Below are the 6 best leadership and self help books that you can read right now to develop your sense of direction, find your most authentic self and achieve your goals!
Wondering what are the best leadership books to read before this year comes to an end?
1. Grit By Angela Duckworth
Grit is nothing more than a combination of courage, passion and perseverance.
In her book Grit, Angela Duckworth interviews a series of leaders from all walks of life whose grit has helped them succeed and whose stories will surely inspire you.
2. How To Win Friends & Influence People By Dale Carnegie
In How To Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie gives practical advice on how to successfully attract people, convert their way of thinking towards our ideas, on how to be more confident, achieve more and reach your highest potential in life thanks to your relationships.
3. The Little Book Of Big Lies By Tina Lifford
In The Little Book Of Big Lies, Tina Lifford gives helpful advice for you to build up your inner self and shares fourteen real life stories to help you move on from trauma and your past.
4. Year Of Life By Shonda Rhimes
In her funny memoir Year Of Life, Shonda Rhimes shares her poignant life story and her journey towards personal success.
Throughout her book, she makes you laugh but also reflect on the power of saying yes, of continually staying positive and focused.
5. The Magic Of Thinking Big By David J. Schwartz
David J. Schwartz teaches us throughout The Magic Of Thinking Big to:
Think big and set bigger than life goals.
Overcome our fear of failure by actually accomplishing our goals.
Fail forward and trust the process.
6. The Obstacle Is The Way By Ryan Holiday
In The Obstacle Is The Way,Ryan Holiday employs the lessons of Greek philosophy to help you see past your failures and obstacles.
He encourages you to persevere no matter what and to apply a certain stoicism to most of your life situations.
Last Words Of Advice!
Each one of these books demonstrate ways to achieve long term success, accomplish your dreams and figure out a solution to every single one of your problems.
To top it all off, these books also exhibit great examples of people who have remained optimistic and creative in the face of challenges.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
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Within their roles, leaders would have to decide the best candidates for the job, the direction of an organization or even the concept of a new product.
Some of those decisions are made thoughtfully, some instinctively, involuntarily, out of necessity and others by putting it off or by letting problems solve themselves.
In reality, decision-making relies on a leader’s ability to select the best option to achieve a desired outcome.
Furthermore, decision-making is the ability to think critically in order to reach critical goals and to demonstrate the soundness of that decision.
Quick and sound decision-making is a sought-after leadership trait.
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Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
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In Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want, Michael Hyatt & Daniel Harkavy suggest that we define a plan for our lives.
They introduce us to the concept of Life Planning and show us how to implement the process.
What is a Life Plan?
According to Hyatt and Harkavy, “A Life Plan is a short written document, usually five to fifteen pages long“.
The Life Plan is personal, describes your priorities, the steps to reach your goals and the legacy you want to leave.
It is a life long process, that can continually be adjusted and improved. A Life Plan doesn’t shield you from life challenges and failures. Instead, it will help you create intention for your life.
It is common to have a career plan but no Life Plan. The Life Plan enables you to:
Set priorities and stick to them.
Stop sacrificing yourself, to stop trading health and time for work, career advancement, accolades or money.
Filter out opportunities. As you get older and as you get experiences, opportunity coming your way will multiply. It is therefore important to know where your priorities lie and what opportunity to choose.
Avoid distractions, confront and deal with reality.
Avoid the feeling of being stuck and allow you to keep your eyes on the future.
Avoid regrets and increase your level of control.
The drift and its consequences
Most people drift away from their dreams because:
They are unaware that their ideas and assumptions are inaccurate and harmful.
There is a discrepancy between their beliefs and reality.
They are distracted, are spread too thin or too busy to focus on their lives and to start prioritizing.
They don’t understand that there is hope, that they can change and that they have more control over their lives than they think.
When you drift away from your dreams and when you don’t have a Life Plan, you tend to:
Lack meaning and purpose.
Waste your time and other valuable resources on meaningless tasks.
Lose opportunities and their sense of urgency. People who drift away procrastinate and are unable to discern a good opportunity from a bad.
Experience trouble more intensely because they are unprepared.
Take a passive approach to life, shift blame and live in regrets.
Designing and implementing your Life Plan
To design your Life Plan, it is necessary to outline your legacy, to set your priorities, get clarity on your objectives and to reserve one day to build your Life Plan.
