I Hate January!

I’m a positive, optimistic, upbeat, glass is 1/2 full kind of guy. Not much gets to me or gets me down. Except January! For the last 20 years or so, I’ve hated January.

It’s not the fact that Christmas is over or decorations are coming down (I’m usually ready to get back to normal life). It’s not the cold weather (I like to hit the slopes). It’s not the icy roads or constantly dirty car. It’s not any of those things. I hate January because when I look at my sales board for the year it is full of zeros!

I’m usually celebrating a good year each December - looking back at what worked well, what went right and what the final year end numbers are going to be.  December is also my planning month - setting next year’s goals, planning my marketing and creating my business plan. I love December!

But then January comes around and it’s like all of last year’s hard work never existed. My sales board is empty, and I have a LONG way to go to hit my yearly goals! I try my best to avoid any “stinkin thinkin” but January just has a way of bringing me down. January is my Kryptonite.

When you own your own business or work in a sales environment it helps to look at things and see the possibilities instead of the problems. It’s been scientifically proven that your attitude and outlook are major factors in your success and achievement, so I spent the first week of January researching some of the most successful people around to get some tips, tricks, hacks and productivity tools to get the year kicked off right.

I found so much good info, that I thought I’d share some of my favorites with the hopes that others can use some of it to throw their year into high gear! I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get things moving. Last year was a pretty incredible year in my business. But that was then and this is now and my competitive nature is driving me to do more, be better and achieve more than I did in 2015. I always feel like I can work a little bit smarter, reach a little bit higher and get a little bit more done than last year. If you’re wired that way too, perhaps some of the info I found will help you get there.

4 Things The Most Successful People Have In Common:

Just Say No

Warren Buffett once said: The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything. And that’s what gives them the time to accomplish so much. Achievement requires focus. And focus means saying “no” to a lot of distractions.

Know What You Are

In his classic essay Managing Oneself, Pete Drucker is very clear: ignore your weaknesses and keep improving your strengths. In identifying opportunities for improvement, don’t waste time cultivating skill areas where you have little competence. Instead, concentrate on—and build on—your strengths.

This means knowing who you are, what you are and what you are good at. Harvard professor Gautam Mukunda, author of Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter, says this is key for leaders:

More than anything else, “Know thyself.” Know what your type is. …Think about your own personality… For instance, if you are a classic entrepreneur, you can’t work in an organization. Know that.

Create Good Luck

Luck isn’t magical — there’s a science to it. Richard Wiseman studied lucky people for his book Luck Factor, and broke down what they do right.

Certain personality types are luckier because they behave in a way that maximizes the chance for good opportunities. By being more outgoing, open to new ideas, following hunches, and being optimistic, lucky people create possibilities.

Does applying these principles to your life actually work? Wiseman created a “luck school” to test the ideas — and it was a success. Via Luck Factor:

In total, 80 percent of people who attended Luck School said that their luck had increased. On average, these people estimated that their luck had increased by more than 40 percent. You can read the entire article on creating good luck at: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/10/increase-luck/

Have Grit

Intelligence and creativity are great but you can’t quit when the going gets tough if you really want to accomplish anything big. That’s grit. Perseverance. And it’s one of the best predictors of success there is. Researchers have found that grit exists apart from IQ and is more predictive of success than IQ! Howard Gardner studied some of the greatest geniuses of all time. One quality they all had in common sounds an awful lot like grit: “…when they fail, they do not waste much time lamenting; blaming; or, at the extreme, quitting. Instead, regarding the failure as a learning experience, they try to build upon its lessons in their future endeavors. Framing is most succinctly captured in aphorism by French economist and visionary Jean Monnet: “I regard every defeat as an opportunity.”

In addition to things that ultra-successful people have in common, I came across some of their best productivity hacks too. Here are a few to get your year going:

Turn Off Alerts

It's terribly tough to get into your Zen zone when your phone is buzzing every few minutes. Depending on how chatty your phone is, you may get notifications for everything from emails to retweets. It's essential you shut these notifications off! Trust me, you'll see efficiency skyrocket once you tell your phone to shut its blabbering mouth.

Even if you’re not able (or comfortable) turning off the alerts for long periods of time, try putting your phone into airplane mode once or twice per day while you work on important issues like marketing your business. Creative time goes a lot further when you hunker down, get rid of the distractions and focus on the task at hand.

Have 30-Minute Meetings

As Jeff Haden notes in an Inc.com article, "whoever invented the one-hour default in calendar software wasted millions of people-hours." The truth is that most meetings never need more than 30 minutes to accomplish their missions. Many really only need 15 minutes. Don't be a calendar-default deadbeat. Try it for a week and see what happens. Book all of your meetings for 30 minutes and see if you still get everything done. Chances are, you’ll not only accomplish everything you needed to in your meetings, but end up with a calendar full of extra free time as well!

Down With To-Dos, In With Scheduling

Have you ever had that to-do item that simply wouldn't disappear? It hovers at the bottom of the list or scratched in the corner, petulantly scowling at you for days, weeks, even months! As more time passes, you feel even less inclined to give it attention.

We've all been there--it's just one of the reasons I'm saying out with the to-do list and in with scheduling. As Eric Barker, a writer for The Week notes in the article "How to Be the Most Productive Person in Your Office--and Still Get Home by 5:30," scheduling requires you to be realistic about what you can get done. It makes you seriously sit down and consider your available time and what specific slots you can designate to completing certain tasks in a given day. To-dos are pipe dreams. Scheduling is a game plan. Studies show that even scheduling free time can be rewarding and can result in better quality of time spent--even if that time spent is playing a game or reading a novel.

If you've got some good ideas for 2016, I'd love to hear about them. Who knows, maybe some other agents out there could really benefit from what you've got to share. Maybe there are some agents out there with the exact right idea you need to grow your business! We're all stuck in this January thing together, let's stick together and help each other get out with some of the best agent ideas ever!