My 5 Best Rules for Focusing on Success by Nicholas

Davies

SUCCESS PSYCHOLOGY POWER BRIEFING 1#

WELCOME TO THE FIRST OF THE SUCCESS PSYCHOLOGY POWER BRIEFINGS!

This is the first in a series of visual briefings from ‘Success Psychology’, a blog dedicated to investigating the psychology of success.

Success Psychology aims to understand the principles required to master the success mind-set and present them for the benefit of others. The aim of the Power Briefings are to make them available to an even wider group of people.

POWER BRIEFING 1

My 5 Best Rules for Focussing on

Success

Focusing on success can be difficult at the best of times. It’s very easy to set a goal, motivating yourself to actually achieve it can be an entirely different thing altogether.

Here are some my 5 best rules which I’ve used in the past which you can try to really give the pursuit of your goals a power boost:

One of the best ways of focusing on your goal is to find a way of keeping it visible as much as possible. One that I learnt from Jurgen Wolff years ago, this tactic involves writing your goal on a post-it note or index card (available from most good stationary shops.) Display the card in a prominent place where you’ll see it everyday. This could be a mirror, mantle-piece (if you have one!) or maybe a prominent picture. You could attach it to the fridge with a fridge magnet. Use your imagination, but find somewhere where you’ll see it on a regular basis. The net effect of this little tactic is that it will keep the task or goal at the fore-front of your perception so you won’t forget it.

Jurgen Wolff: http://www.timetowrite.blogs.com/

Rule 1# - Keep the Task Visible

Rule 2#: Work towards your goal

in sections

It’s always a good idea to plan your progress towards your goal and break it down into sections or stages. This is technique commonly known as ‘chunking’ For instance, let’s say you want to write a novel in two months. In order to do this, you need to work out how much you need to write a day. Based on your calculations, you should be writing at least a 2000 words a day to complete the novel. Each of the 2000 word sessions would be a section or ‘chunk’ towards completing your novel. All you need to do is set aside time each day to write, maybe an hour or two, if realistic? This is an important point – KEEP IT REALISTIC!

Rule 3#: Keep a Journal

It’s important to keep a record of your progress towards your goal. This is why I’ve recently developed the habit of keeping journal to assist with my goals. This journal can be something as simple as a note-pad or notebook which you can carry around with you wherever you go. You don’t have to use it just for recording your progress, of course. You can also use it to jot down ideas and inspiration, as well as any reminders about tasks or actions you need to complete to move you towards your goal.

Rule 4#: Use a Spread-sheet to Record Progress

If you are, like me, keen on using IT, a great way to record your progress towards a goal by recording it in a spread-sheet. The best way to do this is to use the table function within whichever programme you are using. To illustrate this, let me use my example of the spread-sheet I’ve created for my article writing at present. For this, I simply labelled a column for the date I wrote the article, the next for the website it was published to followed by a quick over-view of the article section, a notes section and a section to cut-and-paste the link to the article for quick reference. This is a great way of being able to track progress with the goal quickly and accurately. Of course, if you are not happy with spread-sheets, you can always create a table using a word document if you prefer. (More on this rule at a later date.)

Rule 5#: Be Publically

Accountable!

If you really want to maintain your focus and motivation, you can declare your intentions publically in order to ensure that you stick to them! I’ve used this rule quite a lot recently, and it certainly is a major motivator in making sure that you get things done. In my case, I use my personal blog at http://nicholas-davies.com/ to record the progress of my 30 day challenges, providing posts regarding my declaration of intent, mid-way progress and final result through-out each challenge. You don’t have to set up a blog, you could merely post your progress on social media such as Facebook or on an online forum you are a member of. The most important thing is to make yourself publically accountable.

So, those are my five best rules for maintaining focus on success!

Interested in finding out more? Check out ‘Success Psychology’ blog on the link below for more interesting posts and articles on the ‘psychology of success’:

http://psychologyofsuccess.org.uk/

(Picture credits: http://www.wpclipart.com/ )

© 2013 Success Psychology

THANKS! - SEE YOU IN THE NEXT

POWER BRIEFING.