Found 0 posts
Mobile devices are more than just modern conveniences. In today’s business climate, having the right mobile tools at your disposal is critical to your professional survival. Staying connected around the clock is the accepted norm, not the exception and remaining competitive means keeping yourself up-to-date on the best apps to help you work smarter, faster, and better.
As thousands of new apps are released into the market every day, staying current on the best and most effective apps for improving productivity and performance can feel like a very daunting task. Luckily, Cydcor has created a shortcut to help you wade through this vast ocean of available apps. We’ve compiled a list of some of most useful apps to help busy professionals stay organized, communicate better and more efficiently, quickly get where they need to go, and be more productive.
Ah, productivity. It seems so simple, doesn’t it? Make a to-do list, prioritize it, then get to work! In reality, we all know this is much easier said than done. Thankfully, there are several surprisingly simple productivity tips and tricks that we can implement to make the most of our time. Check out the four productivity tips below.
1. Implement a Daily Drink and Think
Let’s kick off this list with a productivity tip that’s sure to sound counter-intuitive: Sit down and do nothing.
Yes, really!
One of the best things you can do for yourself is to take 10 minutes a day to just think. Sit down in the morning with your coffee or tea, or at night after a relaxing bath or tucking in the kids. Find somewhere relatively quiet where no one will bother you. Put away your devices. Ponder your day, think about what’s important, and pay attention to what rises to the surface. When you’re done, revise your to-do list as you see fit.
2. Empty your Brain
If you’ve ever watched a survivalist competition on TV, you’ve seen how important it is to conserve resources and be strategic about energy expenditure. Navigating through daily life is no different.
One of the best ways to conserve mental energy is to write everything down, rather than holding thoughts in the back of your mind. Did you just remember that a report is due at the end of the week? Add it to your calendar. Did a great idea just pop into your head? Jot it down. Doing so will make it easier to focus on the task in front of you, upping your productivity.
3. Set a Series of Timers
Depending on your style of working, this productivity tip has the potential to skyrocket your efficiency. This can be particularly effective when there’s an item on your to-do list that you’ve been dreading or if you’re a person who works best under pressure.
Start small. Set a timer for 20 minutes. Force yourself to use every millisecond of the time block to do focused work. Zero funny business allowed while the clock is ticking. Challenge yourself to see how much you can get done in this window. Then, when the timer goes off, set another one for 5 minutes. This time is your reward. Use it to grab a snack, check Instagram, text your mom, or do anything that will register in the pleasure center of your brain. Then repeat. Try playing around with longer working blocks.
4. Create a Must-Do List
Different from your to-do list, this should contain 3 to 5 items that absolutely, no matter what, need to be completed today. You can vary the length of the list based on the heft of the tasks, but the key is to identify which activities are non-negotiable. Tell yourself that you can’t leave work or even go to bed until they are done.
There are a few reasons this works so well. First, the commitment to yourself alone is very powerful. No one wants to let themselves down. Second, human nature is to avoid pain. If you don’t want to work all night, you’ll put the pressure on yourself to ramp up your productivity during the day. Your Must-Do list will serve as an anchor to stay focused on your priorities when you’re tempted to stray.
How do you make the most out of your day? Share your favorite productivity tips with Cydcor on social media!
Shirley Levine was an incredible educator that I had the pleasure to work with and learn from. She once asked some teachers, “What is your job?”
The teachers responded, “Teach the kids.”
Shirley said, “That is not it.”
The teachers responded with, “Educate the kids,” and similar concepts.
Shirley said, “That is not it either.”
After a while, when the teachers were perplexed, she said, “Your job is to get the kids to learn. There is a big difference. If your job is to teach, once you deliver your great lesson, you are done. If your job is to get them to learn, you are not done after the lesson. You are only done when they learn the material. Also, kids can learn a variety of ways. They can learn on their own, from their peers, from a book.”
I frequently need to remind myself of this concept. I too often get into teaching mode. My eldest daughter reminded me of this hearing me go over one of my presentations. She thought it was bad. I asked why. She said, “I felt like you were talking at me, not involving me. Millennials like to be involved to learn.”
After the initial shock of her dissatisfaction with a presentation I have given for over 25 years, I remembered this quote frequently attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”
Did Benjamin Franklin know about millennials 250 years ago? Or, is it always that we learn best when we are involved? It is much easier to teach than find a way to involve. But who wants easy?
