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It’s easy to get so caught up in the flow of things that we don’t pause to see the bigger picture. This is where tracking specific aspects of our life can be highly useful. It’s a way of being more mindful of how our daily actions connect to our larger vision. When we track things, we’re able to look at our actions from a different perspective, consider their cumulative impact, and make adjustments where needed to stay on track. While I’m not suggesting that you start rigorously tracking your every move, here are a few places it may be worth gathering some data:

Progress

Tracking your progress is an incredibly powerful tool. It’s an important way for us to evaluate the efficacy of our actions. When we see forward progress, it can serve as a great motivation for us to continue striving. When we see progress stall, it’s a sign that we may need to check in. ‘Progress’ is quite a general idea, so, of course, you’d need to customize this to your own goals. What are the things you’re striving for, especially those longer-term aspirations? Ensure that you have a system in place that allows you to measure progress and check in at regular intervals to record your current standing. Not only can this help you to stay motivated and make changes when needed, but it can also help you make important connections with other areas in your life. If you notice that progress slowed significantly in the winter months, for example, it’s worth looking into what else happened at that time. What is a lull in business that was out of your control? Were your energy levels and drive impacted by the change of season? We can learn a great deal about the way we work by tracking our progress and regularly reviewing the data.

Habits

Another great area to track is your habits. The effects of these small, repetitive actions can be significant. If we want to supercharge our success, we need to harness that power. Identify the habits in your life that are moving you closer to your goals, or define a couple of new habits you want to incorporate. Then devise a system to track these. A simple list where you can mark each day whether you did the activity or not works great. This is especially useful when trying to incorporate new habits. It forces us to bring our attention to our habits each day and ensure they’re supporting our success, not detracting from it. You might include bad habits you’re trying to break so you can see how often you still engage in them, and you can include newer habits to see how well they’re sticking.

How You Spend Your Time

Tracking your time is more of a time-bound experiment than a process I’d recommend continuing indefinitely. Mark off a couple of days or an entire week where you plan to track your every minute. It’s time intensive, but the insights you gain at the end can be powerful. Any time you pause or change activities, you note it in your log. If you spend 10-minutes talking to a coworker or two hours working on a project, it all makes the list. At the end of the tracking period, you can evaluate the way you use your time. How strong are your time-management skills? Are there certain distractions that are slowing your productivity? Are you spending your time in the areas that are most important to you? How does your work-life balance look? Getting an overview like this is so valuable. Again, this isn’t something I’d recommend as a continued habit. It’s an experiment you may do once or twice a year to check in on how you spend your time.

 

Knowledge is power. The more you understand about yourself and the way you work, the better you can set yourself up for success. Tracking specific areas of our lives gives us a unique opportunity to see the progression of our actions over time and to evaluate if changes need to be made. Are there other aspects of your life you think are useful to track? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

For me, rituals are a step above habits. They often have a deeper significance in our lives, and thus their effects can be even more powerful. A habit tends to be about the action itself, while a ritual has meaning outside of that action as well. Habits can also often be unintentional, for better or worse. Rituals, though, are a more active and conscious parts of our lives. We specifically create them ourselves to provide some benefit to ourselves. While rituals are often associated with spiritual or religious practices, they certainly don’t need to be. Professionals can find great benefit in creating rituals of their own to support their success. Here are a few ideas:

Meditation

Having a daily ritual of meditation can have powerful effects in multiple areas of our lives. There’s no one way to perform this ritual. You design what works for you. Perhaps it’s ten minutes in the morning before you leave your room, maybe it’s a five-minute guided meditation at lunch, or maybe it’s a longer practice in the evening. When you make time for meditation, you engage in a ritual that lowers stress, promotes mental clarity, and helps you better connect with who you are and what you want. There’s no doubt that ambitious professionals can benefit from all of this.

Movement

Like meditation, regular movement can also keep stress low. And it can take a different shape for everyone. From a simple loop around the block to a more challenging workout, the only requirement is getting your body moving. In addition to supporting lower stress, regular movement can also help us raise and sustain our energy levels and make us feel more confident. By making it a daily ritual, you establish it as something you can rely on. You create something consistent so that its effects can permeate your day-to-day.

Gratitude

In the last few years, there have been countless studies on the benefits of gratitude. From elevated mood and lower stress to better sleep and stronger connections, the list of benefits is a long one. It’s easy to think that we’re being grateful, but creating some ritual around this can help ensure we stick with it, even on the most challenging days. The great part about creating a gratitude ritual is that you can design something that takes just a couple minutes. It doesn’t need to take up an hour of your day to make an impact. Starting or ending your day with a list of things you’re grateful for can be enough for you to see the positive effects.

