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The G.I.V.E. U.P. Method for Getting Things Done

Do you want to know a secret to success?

Give up. Or, more accurately, G.I.V.E. U.P.

No, I’m not talking about giving up on your goals and your dreams. Instead, I’m talking about you giving up your negative mindset and bad habits.

Specifically, here are the six things you can G.I.V.E. U.P. in order to get more done and start seeing more success:

G – Grouches

I – Inactivity

V – Vices

E – Excuses

U – Uncertainty

P – Perfection

Grouches

If you want to be more successful, then a good place to start is to G.I.V.E. U.P. the grouches in your life. These are the people who’re negative.

You’ll hear them say things like:

You can’t do it.
You’re wasting your time.
Choose something reasonable.
That’s silly.

That’s impossible.
What makes you think you can do it when so many others have failed?

Worse yet, every time you fail or have a setback (and you will have setbacks from time to time), the grouch says, “See? I told you this would never work! Stop wasting your time now.”

This sort of negativity is infectious. The more you hear it, the more you’re likely to start believing it.

It’s like a drum beat that starts playing in your head, too. And if you hang around grouches long enough, pretty soon you will find yourself failing more and more. The grouches will feel justified. They’ll say, “I told you so.” But what they don’t know is that once you make the choice to eliminate the grouches from your life, you WILL start seeing more success.

Inactivity

The next thing you need to G.I.V.E. U.P. is inactivity. In other words, stop procrastinating.

Easier said than done, right?

Sometimes procrastination is happening because of fear. You’re afraid of failure, so you don’t take the necessary steps to see the project through to completion. Or maybe you’re afraid of success and the changes it will bring. But the end result is the same: you procrastinate so that the project never gets done.

Do you know what the cure for fear is? Action. And you can start taking more action by following these steps:

Create a daily to-do list. Be sure to list the tasks in bite-size chunks so you don’t feel overwhelmed.

Get accountable. One good way to do this is to find someone who’ll ask you every day whether you completed your to-do list.

Force yourself to take the first step. Action tends to cure fear, but taking the first step is often the hardest. Once you get some momentum going, however, it gets easier. And that’s why you may need to virtually force yourself to take the first step. You might start with something you like. Or you might set a timer for 15 minutes and just force yourself to work, focusing on quantity rather than quality.

Do these steps for a few days or a few weeks, and you’ll find it easier and easier to take positive action.

Vices

Do you have bad habits in either your business or personal life? If so, it’s time to G.I.V.E. U.P. those vices.

For best results, find a good habit to replace the bad habit. And then make a concentrated effort for at least three weeks to get rid of the bad habit. After 21 days your good habit should indeed be a habit.

Example: Maybe your vice is spending too much time in front of the TV. Perhaps you can replace this bad habit with a good one, such as walking for 30 minutes. If you take a walk every day during the time you’d normally watch TV, by the time three weeks have past your daily walk will have turned into a habit – and you won’t be watching as much TV as a result.

Excuses

The next thing you need to G.I.V.E. U.P. are your excuses.

Remember, whether you succeed or fail is up to you.

When you succeed, go ahead and take credit. But when you fail, don’t make excuses – instead, take responsibility and learn from your mistakes.

Likewise, don’t make “pre-emptive” excuses.

Example: Maybe you made a goal to get a new blog up this week. And maybe the week is coming to a close, but you find yourself saying things like:

I’ve been so tired this week.
It’s been a really busy week.
It’s been a stressful week.

You know what? Those are excuses for why you CAN’T do something.

If you want to see more success, you need to give up your excuses for why you can’t, and start looking for reason why you CAN do something.

Uncertainty

The next thing you need to G.I.V.E. U.P. is your uncertainty (which is your fear). This leads to second-guessing yourself, which leads to procrastination.

End result? No progress.

Listen, you won’t know the best answer until you give something a try.

So if you’ve made the best decision you can based on your research, then stop researching, stop second-guessing, and start taking action. If you fail, consider it a good lesson of what doesn’t work and keep moving forward. As the saying goes, “Fail forward and fail faster.”

In short: You’ll find your success far faster by doing something – even if it turns out to be wrong — as opposed to being immobilized by fear for months or even years.

Perfection

Yes, you want to do a good job. And you should produce quality work in everything you do. But you need to G.I.V.E. U.P. the idea of perfection.

It doesn’t exist. And if you’re seeking perfection, then you’re probably in the grips of fear, looking for an excuse to not let a project see the light of day.

Take a look at just about any big company in the world, and you’ll see that they don’t strive for absolute perfection.

Example: Software companies routinely put out software that isn’t perfect. That’s because it would take too much time and money to make it perfect. Indeed, it would never see the light of day if they waited until the software is perfect. So, what the companies do is ship out good quality products… and if the users tell them the software isn’t perfect, they patch and update the software as needed.

You can do the same thing. Let go of your fear and give up the idea of perfection. Commit to always doing your best and putting out high-quality work, but don’t get stalled by trying to be perfect.

Conclusion

When someone tells you to give up, it sounds like quitting. It sounds like failure. But when I tell you to G.I.V.E. U.P., I’m telling you to reach for success by giving up these six negative habits and mindsets:

G – Grouches

I – Inactivity

V – Vices

E – Excuses

U – Uncertainty

P – Perfection

Go ahead and G.I.V.E. U.P. starting today – I think you’ll like the result!

How to Make the R.I.G.H.T. Decisions

Where ever you are in life, you’re there because of the series of decisions you’ve made in the past. If you’re not happy with where you are, then chances are you’ve made some poor decisions in the past.

Example: Most people who’re overweight are carrying those extra pounds because they made a series of decisions to eat too much or to eat the wrong thing. This wasn’t a one-time decision, but rather a series of decisions carried out over time.

Likewise, those who’re fit tend to be that way because they made a series of good decisions.