Gary Polson is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Cydcor, the market leader in outsourced sales. With more than 25 years of business operations experience in accounting, legal and senior management, Gary has propelled Cydcor to unprecedented achievement with clients, culture and philanthropy since 2001. Under his leadership, Cydcor has increased its revenue more than six-fold since 2001 and has been recognized as “…the most respected sales outsourcing company in the world” by Datamonitor and The Black Book of Outsourcing, and one of the “Best Places to Work” by the Los Angeles Business Journal for eight consecutive years. Gary’s passion for excellence and never-satisfied approach has led Cydcor to earn both industry and employer recognition. With Gary at its helm, Cydcor has built its reputation on maintaining long term relationships with clients by consistently delivering results and by going above and beyond to help Cydcor’s clients gain market share and grow.
If you’re serious about advancing your career, you have to be willing to take massive action—there’s no way around it. Top performers in any industry are those who know how to push themselves. They are constantly seeking out a new competitive edge, looking for ways to up their game and achieve the next level of results.
Whether you are just beginning your career and want to get off to a strong start, or you are a seasoned veteran looking to kick things up a notch, it’s all about the willingness to take action and put the pedal to the metal. While there will always be factors outside of your control, the ability to be proactive will ultimately determine how far you'll advance in your career and how fast you get there.
1. Don’t wait to shine
A shocking number of professionals fail to reach their full potential because they’re waiting for the people who got there first to succeed. You might be doing this without even realizing it. If you truly want to advance in your career, get rid of this mentality. Never be afraid to set the pace, even when you’re the newest member of the team.
Are you awesome at what you do? Shine. Can you break a record? Do it. Do you have great ideas? Share them. Want more responsibility? Rise to the occasion. Take action and unleash your talents on the world. Outwork the person who started five years before you. Whatever you do, don’t wait for someone else to get promoted first just because you’re the rookie.
2. Be hyper-strategic about where you take action
If you want to advance your career, it’s time to be smart about what activities deserve your time and attention. Yes, there are likely three-dozen things on your to-do list—that’s why you need to strategize.
Start by asking yourself this question, “What is one specific change that I could make that would elevate my game?” (Hint: if you’re having trouble answering this, schedule a chat with your mentor.) Simply knowing the answer to this one question can bring clarity to your plan of attack.
Once you’ve got your mission, put the blinders on. Take deliberate action to advance the specific goal that you’ve defined. Give your freshest, most valiant effort while you’re still on a full tank by avoiding lower priority tasks until you’ve made satisfactory gains. If you catch yourself sending your valuable resources in the wrong direction, be sure to pivot quickly!
3. Spring clean your life
Now is the perfect time to get impeccably organized. Set aside a weekend to dust away anything extraneous in your day-to-day life. Put away your winter clothes. Go through the files you’ve downloaded to your desktop. Get rid of old voicemails. Finally hit inbox zero—and come up with a system to keep it that way. This might mean skipping your normal Netflix-dedicated Sunday, but it will be worth it. Nothing feels better than having your ducks in a row. By cleaning up and simplifying your world, you will eliminate distractions and clear up space to focus on how to take action to advance your career.
Remember, successful careers aren’t built overnight. Little things add up to big things. Keep working hard and never stop asking yourself how you can up your game. Be so good they can’t ignore you. You have the power to increase the pace at which you advance in your career.
When asked for his advice on how to achieve success, renowned comedian, actor, and writer Steve Martin once said, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” But isn’t that easier said than done? We all want to be good at what we do, but how can you become so good that you stand out from the crowd? And, more specifically, what will you be good at? It’s tempting to say that you’d like to be good at everything you do, but to stand out from the crowd and reach your most ambitious goals, it’s important to figure out what you do uniquely well. Then, you can start to build a game plan for how you will push yourself even farther, so you’re not just good, but great. With work and focus, everyone has the potential to become so good they simply can’t be ignored.
1. Make the Choice
They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Decide to get out of your comfort zone in order to achieve success and stand out from the crowd. Realize that you can accomplish more and choose to be your best in everything you do. Change your mindset toward action and you’ll discover that nobody can motivate you more than you can. Push yourself to work differently or to put yourself in situations you normally wouldn’t—those are the moments when you can truly learn, and more importantly, grow.
2. Play to Your Strengths
Don’t focus outward at your colleagues and wonder why they are so lucky or how things seem to come so easily to them. Instead, focus inward, and ask yourself why nobody sees all the talents you possess. It might because you’re not using your abilities to their fullest. Take advantage of the things you already do well and figure out what it will take to become great and to achieve success. What do you do best, and how will you become better than anyone else at that one thing? How will you make that unique skill or talent your calling card? How will you stand out from the crowd?