What Do You Need?

As I mentioned above, the idea of a ritual is that the action has a purpose beyond itself. So, reflect on what you need in your own professional life. Do you need to manage your stress, increase your confidence, improve your mood, build your network? Think of the things you want to cultivate in your own life, and then find a ritual or two to support them. There’s no one size fits all here, and for rituals to be most beneficial, they should be tailor-made by you, for you. Getting inspiration from others is great, but you should ensure these practices fit your needs and lifestyle so that you’re more apt to stick with them.

 

 

We often respect rituals a bit more than we do habits, with the classification implying a certain level of importance. For professionals who want to give themselves a boost, looking to rituals as a strategy to help them do so is a great option. What do you think about the role of rituals in our lives? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

When we look at the top professionals across industries, one thing they seem to have in common is energy. They’re able to accomplish a great deal every day without working themselves to burnout. They move confidently and consistently in the direction of their goals. And sure, it’s easy to be energized when you set a new goal or start a new project, but the real key here is maintenance. It’s one thing to generate the energy, but how do you sustain it? If we want to continue growing in our careers and expanding our success, I believe this is a question we need to ask ourselves. The more I explore this question for myself, the more I figure out the strategies that work for me. While maintaining energy may look a bit different from person to person, here are some important areas that may help:

Goals

We need to stay energized to reach our goals. We need to have the capacity to keep pushing forward even when we’ve been striving for months and the end is still out of reach. But instead of just requiring energy, goals can also generate energy. While most of us are familiar with that initial burst of energy when setting out on a new goal, it’s the rest of the process we really need to focus on. How can we use goals here to maintain energy? By creating smaller goals along the way. Instead of just fixating on one distant endpoint, you can create smaller goals that feel within reach that will push you closer. When we do this, we create that initial boost of energy from setting a new goal, and we also create an additional boost when we achieve it. This technique of using smaller goals to build the path towards a larger one can provide a steady source of fuel while you strive.

Inspiration

We also create energy through inspiration. When we get excited about something, we naturally feel more energized. If you’ve been in the same position for years, it can be easy to slip into a rut. If you stop introducing yourself to new ideas and experiences, it’s no wonder inspiration will start to diminish. Professionals need to be proactive here. It’s usually much more challenging to get inspired when you’re already feeling burnt out. Instead, work to maintain a steady connection to sources of inspiration. Whether that’s through engaging podcasts, innovative blogs, taking classes, or any other way of taking in new information. Keeping your mind active and engaged in this way creates a powerful support for sustained energy.

Community

Who do you surround yourself with? And how do they impact your identity? We’ve likely all been around people who can drain us. We may even enjoy spending time with them, but at the end, we tend to feel exhausted. This is just something to be cautious of so that it doesn’t start to take a real toll. Set boundaries where you need to. Just as much as unenergized people can bring our energy levels down, high-energy people can bring our energy levels up. Surround yourself with people who are excited about their work, who commit to their goals, who strive for more, and who like putting in the work. Creating this type of a community is an important way for professionals to protect and maintain their energy.

Recharge

Maintaining energy doesn’t mean ignoring what you need. If you’re feeling exhausted, listen to that. If you notice your energy levels declining, investigate. To maintain a sustainable level of energy that will fuel a successful career, we need to know how to recharge. This often means having a few techniques in place you can fall back on when energy is low. Sometimes this might look like an unplugged weekend where you catch up on rest, while other times it might look like going for a run or taking a trip somewhere new. We all recharge in different ways, and it’s smart to have a variety of strategies to turn to when you need to recharge.

 

To achieve sustainable, long-term success, we need a sustainable source of energy. We need to invest in learning how to generate and protect that energy so that it can fuel forward progress. How do you stay energized in your work, especially at more challenging times? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Our digital devices are meant to be tools to make our lives better. But too often, the tables turn without our fully realizing. Instead of supporting our success, our devices start adding to our stress. This is why digital detoxes have become so popular. It’s a way for people to take back control from the technology in their day-to-day lives. The more we learn, the more we realize much of this technology was designed to be addictive. And even though it may feel like a necessity for work, it’s often in overdrive. Getting rid of all things digital for good, of course, isn’t the goal. Instead, the goal is to give our minds a break from the constant connection and to put technology back into our lives in an intentional way after the detox. Let’s take a closer look:

What?

Fairly self-explanatory, a digital detox is a set period of time where you completely disconnect from all technology. No social media, no checking email, no texting, no screens.

Why?