Example: Every morning when the alarm goes off, they have the option to stay in bed… or go to the gym. And if they keep choosing the gym, then over time these decisions will be reflected in their leaner, healthier body.

That’s just one example. However, you’re making decisions all the time that affect not only the present moment, but they’re going to affect that your business and life are going to be like in the future. And what’s why you need to learn how to make the R.I.G.H.T. decisions, which include:

R – Research

I – Investment

G – Guidance

H – Hindsight

T – Thought

Let’s take a closer look at each of these components…

Research

You have a decision to make. Your first step is to figure out all your possible options. And in order to do this, you need to spend some time researching all these possible options, solutions or answers.

There are multiple ways to uncover your options, but of course it really depends on what kind or problem you have or what type of decision you need to make.

Here are a few possibilities:

Ask for a variety of opinions. You can do this offline with friends and family. Or you can do it online through forums, social media or other appropriate niche communities.

Google it. You can bet if you have a problem or decision to make, plenty of others have had that same problem – and you can probably discover your options by Googling it.

Read a book on it. If it’s a fairly big problem or decision, then you’ll probably find books on the topic. Check a bookstore like Amazon, where you can even instantly download a Kindle book.

Investment

Your next step is to take a closer look at the options you uncovered.

Now assess these options honestly, asking yourself which ones will require the least investment of your time, your money or other resources.

Generally, with all things being equal, the easiest, “path of least resistance” should be considered among your top options.

Guidance

Earlier I suggested that one way to uncover your options is to ask for other’s opinions. Now you can take this a step forward and not just seek out options, but request guidance in helping you choose the right option for you.

Generally, you’ll be seeking out someone who’s qualified to give you an informed answer. Depending on what you’re asking and who you’re asking, you may need to pay a consultation fee.

This is why it’s good to uncover your options first. That way, you only need to pay to have someone help guide you to the best option, rather than paying someone to explain all the options to you.

Example: If you’re looking for guidance as to whether you should operate as a sole proprietor or whether to incorporate your business as an S-Corp or an LLC, then you should consult with an attorney in order to get the most qualified advice.

In other cases, you may not need to turn to a paid professional.

Example: If you’re interested in getting a dog, you may talk to a knowledgeable friend to help determine what kind of dog is right for you.

Hindsight

They say hindsight is 20/20. And that’s why your next step is to look to your past. Ask yourself what worked and what didn’t work. And then ask yourself how you can apply these lessons to the current decision.

Example: Let’s suppose you’re trying to lose weight. And let’s suppose that you almost always see some success, get complacent and go off your diet. In that case, you need to make sure you don’t get complacent this time, so perhaps you’ll:

Make a lifestyle change rather than going on a temporary diet. That’s because some diets are nearly impossible to follow for an extended period of time.

Get an accountability partner. This is someone who’ll help you avoid complacency.

In other words, learn from your past mistakes and successes so that you can make the best choice today.

Thought

Now that you’ve uncovered and evaluated all of your options, your next step is to think about your decision. Ask yourself, what is the most “logical” course of action?

Naturally, that’s going to depend on what type of decision you’re making. However, here are some general guidelines to consider:

Which of your options will give you 80% of the solution for 20% of the effort? (The 80/20 rule.)

Which of your options will produce the best results in the shortest amount of time?

Which of your options will produce the best results while having minimal impact on other factors? (Each decision creates a ripple effect, those these ripples can be positive or negative.)

Conclusion

It’s so simple: If you want to change your life, then you need to start making better decisions. And while you can certainly commit to making better decisions, you’ll only truly be able to do this once you start making the R.I.G.H.T. decisions as outlined above.

No, you don’t have to go through this process for small decisions (like whether to eat grapefruit or eat an orange with your breakfast), but you should use this system to help you make the bigger decisions (the ones that are going to have bigger consequences in your future).

That’s right! J Start making better decisions today, and see if you don’t have a better tomorrow.

The “B Word” That Successful People Practice

Imagine a dedicated bodybuilder for a moment…

Every day he’s in the gym lifting heavy weights, growing his muscles, sculpting his physique. And every day in the kitchen he’s eating the right foods to support his muscle growth.

Except there’s a problem…

This bodybuilder doesn’t understand the concept of balance. And so he’s been working out just ONE side of his body. So maybe he has a huge, rock-hard right arm, shoulder, thigh and calf. But the left side of his body is soft, flabby and tiny.

That would be absolutely ridiculous, wouldn’t it? Serious bodybuilders would never let their body get so asymmetrical.

But here’s the odd thing…

While most people would agree that the above exaggerated example is ridiculous, plenty of these same people are living asymmetrical lives. And many of these folks are wondering why they’re having troubles meeting their goals and finding success.

If you’re not yet where you want to be in your business or in your life, then the one thing you’ll want to consider is the “b” word:

Balance.

Let me give you a few examples:

Some business owners spend the majority of their time focusing on getting targeted traffic, but they don’t balance this activity with converting this traffic. Thus their traffic logs are big, but their bank accounts are small. Imbalance causes imbalance!

Some business owners don’t properly balance their business activities with their personal activities. And so they find themselves working all the time, which eventually leads to feeling burned out. Again, imbalance leads to more imbalance!

When we talk about balance, we’re talking about where you’re putting your time, energies, resources and attention. And it truly is a balancing act.

On the one hand, you need to be sure that you’re paying proper attention to the different components of your business and your life. But on the other hand, you need to be sure that your balancing act isn’t causing you to spread yourself too thin.

Example: Many business owners realize they need to diversify their business. And so they enter multiple niches. They use multiple traffic strategies. They create multiple products.

That’s great, and they are all good ways to help introduce balance into one’s business. But if you try to implement them all at once, then you’re going to spread yourself too thin.

Maybe you’ll end up with poor quality because you don’t have enough time to do it right. Or maybe you’ll have good results, but on a personal level you’ll burn out and your relationships will suffer because you’re sitting in front of your computer all the time.