3. The Time to Achieve Success is Now
Change is hard, so it might be tempting to drag your feet, but don’t put it off. Waiting will only keep your goals out of reach that much longer. There is no time like the present to start pushing yourself to achieve more. First steps are often the hardest, so getting past that first hurdle might be all you need to start building momentum.
4. Take Control
This works in sales but it also works in life: Don’t waste time wishing for things to be easier. Instead, seek ways to make yourself better and stand out from the crowd. Realize that the direction of your career and your future are in your hands. You have the power to write your own story and decide where it will lead. Be an example to others by actively tackling the obstacles before you and realizing that challenges are really opportunities in disguise.
5. Remove Limiting Beliefs
Stop doubting yourself and giving yourself reasons why you can’t achieve success. There are enough setbacks along the way—there’s no reason to create your own. Be humble and stop letting your ego stand in your way. Realize that you don’t have to have all the answers, and embrace the idea that the journey to discovering those answers can help you acquire the knowledge and skills you’ll need to bring your ambitions to life.
Nobody ever said that achieving success was easy. Becoming the best version of yourself and figuring out what you’d like to be known for and how to stand out from the crowd is going to be work. It’s going to take passion, commitment, and endurance, but the alternative is most likely a career path that won’t take you where you want to go. By taking ownership of your story and your future, embracing your strengths, and committing to the values you hold dear, you can open doors to even your most ambitious aspirations. What’s important is realizing that you have much more power than you think you do. Once you figure out how you will “be so good,” you’ll become someone nobody can forget.
Finding your first job after college can be difficult. You’ve spent a great deal of time working towards your desired career, and you want to get it under way. The problem is that while you have the skills you need, you may not have the real world experience that employers are looking for. That’s why it’s important to weigh all of your options when you are searching for that first job. You may not have considered taking an entry level sales job before, but it is definitely worth investigating. Starting you career in sales can set you up for success in a number of different ways.
Communication
It’s hard to overstate just how important quality communication is. Virtually nothing can be accomplished in business or in life without clear, concise, and considerate communication. You may have the most brilliant idea in the world, one that will help your company out-pace the competition two-to-one. But if you can’t communicate it effectively, it won’t do anyone any good. Landing a first job in sales is an opportunity to hone those vital communication skills. In order to be successful in sales, you need to learn both how to listen to your potential customer and how to vocalize your point of view in a way that the customer can appreciate. Unless you know what the customer needs, and unless they are convinced that you have the solution to their problem, you aren’t going to close the sale.
Time Management
Most entry level sales jobs give you a great deal of flexibility as to how you make the most of your time. And as you get out into the field, it will become evident very quickly that time is a limited and valuable resource. This means that you alone are largely responsible for how you structure and manage your time to achieve maximum results. This is a skill that is critical for success in any professional field, and it will surely serve you well in the future.
Making Your Case
Your potential client isn’t going to seal the deal if they aren’t convinced that you have the right solution. You need to be able to summarize all of the important information and communicate how your service will solve the customer’s problem. You need to be flexible and adaptable in your approach. You need to be able to read your audience and be able to adjust as needed. These skills will come in handy later on, whether you’re selling your next big idea to the board or nailing that opening interview.
Networking
They say it’s not what you know, but rather who you know. The networking that is inherent in an entry level sales job is of great value. By learning how, when, and where to network, you’re both exercising vital business skills and creating the framework from which you’re future network will grow. You will be in contact with seasoned professionals that you may be able to enlist as mentors or supporters as you pursue your goals. You’ll connect with peers who will help to keep you informed about changes in the business. The networking that in inherent to the sales field will help you master the critical art of relationship building, which is foundational to almost any business transaction.
Negotiating
With a first job in sales, you will learn quickly that everything is a negotiation. In business and in life, moving forward often comes down to resolving the differences between conflicting parties and opinions, and that is the essence of negotiation. Since achieving success as a salesperson demands that you learn to become adept at negotiating, that skill will become an advantage you can use to get ahead in any number of future pursuits.
Goal Setting
Because your success with an entry level sales job is determined by how much effort you put in, goal setting and follow-through become vital. It puts you in a decision making position that requires your self-discipline and focus be consistently outstanding. With that skill set readily at your fingertips, you’ll be far ahead of your competition in any field. You will learn how to drive your own success and hold yourself accountable.