There are so many reasons to try a digital detox. First, this experience can give you some great insight into how technology fits into your life. Just notice how you feel in the first few hours without a device. Many people find themselves anxious, restless, and uncomfortable. It’s worth observing how you respond here.

 

Next, technology is a major source of stress for many of us. It keeps us constantly plugged into our work, making it difficult to find a healthy work-life balance. Chronically high stress levels aren’t good for us on multiple levels, and stress tends to breed more stress. By eliminating so many stressors, you give your body and mind a chance to relax and recharge. Coming back to your work with lower stress levels tends to mean greater productivity, focus, and enjoyment.

 

Another area where technology can be sabotaging our success is our sleep. When we’re not well rested we can’t perform at our best. And so much screen time, as well as the stress connected to it, often prevents us from getting a good night’s rest. There’s no surprise that we work better on adequate sleep.

 

Then there’s the aspect of what we’re actually doing with our technology and how that affects our thinking. For some, being on social media causes a comparison effect with other professionals that makes them dissatisfied with their own progress. For others, the constant stimulation reduces creativity thinking and problem-solving skills. When you think about how much time many of us spend in front of a screen, there’s no doubt that this is having some impact on the way we think.

How?

If you’re interested in giving your brain a chance to detox from all the tech, I highly recommend it. The good news is you can design the detox yourself. There’s no one right way to do it. For many, a great place to start is a weekend detox. Block off your next Saturday and Sunday to be completely screen free. The key is simply unplugging from all tech for the entire time.

 

 

What do you think? Have you tried a digital detox? Do you feel like you need one? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Sometimes, it can feel like our days are pushing us further and further away from being fully present. Many people live in a chronically busy state, and the average person likely has a lengthy to-do list when thinking about work, family, social, and personal commitments. We’re often so focused on future goals and past numbers that the present doesn’t get much of our attention. Unfortunately, this can lead to stress, burnout, and lower levels of happiness more generally. Need a bit more motivation to stay in the present? Here are some key benefits of slowing down and being more mindful:

Work More Efficiently

Our thoughts are often one of our major sources of distraction. It’s so easy to get caught up reflecting on past events or planning for future ones. When we’re doing this while also trying to work on whatever is in front of us, it can significantly slow down our efficiency. An effort to be more present includes paying attention to these kinds of thoughts. It’s not that we’re aiming to get rid of them altogether; sometimes they’re a key aspect of what we’re focusing on. Presence helps us to pay more attention to our thoughts. When you’re intentionally looking to the future to set a goal or plan for a project, that’s great. But when those thoughts are pulling you out of something you’re trying to focus on now, you’ll have a greater awareness of them, and it will be easier to bring your attention back to where you are.

Combat Stress

Often, the past- and future-oriented thoughts we get caught up in can be stress inducing. We obsess over a past mistake or worry about a future failure. This kind of negative thinking pulls us from the present moment, lowers or motivation, and increases stress. The average workday is challenging enough without bringing in all these additional stressors. When you start to feel stress levels rising, try focusing on your current reality. What’s around you, how does your physical body feel, and where do you want to be focusing your attention? This can help you stay in control of your stress.

Make Stronger Connections

We’ve all had a meeting with someone who was physically present but mentally seemed to be elsewhere. Maybe we’ve even been that person ourselves at times. Whether it’s only partly listening to what the other person is saying or occasionally glancing at your phone during a conversation, these things can have a significant impact on the connection you’re able to make. When you make the effort to be completely present in your conversations, you’ll gain more value from them, and you’ll make the people you talk with feel heard and appreciated.

Take Control of Your Time

I read about a great strategy for thinking about how we can be more present in the way we spend our time. Rather than racing through your day going from task to task, how can we be more present in our workflow, especially when we have competing priorities? A great way to bring some presence into your planning is to frame it as, ‘I’m saying no to this so I can do this’. It might be a positive motivation to stay focused: “I’m saying no to going on social media so that I can efficiently complete this project”; or maybe it brings you some clarity: “I’m saying no to dinner with my family so that I can stay late at the office again”. If the statement you make doesn’t feel right to you, you have the opportunity to make a change.

 

Take just ten to twenty seconds right now to bring your attention to where you’re at. Maybe you take a few deep breaths, look around you, stand up and stretch, and notice where your thoughts have been. Regularly bringing your attention back to the present in this way can be a great tool for professionals to increase focus and productivity while decreasing stress and unhealthy habits. What are your thoughts on staying present throughout your day? Please share them with us.

