Good tips on how to be successful

1) Lessen Your Social Media Use

Social media has easily become the world’s most accessible procrastination drug.

If the problem is that you’re not motivated to do anything in the first place, it’s a clear symptom that you are overdosing yourself with online dopamine.

Stop making tweets, shares, and good Instagram photos the basis for your achievement and self-worth.

The most important (and effective) way to train your brain into looking for real-life basis for success is to cut yourself away from social media. 

You don’t have to go cold turkey – just use less of it every single week until you have found a better, more productive ways to spend your time. 

How To Make It Happen:

Install an extension like Rescue Time that will automatically blocked specified web pages. 

Give yourself a daily limit every week, and make it 30 minutes to an hour shorter the following week. 

2) Fix Your Sleeping and Eat Healthy

Humans may be the smartest animals alive, but we’re still animals nonetheless.

This means that our bodies, as complex as they may be, rely on good sleep and proper nutrition to keep moving. 

In fact, researchers have found that the benefits of healthy sleep and nutrition go beyond the physical; a study found that negative sleep habits can negatively impact self-control, leading to more compulsive behavior, poor decision making, and decreased attentional capacity. 

The next time you’re feeling less creative and productive, make sure you’re getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep and eating three good meals a day.

The brain uses about 20% of the calories you consume everyday, so don’t neglect to feed your thinking machine.

How To Make It Happen: 

Aim to have a “no screen” policy by 8 to 10 PM, until morning. 

Don’t fall for fad diets and hip new fitness regiments. The rule of thumb is to consume 45-65% of your daily calories from carbs (processed and whole grains), , 10-35% from protein (chicken, tofu, eggs, beans), and 20-35% from fats (vegetable oils, dairy)

Take 0.5g of melatonin, a naturally-occuring sleeping aid, every night to help you fall asleep better. 

3) Accomplish Something Every Day

Make productivity a habit, not a trait.

When you’re used to ticking things off your list every single day, your brain starts to get used to that rush of dopamine.

This is a fantastic way to build momentum and reinforce a solid work ethic. 

The more you work every single day, the easier it will be to find the energy to continue doing work. Set a couple of hours of distraction-free productivity every day to get your brain accustomed to focusing on a task and finishing it. 

How To Make It Happen:

Keep your to-do lists short and realistic. Avoid setting yourself up for failure by aiming to do two big tasks and a number of smaller tasks a day. 

Distinguish between tasks and chores. Ever find yourself cleaning when you’re supposed to be working on that 3,000-word report? Chores can easily be an avenue for procrastination.

4) Celebrate Small Victories 

Celebrating small goal posts are just as important as reaching the end of the race.

Turn one big goal into a series of micro-goals that you can track individually.

Treat those as milestones so you have something to look forward to every week or month. 

Doing so will keep you motivated, and, more importantly, allow you to understand just how far you’ve come VS how far you have to go.

How To Make It Happen:

Gamify aspects you find most challenging. Trouble losing weight? Give yourself a reward every time you reach a new power record or hit a new milestone. Not finding work enjoyable? Buy yourself something nice every time you sign on a new client or complete 10 big projects. 

Set clear definitions on what you consider a “victory”. Preserve the special and unique feeling associated with your small successes by limiting it to when you actually achieve something. 

Celebrate qualitative and quantitative victories equally. If you notice improvements in your behavior, work ethic, and disposition towards progress and failure, keep a mental note for those as well. 

5) Define the Weak Points

Instead of perceiving failure as one big event, dissect it as a series of variables and processes.

Try to determine what caused the failure – was it personal? Situational? Was it skill-related? Time-related?

By doing so, you make the failure feel less personal and turn it into a problem-solving opportunity. 

Even if you can’t do anything to undo the situation, you will always have this experience in your arsenal.

The next time you experience failure, you will feel more in control because you know how to deal with it logistically and mentally. 

How To Make It Happen:

Consider outside opinion whether you’re working on personal or professional goals. Sometimes other people can prove more honest and straightforward when assessing our weak points and shortcomings – use those to reevaluate yourself. 

Study every single variable possible. Yes, that includes you. It’s easy to blame your team, “the process”, the algorithm, or just about anything else when it comes to failing. Remain objective and treat each and every valuable with equal discretion. 

Accepting Failure: Redefine it as Growth

As we said above, failure is a part of life. You can’t learn to stand, walk, and run without falling down. And yes, falling down brings pain and discomfort, which we are taught to avoid at all costs.

But the most successful people are those who have failed the most. Because failure isn’t truly “failure”.

Not achieving your goals is only failure if you allow yourself to think of it as a failure. If you let your inner voice criticize and put you down, and if you let discouragement be the biggest takeaway from your attempt at self-betterment.

In truth, every failure we have is an opportunity to learn and grow.

And only through growth can we become the people we want to be, until we are so far away from the initial failures that we can only look back on them and wonder: why did I ever let those things bother me?

Grow, learn, and fail. And finally, succeed.