Outlining your legacy
To design your Life Plan, keep in mind that everybody leaves a legacy, face your mortality and begin with the end in mind.
It is critical to write your Life Plan like you are writing your eulogy, to imagine how you want others to remember you and to stay committed to the process.
Setting your priorities
Getting more clarity on your objectives will definitely increase your commitment. To do so, you must steer clear from external expectations and do what is right for you.
Getting clarity on objectives
Identify your purpose.
Project yourself into the future, picture yourself in it and imagine all the different positive outcomes. To make your vision much more compelling, write down in the present tense what you hear, feel, see, smell and taste.
Find and apply a quote that inspires you.
Make an honest assessment of your current progress.
Commit to specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time-bond goals.
Devote one day to your Life Plan
Hyatt & Harkavy recommend that you schedule one day to create your Life Plan. Needless to say, the Life plan should be implemented starting the next day.
It is necessary to allow yourself to dream, to not expect perfection and to not get distracted.
Implement your plan
Implementing the Life Plan is the most challenging part. It is necessary to:
Include your Life Plan in your everyday routine.
Fight the feeling of being overwhelmed by life’s drama.
Don’t be afraid to say no or to disappoint others.
Read your plan daily and review it often.
Review
Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want by Michael Hyatt & Daniel Harkavy is an easy to read self-help book that is based on some of their traumatic experiences.
It is destined to increase our focus, to helps us find out what matters most, to acquire meaning and fulfillment in our everyday life, to allow us to prioritize our lives and to contribute effectively,
This book is written for people who are looking for a better direction for their life because they are either:
unsatisfied with the current state of their lives,
lack purpose,
seeking more balance,
unable to overcome life challenges,
noticing that their lives don’t fit their vision or dream,
not reaching their full potential.
The earlier we start creating and implementing a Life Plan, the better.
Favorite quote(s)
Living Forward will heighten your sense of what’s truly possible for you in life. If you feel out of balance, aware that your current pace is unsustainable; if you are making great gains professionally but don’t want to neglect personal priorities; if you want to have better focus to succeed financially; if you have gone through a recent tragedy and suddenly become aware that life is short; if any of those are true, this book is for you.
I know that how we lead ourselves in life impacts how we lead those around us. Self-leadership always precedes team leadership. We must have a balanced approach to accumulating net worth in all of the critical accounts in our lives, not just one or two. Ultimately this allows us to make the greatest difference and adds the most value to those around us. It is possible to grow at work without diminishing other areas of our lives. Living forward helps us find and maintain our balance.
Strangely, this week, I found myself explaining the 80/20 principle to everyone I know…
Though this principle is well-known by leaders, it is rarely applied. Leaders around the globe get flooded with information, sometimes more than they can handle. However, they have to make swift decisions and keep their most important objectives in mind.
To extract value and positivity in every situation, to improve our daily life, our institutions, our efficiency, our processes, our achievements, it is detrimental to understand the 80/20 Principle.
Wondering how to generate goals and focus on the most important ones using the 80/20 Principle?
What Is The 80/20 Principle?
The 80/20 Principle is actually known as the Principle of Imbalance, the Principle of Least Effort or the Pareto Law, uncovered in 1897 by Vilfredo Pareto, an italian economist. In the 19th century, in England, Pareto noticed that 80% of the wealth and income was accumulated by only 20% of the population. Furthermore, Pareto remarked that the wealth was not evenly distributed and that not only wealth was distributed in this manner. The Pareto Principle was consistently reproducible in different countries, in different times and with different sets of data. The Pareto Principle :
has been justified by Professor Zipf who demonstrated that 70% of marriages happened to people living 30% within each other.
has been used by Joseph Moses Juran during the industrial revolution, in Japan, in order to improve the quantity, the reliability and the value of customer goods.
is illustrated in every cause to effect relationship. For example,
20% of employees or customers are responsible for 80% of the company profits.
20% of criminals commit 80% of the crimes.
20% of your clothes in your closet will be worn 80% of the time.
80% of our achievements happen in 20% of our time.
According to Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle The secret of achieving more with less, the principle either requires 80/20 Analysis or 80/20 Thinking:
80/20 Analysis: Before taking action, Prior analysis of the non linear relationship between cause and effort. This analysis is time-consuming but more detailed.