Grit
Setbacks and obstacles are unavoidable. Everyone encounters them from time to time. The important part is how you deal with the situation. It’s easy to get discouraged and get off track if you allow yourself to be overly affected. Salespeople know, however, how to get right back up and keep going. That doggedness and determination will be a valuable asset no matter where your career takes you. In situations where others may falter, you will thrive.
Leadership
If your first job is in sales, there is a very good chance that it will be the first opportunity you have to exercise your leadership skills in a professional setting. By taking the lead on a team or taskforce, you will have the opportunity to discover what your personal leadership style looks like. You will learn first-hand what motivates you and your team. You will understand how to empower your team to achieve their goals. Every profession needs leaders, and you’ll be ready to step up to the challenge.
Clearly, there are a number of benefits to working in sales, especially when you take an entry level sales job right out of school. When a potential employer sees that your first job was in sales, and that you excelled, they know exactly who they are hiring. There will be no doubt that you are a resilient, capable asset who will undoubtedly see any task through to completion.
Congratulations! Your college career is coming to a close and the future is exciting, but it can also be a little intimidating. Everyone’s either looking for a job or has one lined up, and the college-to-career transition might feel like a race. But the truth is, everyone’s path and pace are different, and finding success after college is about exploring opportunities and discovering where you’d like your journey to lead.
Nobody is ever fully prepared for life after college, but what it takes to succeed remains the same: focus, determination, and confidence. Below are Cydcor’s quintessential tips for success after college.
#1 Have a Focus
Landing your dream job takes time and dedication, but it helps to know where to focus your efforts. To land a job you'll love, research companies whose values align with yours, or where you can learn and grow into that position. When you know your career path, you can focus all your energy on impressing potential employers.
#2 Establish your Personal Brand
Your social media profiles say a lot to recruiters about who you are. Check them for anything you wouldn’t want to come up in an interview, and if you’re not on LinkedIn, make a profile and introduce yourself. LinkedIn allows anyone to self-publish, so seize the opportunity establish your expertise with an informative blog post. Join relevant discussion groups, and instead of asking people where they work, expand the conversation and ask how they got there. You might learn a different approach to landing your dream job and gain a reference who will put in a good word for you when you apply.
#3 Build a Winning Resume
A great resume can be a make-it-or-break-it tool for landing a great post-graduate job. When writing your resume, get plenty of feedback from friends, family, and another professionals in the field, and use language similar to what’s in the job description. Most companies use online resume checkers to filter out job applications based on certain keywords and phrases.
#4 Start Somewhere
When you find a job that interests you and has upward mobility, apply. It might not be your dream job, but landing a job is the first and most important step to getting there. You’ll gain real-world experience and chip away at student debt, but not at the expense of your dreams. It’s also easier to get a job when you have a job.
#5 Keep Learning
Yes, you just spent the last two decades learning and a lot of it wasn’t interesting. But, you also learned how to learn. Take advantage of your student mentality and learn more about what interests you and how to improve your skills. Read blogs about industries that fascinate you and seek out a professional mentor through your alumni network. Did you really enjoy an elective class that was totally outside your major? Look online or at a community college for more specialized classes, sharpen your skills, and turn it into a career. Life after college is all about applying what we know.
The reality is the world probably changed a lot while you were in college: new jobs that you haven’t dreamed of emerged, workplace culture norms evolved, and a job market with different expectations emerged. But don’t let that stop you from diving in. There’s no telling what twists and turns your career might take, but what’s important is to keep growing, keep going, and embrace the journey. Congratulations, and welcome to post-college life! Things may be different now, but if you’re open to them, exciting opportunities are around every corner.
There are only so many hours in a day, and you only have so many resources at your command. Luckily, there are a number of productivity tips you can embrace in order to get more done. Learn how to save time, increase productivity, and take control of your day. Incorporating these five productivity hacks into your routine can make all the difference in achieving your goals.
It’s fairly common knowledge that it is vital to create long term goals for yourself, to give yourself something to strive for. What you may not have considered is that giving yourself a deadline to work against can actually improve productivity! If there is an end date you need to have a project completed by, it’s much harder for you to procrastinate.
To get an early jump on your day, start planning for it the evening before. You should examine your schedule for the upcoming day to start planning out how you are going to organize work hours. Do all of your appointments make sense as they are scheduled? Do you have any materials you need to review ahead of time?