Your happiness at work matters. It’s connected to your energy levels and motivation, your ability to prevent burnout, your productivity, and many other areas. There’s no doubt that most of us can have stressful days, but when that becomes chronic, it can really start to impact your success. The good news is that there are plenty of small changes we can make that will often give our happiness levels a boost. Here are a few of my favorite tips:

Change Things Up

Whether you have the flexibility to work from a new location or you simply adjust your desk set-up, creating a physical change in your space can help things feel fresh. It’s also worth considering your workflow here. Maybe there are tasks you usually do in the afternoon that you could try doing in the morning. Especially if you’re feeling like you’re in a rut, creating some change is a great way to get things moving and bring in a bit more positivity.

Create Rewards

It’s simple but effective; especially when it comes to those tasks you don’t enjoy as much as others. Rewarding yourself for accomplishing something sends a signal to your brain, and that can be an instant mood booster. It might be as simple as finishing a project and taking a five-minute walk, or working through your whole to-do list and picking up your favorite food after work. Though small, when we set these actions up as rewards, we’re creating little bursts of happiness throughout the day.

Listen to Some Tunes

Not every type of work will be fitting for this of course, but often, we have some type of task that doesn’t require our listening. Those projects that need powerful focus, for example, are a great time to take out the headphones. Finding lyric-free tunes to create a background for your work is a great way to enjoy your focused time a bit more. If you have a task that really doesn’t require much focus, throw on your favorite tunes; just remember that lyrics can often disrupt our concentration.

Stay Hydrated

Having a reusable water bottle at work is a game-changer. If we’re waiting until we’re thirsty to get a drink of water, we’re likely a bit dehydrated, and that can have a real impact on mood and performance. Keeping your water bottle nearby throughout your day is a great reminder to stay hydrated as you work.

Take a Moving Break

Many of us feel happier after moving. Whether you have time for an actual workout or just a few stretches at your desk, pausing to move is a simple strategy to recharge your mood, energy, and focus.

Start a Gratitude Practice

It might be coworkers who love to complain or some particularly tedious work. Whatever the cause, it’s easy to slip into a negative mindset about our work from time to time. A gratitude practice is a quick way to combat that. Creating a list of a few things you’re grateful for in your work when you first get to the office can be a nice way to start the day, or leaving on a good note and doing this before your leave can be great too. Test it out and see which works for you.

 

Who wouldn’t like to be a bit happier at work, even if you already love your job? What I like about these strategies is that they’re all simple enough to start today. Don’t let their small size fool you though. These actions can have a significant impact on your happiness.

A concept that has interested me lately is simplicity. I keep coming back to this idea in numerous aspects of my work and realizing what real value it holds. In a world where it’s so easy to feel information-overload, simplicity can almost feel like a luxury. Rather than a luxury though, I’ve started thinking of it as a strategy. Here are just a few areas of my work in which simplicity has had a positive effect:

Environment

Both our physical and mental environments have the potential to be highly distracting. By working to simplify the spaces we inhabit, be that our office or our thoughts, can help free up wasted space and redirect our focus. In many ways, simplicity is about removing the unnecessary and getting rid of excess. Take a look around your office, your inbox, and your thoughts. Are there things that are getting your attention that don’t really need it? Often, as we simplify these spaces, we feel a reduction not only in distractions but in stress as well.

Brand

What does it mean to simplify your brand? To me, it’s clarifying your message. When you prioritize a simple, streamlined message, it’s often more effectively communicated. Though we tend to establish our brands and go on to other things, it’s worthwhile to return and check in every now and then to see if there are any tune-ups needed. Approaching your brand with this idea of simplicity is a great way to assess. Sure, keeping the images like your logo and photos simple is often useful, but even more important is making sure your message is being heard loud and clear.

Processes

Similar to our brand, our processes tend to be things we think a lot about when we’re establishing them, but once we’re accustomed to using them, we don’t always take the time to reevaluate. Simplicity motivated me to revisit my systems and processes and ask where could I streamline. How could I be more efficient? Especially when you’re working with clients, simplifying the process can be a real boost to the overall client experience you provide.

Goals

Simplifying your goals doesn’t mean lowering your ambitions. For me, it’s more the idea of ditching any ambiguity or confusion around them. It’s about ensuring the goals you set out to achieve are truly of interest to you and not just driven by external pressures. And it’s about keeping the process to achieve them as streamlined as possible.

 

Don’t get me wrong, details and complexities are important elements of most professionals’ work. But what I’ve realized more and more lately is that simplicity is such a necessary and valuable balance to that. In fact, the more I simplify, the better I can attend to those details and complexities that are important, without being distracted by superfluous noise.