80/20 Thinking: Before taking action, intuitively identify what is most important, then verify the usefulness of the 80/20 principle in the given situation. This is faster.
Why It Will Change Your Life
Generally, the 80/20 is used to prioritize, to set goals, to achieve more in less time and with less effort. It can be applied in business, in life, in any social grouping and in various cultures. For instance, in business, it helps you identify the areas where you lose time, money and where it is possible to cut your losses. To exploit its full potential, the 80/20 principle exerts us to:
Spot the most important and ignore the massive unimportant.
Understand that every action doesn’t lead to the same outcome or even lead to one.
Apply it in business to reduce costs and to generate more revenue.
Putting The Principle Into Practice To Set Tangible Goals
The 80/20 is for those who want more of their life, for the ambitious, for the goal-oriented and for the self-disciplined. Being ambitious is not synonymous to bein overworked, busy, or sacrificing yourself. To harness the 80/20 Principle, to make your dreams more feasible and to grow exponentially in any field:
Discover what you are more enthusiastic about in life.
Avoid investing the same amount of energy in everything that you pursue. Be strategic and identify the best 20% and invest 80% of your effort.
Most people believe that goals are wishes, mere desires that they don’t believe they can achieve. Get clarity and be specific on what you want. There is no unrealistic goals.
Make your goals big. The bigger the goal, the bigger the impact on your life, the higher the motivation and the longer you can maintain the vision.
Make sure that these goals are self-imposed.
Keep your goals simple. Simple is rare but simple is effective. Choose simplicity first. For example, identify the simplest and most standardized product, nurture the simplest 20%, make it high quality and eliminate the rest. In addition, simple businesses are better than complex ones because they deliver better value and perform better.
Find ways to make your goals achievements fun. Avoid spending time on easy tasks and tune out distractions. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said it best: “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least”.
Avoid focusing on the negative and waiting for a positive outcome. It is necessary to let go of the customers, employees, products and processes that don’t bring profits
Know your values and purpose. Then, align your goals with your values in order to feel more fulfilled.
Analyze the reasons and the costs of these goals beforehand. Applying the 80/20 Analysis will indicate whether or not you would pursue them.
Write down your goals for various parts of your life (career, work processes, leadership styles, lifestyle, health) and accomplish the most important goal. These goals must have value. Writing down goals allows you to solidify them subconsciously and to get everything into place.
Write down what you really want and write it down as if you are writing it from the future, having already achieved your goal.
Work on this one goal all the time. 20 Percent of your activities will result in 80 percent of our results. It is a known fact that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in a basket. Instead, choose the basket to put all your eggs into.
Review these goals on a daily to keep your commitment to yourself.
Divide your goals into smaller steps to make your plan more coherent and easier to achieve.
Identify the obstacles, the knowledge needed, the relationships that you have to build to achieve your goals.
Measure your progress with parameters like money, time, energy, emotional investment. You can even create a deadline. If you miss a deadline, create another one.
Share your goals with those that will implement it.
Last Words Of Advice!
Don’t beat yourself or your team up for not realizing all your goals. Have you used the 80/20 principle and what have you noticed? What is one of the goal that you want to accomplish? Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership! Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
Strangely, this week, I found myself explaining the 80/20 principle to everyone I know. Though this principle is well-known by leaders, it is rarely applied. Leaders around the globe get flooded with information, sometimes more than they can handle. However, they have to make swift decisions and keep their most important objectives in mind.
To extract value and positivity in every situation, to improve our daily life, our institutions, our efficiency, our processes, our achievements, it is detrimental to understand the 80/20 Principle.
Wondering how to generate goals and focus on the most important ones using the 80/20 Principle?
What Is The 80/20 Principle?
The 80/20 Principle is actually known as the Principle of Imbalance, the Principle of Least Effort or the Pareto Law, uncovered in 1897 by Vilfredo Pareto, an italian economist. In the 19th century, in England, Pareto noticed that 80% of the wealth and income was accumulated by only 20% of the population.
Furthermore, Pareto remarked that the wealth was not evenly distributed and that not only wealth was distributed in this manner. The Pareto Principle was consistently reproducible in different countries, in different times and with different sets of data.
