5 Things That Changed My Life, and Could Change Yours

Last financial year was full of lessons for me. I witnessed business expansion, rupee appreciation and the struggle to stay profitable! 5 things shaped my reactions to all the adversities and I want to share them with you. I think all entrepreneurs face the same challenges and these are 5 things that can shape your success this year!

So here goes:

1. The 4-Hour Workweek

I was stunned when I heard Timothy Ferriss’s podcast on The 4-Hour Workweek. I always wanted to work less and produce more results. But my normal workday was 12 hours. So the idea of working only four hours a week yet producing dramatic results in business caught my fancy. Tim gives practices and tools to escape 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich in this fantastic book. Here are two components of the system:

Elimination
Kill the idea of managing your time better. You need to increase your per-hour results at least ten-fold so you can achieve more in two-hour days than you ever did in your prior 12-hour workdays. Figuring out workable ways to eliminate more, gets you more time! To achieve this, you need to:

– Cultivate selective ignorance.
– Have a low-information diet.
– Learn how to completely ignore the unimportant.

Automation
Establishing decent lifestyle cashflow which does not require your hands-on efforts allows you to more income. The key principles to master are:

– Geographic arbitrage – be able to run your business from anywhere.
– Learn how to outsource the majority of your work day assignments.
– Learn and then apply the rules of non-decision.

I still work full days at office, but I have implemented key ideas from the book in my life and elevated my performance. I ignore unimportant things, I have cut down on my blog-reading, and am delegating more and more of my work. This is a book that I am going to refer throughout this year!

Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.
– Timothy Ferriss

2. Getting Things Done

There are many times when I feel overwhelmed with the sheer volume of things to do. There are too many things I want to / have to do, and the todo list keeps getting bigger. And then I found David Allen’s Getting Things Done – The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. The trick is to get it out of your head and into a trusted system that you can use whenever you need to. It is only when your mind is clear and your thoughts organized that you can achieve effective results.

David’s techniques are adopted by millions of knowledge workers around the world. Over the year, I have experimented with a lot of GTD principles. I have picked up things that work for me, and they have become a second nature of organizing my work. Here are some principles for you:

– Collect: Collect everything. Anything that starts with an “I have to”, “I should” or “I’m going to” needs to be put out of your head and into a system.
– Process: Is it actionable? What’s the next action? Do It / Delegate It / Defer It.
– Organize: No more daily to-do lists, but you need contextual lists to keep your next actions and other items organized.
– Review: Do a weekly review and get everything out of your head again!
– On your calendar, put only actions that must be done on a certain day and/or at a certain time. Do NOT put actions you would hopefully like to see finished on a certain day.

Empowerment naturally results for individuals as they move from complaining/victim modalities into outcomes and actions defined for direction. There is a sense of control, and power. It is a source of positive energy and focus. Over the years, it is becoming clear that positive projection of results can greatly influence actions and therefore outcomes.
– David Allen

Apart from the tasks, I now even have my emails organized in the GTD style. Different folders for Inbox, Next Actions, Review, Someday-Maybe, Good Read and Trash (of course)! And I am striving for Inbox Zero!

3. Focus!

No, this is not about the book! An average person has about 60,000 thoughts everyday! That’s a lot of energy! Why waste it on things that are not important? Over the year, I realized that I got the best results when I focused on what mattered the most. Sell what sells, focus on profitability, focus on business development, focus on results, focus on leadership.

Every time I got distracted by small problems, I asked myself: “Is this worth my time and energy?“, and mostly the answer came as no. That was enough for me to get back to focus on what was worth my time and energy.

4. Do Things You Love

This is not a new idea, and I have always done things I love. But this time, the experience was very different. I was practicing Tim Ferriss and David Allen. And that gave me the freedom to do things that I love. I created time to pursue my hobbies. I took time off. I fulfilled on my long standing wishes. I blogged. I wrote a book. I traveled. I took training. I invested in stock market (made some money too!). I read. I listened. I started programming again! The happiness of doing things you love spills over the other work you do.

What are the things you would love to do, but are postponing in favor of work? Go ahead, and do them!

5. Take Responsibility

Responsibility means accountability, burden and blame to many of us. But I distinguished a new meaning of responsibility. Responsibility to me is access to power. Whenever I take responsibility, I get power to cause what I want in that situation. As a matter of fact, I get power only if I take responsibility. I can take responsibility for anything – even things I am not at all accountable for.

The sheer act of taking responsibility makes me the cause in the matter. If I were to trace down the source of my accomplishments last year, it would be taking responsibility. I started taking full responsibility for my life and what happens around me. Situations and people will be what they are, but I can take responsibility for my reactions to them! Distinguishing responsibility as access to power freed me up from the burden.

Conclusion

So that’s the 5 Things That Changed My Life: Taking Responsibility, Doing Things I Love, Focusing On The Important, Getting Things Done and the 4-Hour Workweek. I will continue to follow them this year, and am sure I will have even better results this year!

What has worked for you last year? What lessons did you learn? I look forward to your comments.