Balance! Successful people practice balance, and if you want to be successful then you need to find balance in your life and business too.

You can start right now by honestly assessing your business and your life by asking yourself these questions…

What gets too much attention?

Is there some area where you seem to spend a lot of time, attention and other resources?

One common problem is that people tend to spend too much time focusing on things that bring them the smallest return on their investment. In other words, they tend to focus on time-consuming, low- value tasks, which means they neglect the high-value task.

Example #1: Email. Whether you’re looking at your personal inbox or your business inbox, you probably get a lot of email. And you probably spend a lot of time reading it, thinking about it, and replying to it. However, chances are this is a low value task for you, especially if you’re simply dealing with customer inquiries that someone else would be perfectly capable of handling.

Example #2: Another problem is that these low-value tasks often seem to be urgent. You see that email coming in and you feel like you need to drop everything and answer it. Again, by giving a low-value task (like email) too much attention, you’re likely to run out of time to do your high-value tasks (like marketing).

What area needs more attention?

Usually this is fairly easy to determine, because it’s the area where you’re getting poor results or something seems to be missing.

You might feel like you’re spinning your wheels in a certain area, or maybe it seems like your progress has stalled. Chances are, this is because you’ve neglected a certain area.

Let’s go back to the example I gave you in the beginning of the article.

Example: Maybe you look at your traffic logs and they show plenty of traffic, yet your bank account doesn’t reflect the same type of success. If so, then it’s likely you’re neglecting conversions (e.g., testing and tracking your sales process).

Where should you focus your attention? You’ve identified what gets too much attention and which activities don’t get enough attention.

Now it’s time for you to make some decisions to bring everything back into balance. Here’s what to do:

Rebalance your attention, time and energy. In continuing with the example above, a business owner would simply spend less time on email and devote that extra time to spend on important marketing tasks. In some cases, this is as simple as prioritizing tasks and then devoting the proper amount of attention to each of these tasks.

Develop systems to become more efficient. In other words, find ways to get more done in less time. This frees your time to make sure important tasks are getting enough attention. And it also helps ensure you balance your personal and business life.

Outsource or delegate as needed. Don’t spread yourself too thin – delegate or outsource as needed so that you don’t become imbalanced simply because you’re trying to do everything yourself.

Conclusion

The world’s most successful people know that balance is a key to their success.

Not only do they know how to balance the various components of any project, but they also know how to balance their business and personal lives. And when you learn how to start balancing your business and your life too, it’s almost certain that you’ll start seeing more success.

Give it a try for yourself!

5 Keys to Becoming an Optimist

Do you want to know one of the secrets of success?

It’s this: Become an optimist.

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about one tiny business project or you’re talking about a plan for your personal life, optimism is essential to your success. When you focus on being optimistic, you just feel better. And when you focus on good things in your life, you’ll suddenly realize that even more good things start flowing towards you.

However, most people can’t just say, “I’m going to be an optimist” and see their life change. You need to work at it. You need to consciously make a few changes to your mindset and your environment.

Here’s how…

Key #1: The Right Sight

The first thing you need to do is focus on the good things in every situation and every part of your life. Look for the win in every situation, even if it is a small win. You’ll quickly realize that things could have been worse.

Example: Sometimes people complain at tax time about how much money they have to pay to the government. If they’re self-employed, they may even worry about whether they’ve paid enough money for estimated taxes throughout the year. And so tax time becomes a burden, because they’re focusing on the negative aspects.

Do you ever do that? If so, time to turn things around. Instead of worrying about money and thinking about how much you hate to pay taxes, look at the positive side of the situation. Namely, you have to pay taxes because you’re making money. And the bigger your tax bill is, the more blessed you’ve been in the income department.

Point is, look for the positive (the win) in every situation. Be grateful for these wins. Look at them as blessings. Because you can train your mind to turn even a seemingly negative situation into a positive one.

Key #2: The Right Surrounding

Take a look around your life – are you surrounded by positive things? This includes:

Listening to empowering music.
Watching feel-good movies.

Reading uplifting books.
Putting positive and inspirational quotes in front of you.
Browsing motivational websites.
Hanging inspirational artwork.

See, you’re heavily influenced by your environment.

If you’re “feeding” your mind and soul with negative influences, then it will be no surprise when you find your mind tends to focus on negativity. But surround yourself with positive music, art, reading material and more, and you’ll find yourself feeling happier and more productive in your environment.

Key #3: The Right Standard

You have dreams and goals, and that’s a good thing. But your expectations are every important.

If your goals are unrealistic, you’re going to start feeling down when you don’t reach those goals. In turn, you’re going to become negative. You’ll start believing that you can’t do it. And negativity will settle over you like a toxic cloud.

So what do you need to do instead?

Simple: You need to be reasonable when you set goals.

Yes, it’s great to dream big. And yes, it’s awesome to “reach for the stars” when you’re setting goals.

But if you find yourself habitually falling far short of your goals and then falling into despair as a result, then it’s time to dial back your goals a bit. The idea is to lower the bar to rack up wins and build confidence.

Key #4: The Right Solution

Sometimes you’re going to fail. Sometimes you’re going to have disappointments. But in order to keep the right mindset, you need to learn how to deal effectively with these setbacks.

Here are two steps to take:

Create a Plan B. No, you shouldn’t expect failure – but you should create an alternate plan in case things don’t work out the way you originally planned. That way you can get right back on track quickly, without letting negative thoughts interfere with your progress.

Learn from your mistakes. Ask yourself what went wrong and how can avoid this mistake in the future. When you take responsibility for your mistakes and then learn from them, you become a better, stronger person.

Key #5: The Right Support

Earlier I mentioned creating a positive physical environment. However, one of the most important ways to create a positive environment is to be sure to surround yourself with positive, supportive people.

