This is Optimal Living Daily, Episode 796. 12 Things Successful People Do Differently, Part 1 by Mark Schurinoff of MarkandAngel.com and I'm Justin Malik. Happy Valentine's Day, if you're listening in real time, and welcome to Optimal Living Daily, where I simply read to you every single day of the year covering personal development, minimalism, and productivity blogs, sometimes books. So today's post is Part 1, I'm breaking it up into 3, so this will take us all the way through Friday.
And with that, let's get right to Part 1 as we optimize your life. 12 Things Successful People Do Differently, Part 1 by Mark Schurinoff at MarkandAngel.com I've always been fascinated by people who are consistently successful at what they do, especially those who experience repeated success in many areas of their life throughout their lifetime. In entertainment, I think of Clint Eastwood and Oprah Winfrey. In business, I think of Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett.
We all have our own examples of super successful people like these who we admire, but how do they do it? Over the years, I've studied the lives of numerous successful people. I've read their books, watched their interviews, researched them online, etc., and I've learned that most of them were not born into success. They simply did, and continue to do, things that helped them realize their full potential.
Here are 12 things they do differently, as the rest of us can easily emulate. 1. They create and pursue smart goals. Successful people are objective.
They have realistic targets in mind. They know what they are looking for and why they are fighting for it. Successful people create and pursue smart goals. Smart goals are S, specific, M, measurable, A, attainable, R, relevant, and T, timely.
Let's briefly review each. Specific. A general goal would be get in shape, but a related specific goal would be join a health club and work out three days a week for the next 52 weeks. A specific goal has a far greater chance of being accomplished because it has defined parameters and constraints.
Measurable. There must be a logical system for measuring the progress of a goal. To determine if your goal is measurable, ask yourself questions like, how much time? How many total?
How I know when the goal is accomplished, etc. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continue efforts required to reach your goal. Attainable. To be attainable, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work.
In other words, the goal must be realistic. The big question here is, how can the goal be accomplished? Relevant. Relevance stresses the importance of choosing goals that matter.
For example, an internet entrepreneur's goal to make 75 tuna sandwiches by 2 PM may be specific, measurable, attainable, and timely, but lacks relevance to an entrepreneur's overarching objective of building a profitable online business. Timely. A goal must be grounded within a time frame, giving the goal a target to date. A commitment to a deadline helps you focus your efforts on the completion of the goal on or before the due date.
This part of the smart goal criteria is intended to prevent goals from being overtaken by daily distractions. When you identify smart goals that are truly important to you, you become motivated to figure out ways to attain them. You develop the necessary attitude, abilities, and skills. You can achieve almost any goal you set if you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps.
Goals that once seem far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them. Number two, they take decisive and immediate action. Very few people ever live to become the success story they dream about, and there's one simple reason why. They never take action.
The acquisition of knowledge doesn't mean you're growing. Growing happens when what you know changes, how you live. So many people live in a complete days. Actually they don't live.
They simply get by because they never take the necessary action to make things happen, to seek their dreams. It doesn't matter if you have a genius IQ and a PhD in quantum physics. You can't change anything or make any sort of real world progress without taking action. There's a huge difference between knowing how to do something and actually doing it.
Knowledge and intelligence are both useless without action. It's as simple as that. Success hinges on the simple act of making a decision to live, to absorb yourself in the process of going after your dreams and goals. So make that decision and take action.
For some practical guidance on taking action, I highly recommend getting things done. Number three, they focus on being productive, not being busy. In his book The Four Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss says, quote, slow down and remember this, most things make no difference. Being busy is often a form of mental laziness, lazy thinking and indiscriminate action, unquote.
This is Ferriss's way of saying, work smarter, not harder, which happens to be one of the most prevalent modern day personal development cliches. But like most cliches, there's a great deal of truth to it and a few people actually adhere to it. Just take a quick look around. The busy, outnumber the productive by a wide margin.
Busy people are rushing all over the place and running late half of the time. They're heading to work, conferences, meetings, social engagements, et cetera. They barely have enough free time for family get-togethers and they rarely get enough sleep. Yet, business emails are shooting out of their smartphones like machine gun bullets and their daily planners jam to the brim with obligations.
Their busy schedule gives them an elevated sense of importance, but it's all an illusion. It's like hamsters running on a wheel. The solution? Slow down.
Breathe. Review your commitments and goals. Put first things first. Do one thing at a time.
Start now. Take a short break in two hours. Repeat. And always remember, results are more important than the time it takes to achieve them.
Number four. Hear that in tomorrow's episode. You just listened to part one of the post titled, 12 Things Successful People Too Differently by Mark Chernoff of markandangel.com. I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health.
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And he and Angel have a book called, 1000 Little Things Happy Successful People Do Differently, so if you like this post, definitely check that out. I'll leave it there for today. Have a great rest of your Valentine's Day. And I'll see you tomorrow where we'll continue this post and where your optimal life awaits.