65 Habits Can Help to Increase Personal Effectiveness

Remember you’re the chief of your life. You need to decide what habits you leave, and from what you will get rid of. Conduct your own experiment to find out what habits are the cause of the very best results for you. What habits increase your effectiveness? Which of them are an obstacle?

Here is a list of 65 habits that could help increase personal effectiveness. Check out these items and see which ones are of interest to you.

1. The daily goal
You shall describe tasks for each day in advance. Decide what you do, then do it. Without a clear focus of your attention, it’s easy to distract on extraneous things.

2. First, the worst
Ending postponement from day to day, learn to make the most unpleasant task first thing in the morning, rather than delaying them for later. This small victory sets the tone for a very fruitful day.

3. Rush hours
Determine your peak periods of productivity, and put your most important task at this time. Work on less important tasks during your off-peak time.

4. Zone of Silence
Allot the blocks of time when you no one can divert you to an independent work, where you have to concentrate. Plan light, interrupted problems on the periods when you are open to communication, and more challenging projects for periods of temporary cessation of communication with the outside world.

5. Interim Report
When you set a task, determine the goal you must reach before you can finish the work. For example, when you write a book, you can decide not to stop until you have at least 1000 words. Smite your goal, whatever it was.

6. Packing time.
Give yourself a period of time – 30 minutes is ideal – to make significant progress in fulfilling the task. Do not worry about how much you can do. Just stay within this time.

7. Grouping
Group similar tasks, such as phone calls or trips together and solve them in one session.

8. Early bird
Get up early in the morning, say at 5 am, and start your most important tasks. Often, you can perform more tasks before 8 am than most people in a whole day.

9. Pyramid
Spend 15 to 30 minutes for light tasks, in order to warm up. Then grasp your most challenging project in a few hours. In the end, finish the other simple tasks in 15-30 minutes to get out of operation.

10. Speed
Deliberately pick up the pace and try to move a little faster than usual. Go faster. Read faster. Type the text faster. Come back home later.

11. Net whim
Lower levels of stress, cultivate relaxation, home and office without confusion and turmoil.

12. Agenda
Prepare a clear, written agenda for the meeting participants. This significantly improves the focus and productivity of the meeting. Just use the agenda for important calls.

13. Pareto Rule
Pareto Principle – 80/20 Rule, which states that 80% of the value of the problem comes from the 20% effort. Concentrate your energy on 20% of the fundamental tasks, and not much strive about 80% of non-critical cases.

14. Ready to hit the target
Break the procrastination from day to day, starting to work immediately after the goal is defined, even if the actions are badly designed. You will always be able to reconcile its course while working.

15. Man-minute
Once you have all the information needed to make a decision, put a timer and give yourself 60 seconds to a final decision. Spend a minute on the display of indecision and doubt around what you want, but in the end, take a clear choice. Once a decision is made, take any action, developing them in the process.

16. Time of execution
Set the period of performance to complete the task and use it as the main focus of the movement, according to the schedule.

17. Promise
Tell others about your commitment, so they can ask you about it.

18. Punctuality
Always come to the meeting early. Punctuality strengthens credibility.

19. Reading in between
Read books and articles while waiting for a meeting, or standing in the queue.

20. The response action
Mentally visualize yourself your goal as if you have already achieved it. Enter yourself in the state of the real presence in that place. Make it a reality in your mind and you’ll soon see it in reality.

21. Awards
Reward yourself for accomplishments. Go to a movie theater, plan a professional massage or spend a day at the amusement park.

22. Priority
Separate the truly important tasks from the merely urgent. Make a list with the tasks of paramount importance in comparison with the tasks that are important but not urgent, such as exercise, writing a book, finding the person with whom you can build a relationship.

23. Continuity

At the end of your working day, determine the first task to which you’ll direct your efforts tomorrow and prepare the necessary information in advance. The next morning, begin immediately to work on the task.

24. Slices and dices
Break complex projects into smaller, clearly defined tasks. Then, focus on implementing only one of these tasks.

25. Dealing with something by one
Once you have started the problem, follow it up to 100% availability. Do not switch from this task to another one in the middle of its execution. When you start to get distracted by something, write down those things that you are distracted by, do these things after you accomplish the task.

26. A blind method

Grasp a totally random piece of the project and finish it. Pay one random bill. Make a phone call. Then select any random piece and repeat.

27. Insanely bad
Destroy perfectionism (striving to achieve excellence in everything), finishing your task in a deliberately awful state, knowing that you’ll never need to share these results with others. Write a post on your blog about the taste of salt,on the design of a disgusting functioning web site, or create a business plan that guarantees failure in the first year.

28. Delegate

Convince someone to do the job for you. Suggest a win-win deal or a reasonable fee.

29. Cross-fertilization
Learn new skills that are not relevant to your work. Study martial arts, learn foreign languages or learn to play chess. You will often encounter ideas in one area, that can speed up your progress in other areas.

30. Intuition
Proceed according to your inner instinct. Perhaps it is right.

31. Optimization.
Identify the processes that you use most of the time and describe them in stages. Modify them on paper for better productivity and then implement and test your improved processes. Sometimes we can’t see what is in front of us, until we examine it under a microscope.