These are people who:

Believe in you.

Encourage you.
Support your dreams.
Make you feel good about yourself.
Communicate in positive ways.

On the flip side, this also means that you need to eliminate or otherwise avoid the negative people in your life.

These include people who:

Doubt you.

Talk negatively about your dreams (naysayers).
Talk negatively about other people’s dreams.
Talk negatively about their own dreams.
Seem to always look at the negative side of any situation.
Demand a lot of your time and attention. (Energy vampires.)

Seem to have a lot of drama in their lives.

If it’s impossible to completely eliminate those in your life who drag you down, then at a minimum you need to spend less time with them. And when you do spend time with them, avoid talking about any topics that bring out their negatively (especially your own plans). Instead, stick to light topics like hobbies, sports, etc.

Conclusion

If you look around, you’ll likely notice that people who’re really successful are also really optimistic and positive people. Chances are, they didn’t become optimistic and positive as a result of becoming successful. Rather, they probably became successful as a result of cultivating a positive environment and mindset.

The good news is that you too can create a more positive environment for yourself and start being more optimistic. And all you have to do to get started is follow the five keys to optimism that you just learned about.

So give it a try – you might be surprised at how a little optimism can positively affect your business and your life!

How to T.W.E.A.K. Your Way to Big Wins

Tell me, what do you do after a win of any kind?

You probably celebrate, right? That’s great. But if you want to rack up even more wins in your future, then you also need to take a moment and analyze your successes.

Of course this goes for your failures too.

You can’t just shrug off your disappointments and say, “Well that was some bad luck.” Instead, you need to reflect on them… and grow strong and better as a result of them.

How? By learning how to T.W.E.A.K. your way to big wins with these five steps:

T – TAKE Inventory

W – WEIGH Options

E – ELIMINATE Waste

A – ASK for Help

K – KEEP Moving

Let’s look at each of these components in more detail…

TAKE Inventory

This is something you need to do on a regular basis. You might take inventory of your past week, a project you just wrapped up, or even take inventory of what’s happened in the last month.

Basically, you ask yourself two questions:

What went right?
What went wrong?

Both of those questions are important.

If you’re only focusing on what went right, you’re just setting yourself up to make the same mistakes next time. And if you only focus on what went wrong, you’ll totally overlook taking the steps that made this particular project or time period so successful.

WEIGH Options

Your next step is to take a good look at the mistakes you identified in step 1.

You now need to figure out what you can do better and how you can avoid making this mistake again. To that end, ask yourself these questions:

What can you do to correct the problem?

What can you do to avoid the problem in the future?
What can you do to get better results?

Of course you also need to look at the wins you identified in the previous step. Ask yourself:

What can you do to duplicate and multiply your successes?
What can you do to get even better results?

Go ahead and brainstorm. Think outside the box. Don’t censor yourself… just let your creative mind come up with creative solutions and ideas.

Tip: For best results, turn this into a true brainstorming session. First, block off a chunk of uninterrupted time (at least 60 minutes). Then eliminate all other distractions, such as by turning off your cell phone and shutting down your email client. Finally, just start brainstorming without judging or censoring your ideas. You might be surprised at just how powerful your mind is when you completely unleash it on a problem!

ELIMINATE Waste

You’re looking for wins. So if you see that you have an ongoing problem (one that’s not easily corrected) or there’s something that creates a lot of waste, consider cutting it.

Example: Maybe you’ve created a book that’s not selling. You’ve tried tweaking the sales letter, you’ve tried alternate traffic sources… and the darn thing just won’t sell.

So maybe you just take it off the market so that you don’t have to spend any more money advertising or hosting a product that doesn’t convert.

You might even repurpose or recycle the content to at least get some benefit out of (such as by chopping the book up into articles and posting it on your blog).

ASK for Help

The idea here is to focus on your strengths. There are certain things you like to do, and you likely also do those things really well. But on the other side of the coin, there are certain tasks that you just don’t do well. They frustrate you, they take a long time and maybe you’re not very good at them.

You know what? Stop struggling.

Instead, hand those tasks over to an expert. That frees up your time to focus on what you do well, which in turn helps you rack up more wins.

Take me as an example…

Example: I love sharing ideas through the written word. I’m good at it. And so that’s why I focus on writing articles, blog posts, reports and more.

However, tech stuff makes my eyes roll back in my head. I’d rather not sit around trying to figure out what line of code I need to tweak in order to make a blog theme look better. Instead, I hand this sort of stuff over to a coding and design expert, which free up more of my time to focus on writing. (And it also puts me in a better headspace, because having someone else handle the tech end of my business relieves me of a lot of hair-pulling stress.)

I used a business example above. However, this certainly extends to your personal life, too.

Example: If cleaning isn’t your thing – if you don’t do it well or it just seems to take a lot of time – delegate it to another family member or hire a professional. Either way, you’ll free up your valuable time to focus on more important things.

KEEP Moving

So at this point you’ve done a pretty good evaluation of what went wrong with a project, what went well, and how you can do everything even better next time.

However, now isn’t the time to just nod and agree that your evaluation was useful. Instead, it’s time to take action based on what you just learned. And that means you need to plan your next steps.

Example: Let’s suppose you wrote a book and put it in the Kindle marketplace, but it didn’t do well. And let’s suppose one reason it didn’t do well is because you tried to make your own book cover, which wasn’t very good. As such, one of your next action steps is to have a professional create a new cover. And you’ll also make a note to have a professional designer create all future book covers, too.

Conclusion

You just discovered how to T.W.E.A.K. your success using this formula:

T – TAKE Inventory

W – WEIGH Options

E – ELIMINATE Waste

A – ASK for Help

K – KEEP Moving

The idea is to analyze your successes and failures, determine what you can do better next time, get rid of things that aren’t working, outsource or delegate tasks that are difficult for you and keep moving forward.

