Stop Learning and Start Doing

This may sound strange coming from me, but I must say that quitting has aided my success more than any other strategy. I actually had to go on a self-improvement fast. For a period of time, I would not allow myself to read, listen to, or watch anything new about time management until I implemented knowledge that I had already acquired.

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"quitting has aided my success"

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This was incredibly hard for me. Think about it, I've been a student of self-improvement, life management, time management, accelerated learning, and virtually any other type of self-discovery that you can imagine for my entire adult life. (When my adult life started is a point of contention for some, but let's just say that it's been more than a decade.) This was as challenging as giving up coffee would be (or so I'm guessing).

How Does It Feel?
I went through a week of withdrawals, but started the second week with a renewed intensity. This death of learning birthed new revelation. I discovered that the techniques I had been using were insufficient to get me to the next level. They were effective, efficient, and essential in achieving the level of success that I had acquired, but they were also holding me back.

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STOP for a moment and think: What's holding you back?

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By eliminating the distraction of learning new time management techniques (if I'm honest, I wasn't learning anything new just hearing the same message from different messengers).

What Was Holding Me Back?
By looking inward, I found the problem. I wasn't looking for the right knowledge. I wasn't asking the right questions. The questions I had been asking were, "how can I do this faster?" and "how can I get more done?" The real question for me is a simple one, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Taking a page out of Covey, I started at the end of my life and imagined what I wanted to accomplish and who would be there to share it with me. You know To Live, To Love, To Learn, and To Leave a Legacy.

So, give it a try, stop reading, listening to, and watching all time management techniques for a week, and discover the question that you haven't answered.

Most of our planners include a Goals section, and they goals are generally divided into six sections: Family, Intellectual, Social, Health, Economic, and Spiritual. Think about what you want to Be, Do, and Have in each of these areas and bring more CLARITY to your life today.