. So I want you to become a master scheduler, decide what do you want your day to look like? What do you want to achieve inside a day? And of course, I want you to plan specific periods of rest and relaxation in every day. And at the end of the day, when do you want your schedule to end? When do you want to say I'm off for the night, I'm turning into a pumpkin, or I'm avoiding turning into a pumpkin. Let me get ready for my bedtime routine. All right, so schedule sanity and rest. And my final success strategy for you today is to add joy, J Oh, why happiness, joy, that feeling of lightness to whatever you're doing. This is of course, a tip that I could put into any piece of advice that I could give you. Because we have that option in every moment to be able to insert a little more energy, a little more happiness, a little more enthusiasm, earnestness, love into what we're doing so that everything that is on our plate is something that we can tolerate something that we can get through, and something that we can thrive in. So I hope these strategies have been useful and interesting to you. Go use them. As you know how, and be bold. That might be an extra 10th. One, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. That just brings us back to the first strategy. So I'm going to do a quick review. Strategy one, self doubt is a waste of time strategy to fill your mind with positive input from the beginning of the day. Strategy three, understand that you need to specifically plan your time to get the most out of your time. Strategy four, get comfortable with risk and ignore your fears because they're just keeping you from fun things that you have to get to. Alright, strategy number five, learn the habit of consistency because consistency really pays dividends. Strategy six, get an accountability partner. Strategy seven, learn how to collaborate so that you can save yourself time and energy. Strategy eight, schedule sanity and rest in every day and do that purposefully and don't skip that step. And the last strategy is of course to add joy. Thank you so much for being with me on the make time for success podcast. You are bringing me joy in listening to these episodes every single week. I appreciate you so much. If you love the podcast As much as I do, please do me a favor and take a few minutes to go to your podcast post. And please leave a five star review and a few words about what you're getting out of the show, to help me promote the show to people who need to hear it and people who might become part of our community. Thank you so much again. Have a great day. I will see you next week.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.

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