Simple, right?

And it’s very powerful. Because once you start to T.W.E.A.K. your success, you too will start racking up more wins!

My Secret Weapon for Saving Time

“Argh.”

That’s the sound that escaped from my lips a few times as I struggled to make sense of my new software purchase. What a great tool – but worthless if I didn’t get over this stumbling block!

I felt so frustrated as I scrolled through the instruction manual for the Amember membership software. All I needed to do was set up a product using the software. But this seemingly simple task was actually quite complex, and it required me to go into four separate areas of the software in order to set it up. And the more I peered at the instructions, the more overwhelmed I felt.

Enter Cindy Bidar. I hired Cindy to be my navigator through this software, to turn this complex task into something more manageable. And what she did for me was to create a series of four checklists, one for each of the four areas of the software I needed to change in order to set up my product.

So now instead of having a huge instruction manual that I had to dig through myself in order to figure out the process, I had an easy-to-understand set of checklists.

All I had to do is go through the checklist one line at a time to set up my product. Indeed, I used these checklists repeatedly until I could do it from memory. What a time saver. And what a good way to avoid frustration!

Do you have a big task in front of you, one that’s complex or otherwise requires a lot of steps? Then you’ll certainly benefit from using a checklist to complete the task.

So let’s talk about how to create one for you…

What Goes Into a Checklist?

Before you create a checklist, it’s helpful to know what all will be included. Generally, you’ll break your checklist up into “major” steps, with the sub-steps listed beneath each of the major steps.

Example: A task like setting up a blog will have major steps such as:

Buy a domain name
Get webhosting
Change the domain name server
Select a blog platform

Install the blog platform
Create content
Publish content

The above major steps would form the seven major headings (categories) on your checklist. Then beneath each of these major steps, you’d list all the sub-steps and tasks one needs to complete the major step. Then you can just go through these tasks and check them off as you complete them.

Simple enough, right? Now let’s look at the next step…

How to Create Your Checklist

If you’re creating this checklist for yourself because the task is so overwhelming, then obviously you’ll want to enlist the help of others.

Here are five top ways…

Hire Someone

Depending on what type of checklist you need, you can hire a known expert to create the checklist, or you can hire someone who’s good with research and technical skills.

If you already know of someone who might be able to assist you, then you can approach this person directly and make your proposal. Otherwise, you can go to a site like Elance.com and post a project with your request.

Interview Someone

Instead of hiring an expert, you can offer to interview the expert.

The bonus for the expert is that they’ll get resell and giveaway rights to the interview. The bonus for you, of course, is that you get all the information you need for free. (And depending on your line of business, you might even retain a resell rights license for yourself in order to make money with the interview.)

Ask Experts

Yet another way to get a checklist created for you (for free) is by asking people to help you. Indeed, you may even turn it into a group effort, where you have multiple people contribute to the creation of the checklist.

Here’s how…

Ask people on a relevant forum to help you create the checklist. For example, if you need help setting up a blog, go to the blog’s support forum and request help creating a checklist. Or if you need help doing some other business task, go to a business forum and ask the members to help you create a checklist.

Ask people on your blog or on your Facebook page to pitch in and help you create a checklist. If the people in your network are likely to know how to do the thing you’re trying to accomplish, then post on your blog, write something on your Facebook Wall or even send out a note to your newsletter subscribers to ask them to help you create a checklist.

You’ll find that when you ask multiple people to pitch in, the work goes quickly and people are indeed happy to contribute. And if you make the checklist freely available (such as when you create the checklist on a forum), then you’re helping not just yourself but the forum community as well.

Search for Existing Checklists

Sometimes you don’t need to hire someone, interview someone or enlist the help of others.

That’s because if you take a few minutes to search Google, you may find that a checklist already exists. And if you can’t find one, you can ask on forums or other communities if anyone knows of any good existing checklists.

Seek Help Offline

Some of the above methods can be done either offline or online. However, because a lot of people automatically look for ways to accomplish the task online, I do want to make a special point of mentioning that you can do them offline, too.

Example: If you need a checklist for setting up a blog, you might approach a local web designer and offer to hire or interview this person.

Conclusion

There you have – five good ways to quickly and easily create a useful checklist, which makes any complex task a little easier to accomplish.

Keep in mind that you can combine some of these methods.

Example: Maybe you find a partial checklist online. You can then fill in the gaps by interviewing an expert or hiring someone to complete the checklist. And no matter how you create the checklist, it’s always a good idea to have an expert look it over just to be sure there aren’t any missing pieces.

So the next time you have a complex task looming over you, don’t get overwhelmed. Instead, create a checklist and see if that doesn’t save you time and while helping you avoid plenty of frustration.

How to Make All the Right Moves by Upgrading Your Decisions

There’s no question about it: if you’re starting a business, then you’re going to need to make a lot of decisions on a near-daily basis.

You’ll need to decide things such as:

Which business model to pursue.
Where to focus your marketing efforts.

Which domain name to use.
What design to create for your website.
What kind of logo to use.
Which JV offers you should accept.
Which interview or publicity offers to accept.

Which payment processor to use.
What kind of tools to use to build your business.
Which freelancer you should hire.

… And on and on.

The decisions you’ll need to make are nearly endless.

Now, many of the decisions you make in your business are so important that they’ll have a major impact on the success of your business.

Example: If you choose an unreliable web host, you’ll encounter plenty of headaches in terms of down time, corrupt files or even major security issues.

And that’s just one example. Clearly, you want to strive to make good decisions, which will make everything easier for you in the future.

However, one common decision-making mistake that plenty of people make is that they strive to decide between “good” and “bad” options.

Example: They might look at two webhosts. One of them has plenty of customer-service and downtime complaints floating around the web. The other one is generally well-regarded. So the person chooses the “good” webhost.

But guess what?

That’s generally the wrong approach to decision making.