32. Ultraslow
Oblige yourself to work on a project that is particularly disgusting in just 15 minutes. Disassemble one small shelf. Clean the ten items of clothing that you do not need. Write a few paragraphs. Then stop and wait for the next week.

33. Daily newspaper
Schedule a specific time each day to work on a specific task or habit. One hour a day can lead you to a healthier body, a complete book or website that generates revenue.

34. Additional devices
Form a new habit, adding the task to one of your existing habits. Water the plant, after you have dined. Send thank-you note after checking the mail.

35. Modules
Put one task in the middle of another one. Read while eating (bad for the eyes – translator’s note). Make phone calls while driving. Listen to audio programs while shopping in a store.

36. Gratitude
When someone has done a friendly service to you, send him a card with gratitude. Printed, not taken from the Internet. This rarely happens and it remains in memory, and the people you thank, will endeavor to provide you more options.

37. Training
Practice your skills in a variety of productive habits. Increase your skill set on your computer up to 60 words per minute. Learn speed reading. Improve your communication skills.

38. Disclaimer
Just say no to requests for your time of no paramount importance. If people get offended about this, so be it.

39. Pick up time
Use the time spent in vain by other people in your favor. Mentally visualize a goal during their stupid conversations. Make a list for shopping in the store during a meaningless meeting.

40. Head

Explain to a few people your most difficult problems and ask them for advice, feedback and constructive criticism that you can overpower.

41. Twenty
On a sheet of paper write down twenty creative ideas to improve your effectiveness.

42. Anyone who accepts the challenge
Consciously make the task more difficult as the tasks that challenge you, more entertaining and motivating than a boring task. Follow the cleaning of the house of your non-dominant hand. Compose poetry e-mails to clear the incoming mail.

43. Mental hospital
Follow the boring, tedious tasks in an unusual or crazy way to make it fun and interesting. Accomplish routine phone calls with fake foreign accent. Make notes with colored pencil.

44. Music
Try to determine how music can improve your performance. Try trance or rock music for the e-mails, classical or new age for the projects, and complete silence for a creative work that requires high concentration.

45. Miracle Worker
Estimate how long it will take to complete the task. Then set the timer and take one desperate effort to finish it in half the allotted time.

46. Tell the other
When you are delegated for a task you have not desired, give it to someone else.

47. Delegate
When the delegated task is definitely meaningless to you, give it back to the man who secured it for you, and ask him to prove its operational efficiency.

48. Evasion
Get out of clubs, projects and subscriptions, which take more time than they are worth.

49. Decaffeinated
Say no to caffeine, suffering during the rejection of it, and let your creativity start again, reborn.

50. Conscious procrastination from day to day
Delay the tasks that are not of paramount importance the long as you can. Many of them will die, and they won’t need to be addressed.

51. Life without TV
Turn off the TV, especially news, and get a lot of usable hours.

52. Timing
Measure and log all the problems for all the day, preferably for the entire week. The simple process of monitoring the use of your time, can greatly increase your effectiveness.

53. Courage

Define the task on your list that you are most afraid of. Pick up all your courage and begin to accomplish it immediately.

54. Dissenter
Do business in an unpopular time to avoid the crowds. Walk to the shops just before closing, or immediately after opening. Take advantage of 24-hour stores

55. Fear of crowds
Shop on the Internet, when possible. Make the best choice, take into count reviews, and buy things in a matter of minutes.

56. Reminder
Add a reminder of birthdays and holidays to your calendar for a month or two before the actual deadline. Buy gifts in advance, instead of doing it at the last minute.

57. Do it now!
Repeat this phrase as long as you do not get tired to the extent that you surrender and accept the work.

58. Coach

Hire a personal coach to stay motivate, focused and accountable.

59. Inspiration
Read books and articles, listen to audio programs, participate in workshops to capture fresh ideas and inspiration.

60. Gym
Engage in it daily. Increase metabolism, concentration, clarity of intelligence within 30 minutes a day.

61. The hunt for trolls
Banish all negative, “troll” of your life, and instead associate with positive, happy people. Way of thinking is contagious. Be loyal to justice, love, strength, and not to your pitiful group of people.

62. Evil Eye
Practice with a mirror and learn to build the most evil eyes, and consciously use them to anyone who invades your space, interrupting your most important business.

63. Modeling
Find people who have already achieved the results that you want to achieve, take them interviews. Adopt their attitudes, beliefs and behavior.

64. Pre-emption events
Even if others do not agree with you, take action in any case, and face with the consequences later. It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

65. Real life
Take a break from online activities (such as games, browsing blogs, writing posts on the forums), and reinvest that time in your real life.

All habits are not the same, so take time to identify important habits that can offer real assistance in your life, no matter of habit. For example, the habit to keep a journal has helped me to solve problems and gain new understanding (insights), and the habit of blogging has helped me to share what I learned with others. In both cases, I’m typing on a computer, but blogging is a habit which has a large impact force. Often the easiest way to make a habit of great importance is to find a way to share it with others.