Set aside blocks of time to make phone calls or to complete tasks between meetings. Once you have the general shape of your day mapped out, write out your to-do list for the day. Capture all the important tasks that you want to complete the next day and rank them by level of priority. Choose your outfit and set it aside. You may even want to take 15 minutes and make your lunch ahead of time. That way you can get up and go immediately without any lost time.
It’s easy to get caught up in the mentality of working wherever and whenever you can manage to. Time management and being productive when you're working from home is just as important as workplace productivity. While a stop at the coffee shop to knock out a few items on the to-do list may be helpful, it’s important for you to make your home workspace your own.
Start by decluttering your space. A space free of clutter sets the appropriate mental tone to maintain your focus. This should also help to minimize distractions that may take you off task. Consider using a program to block social media and other websites where you like to spend personal time. It can be really easy to get lost in your friends’ vacation pictures when you should be taking care of business.
The first thing many of us do when we wake up is check our email. Don’t! Break yourself of this time draining habit. Stay on top of your correspondence, yes, but don’t let it dictate your schedule. Part of learning how to increase productivity is to taking control of your time. Set aside a predetermined amount of time early in the day to address emails. Start with the most critical ones, and work downwards by level of importance. If you don’t get to a lower priority email during your allotted time, it can wait until later in the day after you have completed your most crucial tasks.
You may be tempted to go full force without stopping to achieve your daily goals. However, in order to be more productive overall, MIT Senior Lecturer Bob Pozen suggests that a bit of a break allows your brain the opportunity to take advantage of one of our body’s built-in productivity hacks. That time lets your brain switch modes so it can actually process and organize all the information that has been flowing through it.
Try setting aside a period of time once a week for to conduct a review of all of your activity from the previous week. This can give you the opportunity to clean up any lingering action items, get up to date on your progress towards your goals, and gives you some time to think creatively about how you want to invest your energy going forward. Giving yourself space to breathe and collect yourself is an important step in learning how to increase productivity in a sustainable manner.
In order to truly master your life and your time, it’s important to stay focused on what you need to do and how you need to do it. These productivity hacks will help you master your own potential and stay in the present moment. Practice them every day, and soon you will be unstoppable!
Everyone knows that “Coffee’s for closers,” but sales and marketing professionals take extra special pride in knowing all the best movie and TV sales quotes inside and out. Test your quote IQ with this quiz, featuring quotes from all your favorite movies and TV shows about business, sales, and marketing, and find out how you rate against the competition.
By Dwight Coates, Chief Information Officer | Cydcor
Building a department’s strategy, holding meetings, and orchestrating the delivery of technology to our business are not the only ways people can build leadership skills. In fact, one of the most effective ways for team members to learn critical leadership skills is by helping others. There is a myriad of benefits to volunteering. Volunteering takes team members out of their everyday routines and out of the office environment. It shakes up typical work groups, team structure, and processes and it challenges team members to think differently, look to each other for input and guidance, and unite behind a shared purpose. While volunteering, team members aren’t focused on getting ahead; they are focused on completing tasks, overcoming obstacles, and accomplishing goals—which is exactly why community service projects are such powerful teaching experiences.
1.Volunteers Connect with the Whys of Life: While serving others or working on behalf of the environment, volunteering can remind team members of their own values and help them reflect on the things that are most important to them. This process helps build more empathetic future leaders, and encourages team members to engage their hearts, not just their minds, in their work. It also helps team members see the bigger picture, to realize that thier work can have an impact far beyond any single project.
2. Enables Networking: Volunteering can have an equalizing effect, mixing high-level executives with employees fresh out of college. These volunteer activities give employees the opportunity to break out of their typical work circles and meet people from whom they may be able to learn valuable leadership skills or who may be able to offer support to help them grow their careers. While volunteering, team members often form lasting friendships and partnerships.
3. Teaches the Importance of Having a Vision: When teams volunteer, they unite behind a shared vision and commit, as a team, to shared goals. Because the stakes are often so high, it is easy to create alignment within the team, and team members can see how that level of alignment can pay off in the form of rapid results. When people band together behind ideas and trust in a single vision, it is astounding how much they can accomplish, and this experience can translate back to how a team works together on behalf of company goals as well.
4.Volunteer Work Energizes: When employees are stressed, doing work that benefits others, the community, or the planet releases endorphins and lifts spirits better than any sports game or team wine night. Volunteering reinvigorates overworked employees, reignites their passion for their work, repairs bonds between team members, and makes them more efficient and productive by challenging them to solve new kinds of problems and follow different processes.