If you want to upgrade your decisions and start making even better choices in your business (and your life), then what you need to do is decide between “good” versus the “best” option.

Example: Go back to the example of choosing webhosting. If you decide on the “good” webhost and don’t investigate any other options, then you probably aren’t making the best decision for your business. What you need to do is find other webhosts that are rated well (e.g., they’re all considered good hosts), and then make your decision from among these options by choosing the BEST host.

In short – don’t decide between good and bad. Instead, choose between good and the best.

Here are three tips to help you accomplish this…

Compare Multiple Factors

Don’t make your decisions based on just one factor. Instead, compare your options across multiple factors.

Example: Let’s suppose you’re trying to find the best freelancer for your needs. Some people compare freelancers based on price alone, but that’s a poor way to decide. If you want to find the best freelancer, you’ll need to compare your options based on factors such as:

Price
Turnaround time
The freelancer’s reputation
The freelancer’s portfolio/quality of work
The freelancer’s geographic location

And so on.

The idea is that you list all the factors that are relevant to a particular situation. Ideally, you should rank these factors in order of importance.

Go back to the above example – if you don’t intend to meet your freelancer in person, and if you don’t intend to have any live conferences, then geographic location (and time zones) are of little importance. As such, this factor will be “weighted” less when you’re comparing options.

Next, go through your options and rate each factor with a score of 1-5, with “1” being poor and “5” being excellent.

Now you can compare your options based on multiple factors, giving proper weight to the more important factors.

Tap Into the Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle is also sometimes called the 80/20 rule. That’s because the idea is that if you deal with 20% of the causes, you can often solve 80% of the problems. Or if you find something that can do 20% of the work, you’ll get 80% of the results.

When you’re comparing options to seek out the best one for you, you’ll want to ask yourself which option will generate the majority of the results or solve the majority of your problems.

Example: Let’s suppose you need to buy a few tools for your website. Instead of buying multiple tools, look for the one tool that can solve multiple problems.

For example, if you need a payment processor and an affiliate script, then you might choose an option like Clickbank which will handle both of those tasks.

Consider the Future Consequences

Yet another way to compare options is to think about possible consequences or future problems that choosing one option might create.

Usually, any option you pick will have direct consequences (AKA first-order consequences). These direct consequences may create a ripple effect, which creates additional consequences (AKA second-order consequences, third-order consequences).

Example: Let’s suppose you sit down and brainstorm the consequences of buying a particular tool for your business. Perhaps the first-order consequences include:

The tool is expensive, which depletes your budget. A second-order consequence means that you won’t be able to spend as much in paid advertising for the next three months. In turn, this could lower sales and income (and/or you’ll need to spend more time working on free advertising strategies).

The tool is complex, which means you’ll either need to spend time learning how to use it or you’ll need to pay someone to install and maintain it. Either way, there will be second-order consequences (either time or financial constraints) – and these second-order consequences will likely further impact your business.

You get the idea – just look at how each of your options will impact your business in the future, which will help you choose the best option today.

Again, you need to decide if the benefits of a particular option outweigh the potential consequences or problems.

Conclusion

You just discovered three ways to help you make better decisions.

However, remember that your goal isn’t to choose between the good and bad options. Rather, you’re seeking to make better decisions by choosing from among the good options in order to find the very best.

It’s a simple concept and requires a slight tweak to your mindset, but it’s one that’s well worth making.

The Progress Principle: 5 Steps to Tackling Big Goals

If you’re starting a business or tackling another big project, maybe you can relate to this…

I was sitting with my friend Jeremy at a restaurant, talking about business and life. He’d been wanting to start a business for some time. He talked about it a lot. He clearly was serious about it. And yet every time we got together, he hadn’t made any progress on it. He just couldn’t get it started.

I figured out the problem pretty fast: Jeremy was feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Starting a new business isn’t something you tackle over a weekend. And if you sit down and write out a plan and a to-do list, that list would be a mile long. You can see why Jeremy couldn’t quite get started.

So here’s what I did…

I took out a napkin and I asked Jeremy what are the NEXT three steps he needed to complete to start turning his business goals into a reality. He wrote these three steps on the napkin. I then asked him to put a completion date next to each of those three steps, which he did. Finally, I took a picture of the napkin using my iPhone, and I promised Jeremy that I’d follow up with him to make sure he was completing the steps by his deadline.

Guess what?

That little exercise gave Jeremy the push he needed to get going. Not only did he complete those first three steps, but we continued to use this system to gain momentum and keep Jeremy on track.

It’s not a fluke that it worked for Jeremy.

I’ve used this system in my own life, I’ve shared it with countless others who’ve used it with great success, and now I’m sharing it with you too.

Here’s how to tackle those big goals in five easy steps…

Step 1: Identify Your Next Three Steps

You’ve no doubt already thought of what you need to do to achieve your goals.

So ask yourself, what are the next three things you need to do in order to achieve your goal?

Whatever they are, write them down. Commit to them.

Don’t over-think this or second-guess yourself. You already know which steps are important, so write those three steps down, in the order you need to complete them.

One word of advice: choose steps that are manageable. That is, don’t write down a step that’s going to take you six months to complete. Instead, break a bigger step down into something more manageable, perhaps something that will take as little as a few days to complete up to a two weeks to complete.

Point is, if you’re not breaking your big task down into smaller tasks, you’re still going to risk getting overwhelmed. So make sure the steps you’re writing down can be completed in a reasonable amount of time.

Step 2: Assign a Completion Date for Each Step

Next, you need to commit to completing these steps by writing a completion date next to each task.

If you don’t write a date, then you actually don’t have a goal – you just have a wish. So make it real by assigning a competition date for each step.

Step 3: Get Accountability

Writing down your next three steps and assigning a completion date helps you mentally commit to taking action.

