Stop Searching for Information on How to Be Successful
We’ve all read the books. We’ve watched all the webinars. We’ve googled for advice until our hands were riddled with carpal tunnel. We’ve spent hours of our lives seeking information on how to become more successful. Or how to improve our lives and better ourselves.
Whether we wanted to:
- Lose weight
- Make more money
- Invest in real estate to earn generational wealth
- Attract the love of our lives
- Have a successful partnership with said love of our lives
- Join the 5 A.M. club
- Have a better relationship with ourselves
- Attract more clients even though you’re lacking a niche and your email list consists of your mom and overly supportive Mid-Western cousins. (This one is for me.)
We’ve filled up notebooks with scribbled words of wisdom. We’ve debated paying for yet another online course. We’ve visualized our dreams and are waiting for them to manifest.
Out of all the information you’ve consumed… out of all the things you’ve learned… how much of it have you actually tried to implement into your life?
Information is only as valuable as what you choose to do with it.
I guarantee even if you’ve only applied 5% of all that you’ve learned in your quest to be more successful…. You would be more successful.
And maybe you are! Maybe you’re great at knowing how to use the information you learn.
Or maybe you’re like most of us who are lovers of learning, but we question if we have enough information to put action behind what we learned.
We love to learn, we’re curious! We want to improve our lives continue working towards success. But sometimes we have a tough time knowing how to fit this information we’re learning into our life. How do we have to re-arrange our schedule? What time commitment do we need to make? What do we need to cut out of our life to make room for this? Are there other resources we need?
We know how to gain the information, but we don’t always know how to implement it.
We are overloaded with so so so much damn information. Any problem you want to solve, or question you want answered, you can head straight to Google. You’re then bombarded with millions of articles and millions of opinions.
You have the information you need to make the changes you desire in your life. But you have so much of it you don’t know what’s actually going to be helpful for YOU. You don’t know what’s going to work for YOU.
Implementing the information is the hard part.
Actually, taking some of the information and infusing it into your life is the hard part. And then either sticking with it when it’s challenging, or knowing when to pivot when it’s not working. Being able to track how this information is helping you work towards your goals or if it’s not making a difference.
Regarding the success we want to achieve, we need to ask ourselves — Where am I now? Where do I want to go? What roadblocks are in my way?
We need to assess our goals on a macro scale and then use the information we’re acquiring on a micro day-to-day scale.
We need to let the information we’re garnering inform how we set our goals and how we decide what steps to take. We then need to parse down our goals and really look at the micro-steps it’s going to take to achieve them.
Trying to implement too much information leads to burnout and defeat.
We can achieve macro success through micro-steps.
Choose What Information You’re Going to Implement
Every book you read, podcast you listen to, webinar you watch — take notes. See if there’s one piece of information you can take and implement into your life.
I used to be guilty of taking in so much damn information and trying to implement it all at once. Which was beyond frustrating.
My finances are a great example. I read books on finance, watched webinars, had discovery calls with experts… and then would try to re-do my budget, build my emergency savings, contribute to my IRA, get out of credit card debt, and start a new side hustle all at once.
Frustration would start brewing as I tried to tackle way too much shit. I would then get so overwhelmed in my pursuits towards a better financial situation… I would stop implementing all the information I was learning.
It wasn’t until I could focus on implementing a small amount of information that I was able to see progress.
I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi is a wonderful example of a book that utilizes implementing tiny, specific tasks based on what you learn in every chapter. Every chapter has a goal and is meant to be digested over a week.
There are specific tasks to accomplish that directly correlate with the goal. Once these tasks are done and the goal is achieved, you move on to the next week. You ingest more information and start working on your new tasks and next goal.
This is an outstanding example of how we should use the information we’re learning. You implement before you ingest more information.
Out of what you digest, choose what you want to implement.
Micro-Task Your Way to Success Baby
If you look at any goal you have, focusing on the entirety of the goal is overwhelming as all hell.
But if you look at all the steps individually that you need to achieve this goal, it’s not that bad. Each step might even be relatively easy.
Let’s say you naturally awake from your slumber around 8 am, but you want to wake up at 5 am. If you just set your alarm for 5 am after a year of waking up at 8 am… it’s probably going to suck. You may do it for a few days and I can guarantee you’ll end up going back to your habit of waking up at 8.
But if you incrementally start waking up 15 minutes earlier… you do that for a few days or a week… and then the next week you wake up another 15 minutes earlier. You will eventually make your way to waking up at 5 am and you’ll have sustained a habit along the way.
Mind mapping is a great tool to determine what your overall goal is and see what micro-tasks support the best action to take.
This is also a great way to view the information you take in. It’s as if you’re giving a sizeable chunk of information, and you must sift through it and break it apart. You then decide what smaller sized chunks of information suit your goals. How can the information you’re receiving being broken down and used in ways that are useful to you?
Microtask your way to success. Microtask your way to achieving the goals you have.
What is Your Time Commitment for Implementing
Habits take time to build. You won’t know after a week if what you’re implementing is making a true impact. What does your time commitment look like on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? How are you going to analyze if it’s working?
One of my friends recently recommended a helpful tool. Next to every micro-task on your to-do list, write down the time you think it’s going to take for you to accomplish it.
Then as you build your daily or weekly schedule, you can see the tasks you want to achieve, along with the time commitment it will require of you.
This will help you manage how you implement the information you’re learning in your day-to-day life.
I got serious about making my schedule a form of self-care. I stopped overloading it with too many tasks that were impossible to achieve in a day’s time. But at least once a week I would find myself frustrated and feeling strapped for time. Or having to flutter from task to task with no breathing room.
My friend suggested I put the amount of time I thought it would take me to achieve next to the task. This helped me see the minutes of my day differently.
We all know how much time we’re going to get in a single day. How can we make the most of it and not drown ourselves with to-dos?
Viewing the time we’re committed to implementing new information, will allow us to consciously utilize what we’re learning more effectively.
Have a Weekly Date With Yourself to Track Your Progress
You’re the greatest asset in your life.
You need to spend time with yourself to check-in and see how you’re doing. You have great things you want to achieve, and you can achieve them. But you’re the only one who can truly hold yourself accountable and do the deep dive necessary to make it happen.
Also, you’re the only person who is going to care if you make it happen. Everyone else will move on with their life and keep making it happen for themselves.
Have a weekly check-in, whether it’s 10 minutes or an hour. Set aside enough time so you can look at how you’re spending your days and your weeks. Analyze the information you’re learning and decide what is the most useful to you. How can you re-structure your upcoming week around it?
What impact can the information you’re implementing have on your life and your success?
Conclusion
Honor the information you’re ingesting.
Choose to implement it.
If you utilized 5% of the useful information that’s already inside of you… how successful do you think you would be?
Your success is limitless.
Use where you are, use what you have, use what you know.
Read on…
Maddie is a writer + voice-over artist. She’s a soon-to-be certified life coach through the JRNI program. Self-declared boxed wine aficionado. She’d love to hear all your thoughts at [email protected]