5.Trains Great Mentors: As volunteers, team members benefit by offering guidance and support to each other in different ways than they might as part of their everyday role.Volunteer work gives team members a voice who may not always have one, and allows them to step up and show leadership skills and benefits they can offer the team that may not be as easy to recognize while at the office.
6.Exposes Employees to Other Cultures and Other Ways of Working: While volunteering, teams may have to follow new systems or processes than they do as part of their daily work, and this helps to challenge their thinking and adaptability. Team members are sometimes also asked to work with people who come from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds, and this helps team members learn new skills and improve their abilities to bridge communication gaps and relate to others regardless of differences.
7. Fosters Collaboration: Volunteering encourages partnerships between those who may not normally work together. While participating in philanthropy projects with my teams, I often intentionally assign employees to tasks that force them to work alongside team members they’re not used to working with to help bridge those communication gaps and force employees to break through barriers to find solutions together.
Besides the leadership skills volunteering imparts, spending time helping others can change the way team members feel about their work. Employees want to work for organizations that stand for something, and showing a dedication to service may help to improve employees’ outlook on the company as a whole, which may support team member retention. An additional benefit of volunteering includes strengthened bonds between team members, helping them to function better as a team and produce better results. Community service and philanthropy, beyond their clear benefit to the community, are invaluable team member development experiences that no department head should overlook as you strive to help your people be their best.
Dwight Coates, Chief Information Officer, Cydcor
Dwight Coates is the technology driver for Cydcor’s customer relationship management solutions. With more than two decades of leadership experience, Dwight has had the opportunity to see, first-hand the impact community service activities can have on IT and other professional teams as they work together to achieve outstanding results.
What do you call an accomplishment that isn’t preceded by a set of goals?
A lucky break!
Setting goals is an essential stepping stone leading to any achievement. Goals set direction, allow you to maintain focus, and reflect a reachable destination. But be careful: If you make those stepping stones too slippery with misdirected purpose or too far apart with unrealistic expectations, you won’t get any closer to your dream. In fact, you may fall off the path completely. Here’s a list of common goal setting mistakes—and how to avoid them.
Don't be Unrealistic
While goals should certainly be challenging and effortful to achieve, they should not be completely out of the realm of possibility. For instance, you might set the goal to complete a marathon. On the way to pursuing that goal, however, you need to ramp up your endurance in increments. Attempting to run 26.2 miles without properly training is just setting yourself up for failure. Rather, plan a training schedule that will get you in optimum shape for the race. As motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said, “A goal properly set is halfway reached.”
Don't Overlook the Details
Have a bigger plan. If you’re setting goals to get promoted to manager by next year, there are probably many things you need to accomplish to make that happen, not just one. Think of your goals as part of a larger plan, not just arbitrary numbers. Seeking to become an author? Start by writing shorter pieces, investigating the publishing process, joining a writer’s group, and taking the steps for bigger success.
Don't Give Up After a Few Setbacks
Remember that failures are essential to growth and success. Anything worth accomplishing will probably come with its fair share of hurdles. The key to avoiding this goal setting mistake is how you handle those setbacks and the lessons you take from them.
Don't Stifle Your Passion
Set goals that you truly care to reach. Setting goals is personal, and you shouldn’t set goals solely based on what other people want or expect of you. Accept advice from well-meaning people, but avoid adopting their views as your own without doing some real soul searching. To achieve a significant goal, you’ll need ample passion and commitment, and that comes from setting goals you care about.
Don't Ignore the Journey While Focusing on the End Result
Remember that goals aren’t just about where you end up—they are also about the growth you experience along the way. If you are not paying attention to the progress you’re making against your goal, you could be left scrambling at the last minute—another recipe for failure.
Don't Overfill Your Plate
Setting an abundance of goals can sap your energy. While you want to make sure you’re focusing on all the right things, trying to achieve too many different things within the same period of time can feel scattershot and unfocused. Instead of making this goal setting mistake, and taking on seven or eight goals and then struggling to juggle them, hone in on three or four big goals and crush them.
As best-selling author Seth Godin says, “Everybody has their own Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.” So while you aim high, keep this list of DON’Ts close to keep you grounded. Soon, you will find yourself reaching new heights. If you set challenging goals that are right-sized, you will be well on your way to achieving your dreams.