But you know what? If you’re only accountable to yourself, it’s pretty easy to rationalize, make excuses and generally let things slide. “I can start tomorrow,” you tell yourself. But “tomorrow” turns into next week, which turns into next month… and you never do get things going.

So that’s why it’s so important for you to get some accountability. Tell at least one other supportive person about your goals, and ask this person to inquire about your goals on a regular basis (such as every week). When you know someone is going to ask you what you accomplished every week, you’re much less likely to procrastinate or blow off a project. It’s very simple, but VERY powerful!

Tip: You’ll notice above that I said you should choose a supportive person. This is very important. Whatever you do, don’t pick someone who’s naysayer or in any way negative towards your goals. You truly need someone encouraging and supportive, someone who believes in you.

Not only should this person be encouraging, but you also want to choose someone who won’t let you make excuses or rationalize. You want someone who’s going to actually make sure you do your steps – someone who’ll be disappointed if you don’t complete all that you say you’re going to do.

Basically, you need someone who won’t let you off the hook if you try to skip doing your work.

Step 4: Take the Next Step

Ok, now you know what you need to do, and you’ve enlisted a friend to check up on your progress.

So now it’s time to take action by taking the first step. That means completing the first task on your list.

If the task going to take more than one day and/or it’s a complex task with multiple steps, then create daily to-do lists.

Example: Let’s suppose you’re starting a blog. Your to-do list might look like this:

Get a domain name.
Get hosting.
Change the nameservers.

Install the blog platform.
Pick a theme.
Install and customize the theme.
Install plugins.
Write initial five blog posts.

Publish five blog posts.

Once you get finished with your first task on your list, then do the second. When you’re finished with that, do the third.
Step 5: Repeat the Process

Congratulations – you finished the first three steps towards your goal. Now you have some momentum going, which is great.

So now you need to repeat the process. That means writing down your next three steps, assigning a deadline, getting accountability and taking action. Rinse and repeat as many times as needed to reach your goals.

Conclusion

Pretty simple, right?

Perhaps deceptively so. But this simple little system is extremely powerful and effective.

Don’t take my word for it, though – give it a try to see for yourself!

The Surefire Way to Start and Finish Projects

Has this ever happened to you?

You start a project. You’re so enthusiastic about it in the beginning that you can’t ever imagine abandoning the project. But then you start letting the project slide. It falls to a low priority. And the next thing you know, you’ve abandoned it altogether. It may even reside in a virtual cemetery of other projects you’ve abandoned.

It’s frustrating, isn’t it?

But let me tell you why it happens…

The reason why people start but don’t finish projects is because the end reward simply isn’t motivating enough. Simply put, there’s not enough of an incentive to keep going.

Let me give you an example…

Example: Let’s suppose I give you a big job, which includes thoroughly washing, waxing, vacuuming and detailing my car. This is going to take hours. It’s going to be tiring.

Now imagine if I offered you $1 to do the job. Yes, one buck. You’d scoff. You’d laugh. And you’d no doubt outright turn down the offer, simply because $1 isn’t enough of an incentive for you to spend all that time doing all that work.

How about if I offered $5? Probably still not motivating enough, right?

How about $25? Depending on your financial needs or how quickly you think you can do the job, you may accept the offer. Possibly.

Now, the point is, I could keep raising my offer. And at some point I’m going to hit on a price that looks very attractive to you. That’s the price you’d happily do the work, because the end reward motivates you to do the work.

Now think about your business.

You have goals, right? Problem is, some of these goals aren’t going to happen overnight. They’re motivating goals, but you may not see the rewards for months or even years.

So what you need to do is create incentives for yourself that will help keep you going as you march towards your overall goals. That is, you can motivate yourself to achieve milestones (which are smaller goals on the path to your larger goal).

Example: If your overall goal is to build a blog that turns a $100,000 profit per year, then some of your milestone goals will include activities such as creating a certain amount of content and bringing your traffic numbers up to a certain level. These smaller goals are stepping-stones to your overall goal (and to your overall reward – making $100k per year).

Now here’s the important part: As just illustrated above, you need to make sure that these incentives are motivating enough to make you want to do the work. You need to want the incentives so badly that you have no choice but to just do the work so that you get the reward.

Obviously, this is a very personal thing. An incentive that might have me working like mad may just have you cocking an un-amused eyebrow.

So, you need to find an incentive that works for YOU.

Something that puts fire in your belly. Something that really excites you. Something that will make sure that this time you don’t quit.

Here are six examples…

An Indulgent Day

Imagine having a day when you did all your favorite things. Maybe this was a day on the golf course, a day at the spa, a day spent hiking your favorite trails.

Whatever it is, it’s probably something you don’t get to do very often. And so it’s really special (and motivating) if you turn it into an incentive for finishing a project or achieving a special goal.

A Vacation

The type of vacation you take depends on what type of project or goal you just finished. In other words, match the vacation to the goal.

For smaller goals, you might get out of town for one awesome weekend. For medium goals, you might take a week off and do something in your country. To celebrate the completion of a larger goal, you might go on a cruise or go to a foreign country for a couple weeks.

Those are just examples. But in all cases, the point is to create a vacation incentive based on something you’ve really wanted to do, something that’s personally motivating.

An Indulgent Purchase

You’ve had your eye on something, but it seems like you’d be splurging in order to purchase it. You tell yourself you don’t need it, but the truth is, you REALLY want it.

So turn it into an incentive, and you’ll feel proud when you’re able to make that purchase

Dinner at Your Favorite Restauran

You can go alone, with a partner or with a whole troupe of friends. But the idea is to go to your favorite restaurant, order champagne, order appetizers, order your favorite entrée – and just really enjoy yourself.

Take Up a New Hobby

Maybe you’ve been thinking about taking up a new hobby, like fishing, golf, or even scrapbooking. But you keep putting it off because of time constraints or perhaps because you’d need to purchase equipment.