For many of us, our workdays include a hefty amount of screen time. Whether you’re crunching numbers, building a website, or reading emails, most professionals find themselves sitting in front of a screen for at least a portion of their day. So, if most of your work takes place inside, how can spending time in the natural world impact your success? For many of us, there are multiple ways in which it can be beneficial. Whether you live near the woods or ocean, or you have a small park in your town, carving out some time in your schedule to spend outside can help you be more efficient and effective in your work. Here’s how:

Increase Energy

When we spend time in nature, we’re often moving. Whether walking, jogging, or swimming, that movement is a great way to cultivate some energy. Even simply breathing in the fresh air can have a positive effect. Getting active can help you generate a sustainable energy that’s more reliable than the ephemeral burst you might get from a cup of coffee.

De-Stress

Getting outside is also a great way to de-stress. Stress hinders our productivity and can push us towards burnout. There’s no getting around the fact that many of us have stressful work environments, at least from time to time, so finding a way to balance that out is key. Taking a brief walk in the woods, for example, can help you detach from the cycle of work-stress and allow you to return to your work feeling calmer and more focused.

Make Space for Creativity

In addition to reducing stress, spending time in nature can also increase creativity. When you get outside and observe the things around you, you can often clear your mind and boost your mood. This helps us to better use our more creative side of the brain. Whether you consider your work to be creative or not, most professionals can benefit from a boost in creative thinking. You might be developing a new marketing campaign or facing a challenging problem, for example. In these situations, accessing your creative thinking skills can help you find the best results.

Find Balance

There are so many hobbies we can do outside. While it can be a bit more challenging in the winter months depending on where you live, many of us can still find activities that get us out in the fresh air. Regularly engaging in a hobby is a great way to support a healthy work-life balance. It can help us transition from work to our personal lives or it can simply give us something to focus on outside of our jobs.

 

Spending more time in nature can be an unconventional way to boost success. From clearing our minds to energizing our bodies, getting outside can help us achieve a more optimal state in which to work. What about you? Do you find that time in nature affects the way you work? How do you make time for this in your schedule? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Whether you’re a team manager, small business owner, remote worker, or nine-to-fiver, having a clear vision of success is important. It’s understandable that we can sometimes get caught up in the day-to-day stresses of work, and our focus narrows to getting through the week. But if we want real success, we need to stay connected to a larger vision of what that looks like. Beyond making it through this challenging week, what is it that we’re really striving for, and why? When you have a clear vision, you create more motivation, determination, and inspiration for yourself. Rather than an elusive idea of success, you identify targets to aim for and accomplishments to reach towards. If you’re wondering if your vision needs some attention, here are some key questions to ask yourself:

Do you have defined goals?

Have you mapped out some things you want to achieve this month, this quarter, this year, or even in the next few years? When we have a clear vision for success, our goals develop more naturally. Our vision informs them and gives them a context. Rather than just striving for a concept of success, you give yourself quantifiable achievements to shoot for. If you can picture what success looks like to you, it’s much easier to break that down into individual goals.

Have you zoomed out?

Many of us focus on professional success, but it’s important we’re also able to connect that to a bigger-picture view as well. How does your professional success fit in with your vision for the other areas of your life? Do they align? Have you identified the things that are important to you both in and out of work? If you want to own your own business in the future, for example, have you thought about how that would impact your hobbies, family, and social life? This isn’t about discouraging yourself from striving for greatness. It’s planning ahead to ensure that your vision is realistic and, most importantly, something you’ll actually enjoy when you achieve it.

Does it excite you?

When you think about your vision for success, how do you feel? If your vision doesn’t excite you, it might be time to revisit it. We should feel inspired by and driven towards our vision. We should be able to picture it in our minds and feel the motivation to move towards it. Sometimes we get distracted from our vision by external demands and pressures. Check in from time to time and ensure that your picture of success is really yours. When you can envision a future you’re eager to create, you’re much more likely to actually do so.

Are you flexible?

We need to regularly come back to our vision for success and ensure it’s still fitting. If at some point we lose that clarity, we need to figure out why. Perhaps our lifestyle has changed, maybe we’re no longer inspired by our earlier vision, maybe what we want has changed. These things are natural. We need to be willing to adjust if our vision gets blurry. Bring it back into focus by making the adjustments you need.

 

Can you envision the life you want to create for yourself? Do you have a picture in your mind of what success looks like? The clearer that image, the better. When you allow that vision to inspire your goals and generate motivation, and you ensure that it fits in with your bigger-picture view, you’re much more likely to bring it into reality.