If you have a burning desire for this hobby, then turn it into an incentive. Once you reach your goal, give yourself free reign to indulge in your new pastime.

Helping Someone Else

Maybe you can’t think of something that’s super motivating to you. If not, then think about helping others. This might involve going on a mission trip, raising money for charity or setting aside time to volunteer.

The cool thing about this incentive is that if you quit your project, you’re not just letting yourself down – you’re letting down someone else too, which makes it feel extra motivating.

Conclusion

Think about it…

You can do anything if the incentive is big enough. That’s why you need to make sure that any goals that you set for yourself have a big enough reward at the end. And if there isn’t a natural reward (such as bringing in a rewarding income through your business ventures), then you need to create incentives that will keep you going.

This time you will NOT quit… as long as you have that incentive to keep you stepping towards your goal!

How to F.O.R.M. Successful Habits

Think about some of the most successful people you know. Now ask yourself:

Why are they so successful?

Naturally, a variety of factors play into their success, such as having a positive mindset. However, if you look at these successful people carefully, you’ll quickly discover that virtually all of them have one thing in common.

Namely, they’ve all developed good habits. And if you want to become successful, then you too must learn to replace your bad habits with good habits.

You’ve probably tried this before, either in your personal life or business.

Sometimes the good habits stick for a while, but you’ve no doubt noticed how easy it is to slip back into old habits. Of course when you slip back into old habits, nothing changes. You stagnate. You can’t move forward.

So let’s break the pattern, starting right now!

Let’s start by having you learn now to F.O.R.M. successful habits. Here’s my success system that you can start using to F.O.R.M. your own good habits:

F – FOCUS on one thing at a time.

O – OVERCOME challenges.

R – RECOGNIZE that quantity counts.

M – MAINTAIN for 21 days.

What do these four steps mean and how can they help you achieve your goals? Let me explain…

FOCUS on One Thing at a Time

Whenever you start to make big changes in your life, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

Maybe in the first few days or weeks it works out, simply because you’re running on pure adrenaline. But after that, making too many changes at once overwhelms you, spreads your energies too thin or just plain burns you out.

So forget about trying to do everything at once. Instead, pick ONE good habit you’d like to adopt and focus on that one thing.

How to choose?

You might start with a habit you think will bring you the best results.

Example: If you are looking to start an online business, you might adopt the habit of getting up 90 minutes before everyone else in your household, just so that you have a quiet time to work.

OVERCOME Challenges

No matter what you’re doing, there’s no question that there are going to be obstacles. So, your job is to anticipate these challenges and obstacles so that you can make a plan for overcoming them.

So, your next task is to spend 15 or 20 minutes brainstorming all the possible challenges you’re likely to face as you adopt new habits. Then make a plan and take steps to reduce if not entirely avoid the impact of these challenges.

Here are four additional tips to keep in mind:

Remind yourself with a trigger. Let’s suppose that one of your personal obstacles is a tendency to get distracted and start doing other things.

You might use a positive trigger to remind yourself to stay focused, such as sending yourself an encouraging email the night before that you’ll see when you sit down to work in the morning. Or you might set a timer by your computer to remind yourself to stay on task.

Replace things you are changing. If you simply stop one bad behavior, you’ll notice (and miss) its absence. That’s why, whenever possible, you should find positive activities or things to replace the bad habit.

Example: Former smokers often take up a good habit – like walking – whenever they’re tempted to have a cigarette.

So let’s suppose you tend to mess around on Facebook for an hour every day talking to friends and playing Farmville. You don’t want to do this any more. So, you replace it with a new habit, such as spending that hour doing a task you really enjoy (it might even be related to Facebook, such as working on a social media campaign). That way you don’t miss the absence of your old habit, because you’re replacing it with a better habit or routine.

Remove temptations. Do you have a tendency to slip back into your old ways? Then remove the temptations.

Example: If playing video games is your weakness, then unplug your video console and remove it from sight when you’re working. That way, you won’t see the console and be tempted to “just play five minutes” instead of doing your work. (Because we all know that five minutes easily turns into two hours!)

Rely on accountability partners. You don’t have to do this alone. You shouldn’t do it alone. Most people find that they’re more productive if they have an accountability partner.

Here’s how it works…

You tell your partner your goals for the day, and then at the end of the day you tell your partner whether you achieved your goals or not. It’s psychologically uncomfortable to admit to someone else that you fooled around and didn’t get through your daily to-do list. And of course it’s even more uncomfortable to lie to your partner. That’s why having an accountability partner works so well – it’s easier to just do the work!

RECOGNIZE That Quantity Counts

Yes, of course quality matters. But sometimes you need to sacrifice initial quality just to produce quantity, to get some momentum going. That’s because you can always improve the form and substance later on.

Example: Take the example of the yearly novel-writing challenge located NaNoWriMo.org. That’s a site that encourages people to write 50,000 words of a novel in just one month. Are the participants creating perfect novels in one month? Of course not. But the challenge of producing quantity without worries about quality unlocks creativity and gives people the push they need to make something happen.

You can challenge yourself in the same way. Don’t look for perfection. Instead, focus on quantity. Build momentum. And watch how quickly you propel yourself towards your goals.

MAINTAIN for 21 Days

Experts say it takes about 21 days for an average habit to “stick.” And that’s why you should give 100% of your focus for a full 21 days to the new habit you’re forming.

You may start out feeling like you have to force yourself to do the task, but at the end of 21 days it will be much easier. And that’s because it truly will be a habit for you!

Conclusion

And there you have it – you now know how to F.O.R.M. a new habit, by:

FOCUSING on just one thing.
OVERCOMING obstacles.
RECOGNIZING that quantity counts.

MAINTAINING the new habit for 21 days.

This system is so simple, but it really works. So give it a try.

Start with adopting ONE good habit today. Then focus on doing it every day for the next 21 days – I think you’ll be surprised by the results!