The Pareto Principle :
has been justified by Professor Zipf who demonstrated that 70% of marriages happened to people living 30% within each other.
has been used by Joseph Moses Juran during the industrial revolution, in Japan, in order to improve the quantity, the reliability and the value of customer goods.
is illustrated in every cause to effect relationship. For example,
20% of employees or customers are responsible for 80% of the company profits.
20% of criminals commit 80% of the crimes.
20% of your clothes in your closet will be worn 80% of the time.
80% of our achievements happen in 20% of our time.
According to Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle The secret of achieving more with less, the principle either requires 80/20 Analysis or 80/20 Thinking:
80/20 Analysis: Before taking action, Prior analysis of the non linear relationship between cause and effort. This analysis is time-consuming but more detailed.
80/20 Thinking: Before taking action, intuitively identify what is most important, then verify the usefulness of the 80/20 principle in the given situation. This is faster.
Why It Will Change Your Life
Generally, the 80/20 is used to prioritize, to set goals, to achieve more in less time and with less effort. It can be applied in business, in life, in any social grouping and in various cultures. For instance, in business, it helps you identify the areas where you lose time, money and where it is possible to cut your losses.
To exploit its full potential, the 80/20 principle exerts us to:
Spot the most important and ignore the massive unimportant.
Understand that every action doesn’t lead to the same outcome or even lead to one.
Apply it in business to reduce costs and to generate more revenue.
Putting The Principle Into Practice To Set Tangible Goals
The 80/20 is for those who want more of their life, for the ambitious, for the goal-oriented and for the self-disciplined. Being ambitious is not synonymous to bein overworked, busy, or sacrificing yourself. To harness the 80/20 Principle, to make your dreams more feasible and to grow exponentially in any field:
Discover what you are more enthusiastic about in life.
Avoid investing the same amount of energy in everything that you pursue. Be strategic and identify the best 20% and invest 80% of your effort.
Most people believe that goals are wishes, mere desires that they don’t believe they can achieve. Get clarity and be specific on what you want. There is no unrealistic goals.
Make your goals big. The bigger the goal, the bigger the impact on your life, the higher the motivation and the longer you can maintain the vision.
Make sure that these goals are self-imposed.
Keep your goals simple. Simple is rare but simple is effective. Choose simplicity first. For example, identify the simplest and most standardized product, nurture the simplest 20%, make it high quality and eliminate the rest. In addition, simple businesses are better than complex ones because they deliver better value and perform better.
Find ways to make your goals achievements fun. Avoid spending time on easy tasks and tune out distractions. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said it best: “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least”.
Avoid focusing on the negative and waiting for a positive outcome. It is necessary to let go of the customers, employees, products and processes that don’t bring profits
Know your values and purpose. Then, align your goals with your values in order to feel more fulfilled.
Analyze the reasons and the costs of these goals beforehand. Applying the 80/20 Analysis will indicate whether or not you would pursue them.
Write down your goals for various parts of your life (career, work processes, leadership styles, lifestyle, health) and accomplish the most important goal. These goals must have value. Writing down goals allows you to solidify them subconsciously and to get everything into place.
Write down what you really want and write it down as if you are writing it from the future, having already achieved your goal.
Work on this one goal all the time. 20 Percent of your activities will result in 80 percent of our results. It is a known fact that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in a basket. Instead, choose the basket to put all your eggs into.
Review these goals on a daily to keep your commitment to yourself.
Divide your goals into smaller steps to make your plan more coherent and easier to achieve.
Identify the obstacles, the knowledge needed, the relationships that you have to build to achieve your goals.
Measure your progress with parameters like money, time, energy, emotional investment. You can even create a deadline. If you miss a deadline, create another one.
Share your goals with those that will implement it.
Last Words Of Advice!
Don’t beat yourself or your team up for not realizing all your goals. Have you used the 80/20 principle and what have you noticed? What is one of the goal that you want to accomplish?
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
Damon Zahariades is a productivity expert, owner of the blog Art Of Productivity and the author of Fast Focus, a quick-start guide to mastering your attention, ignoring distractions, and getting more done in less time!.
Consequently, followers start questioning their leadership potential and credibility.
Wondering how to stop procrastinating and to become much more proactive?
What is procrastination?
Contrary to popular belief, procrastination is not being lazy. Instead, procrastination is a defense mechanism.
Procrastination is the action of putting off an important yet unpleasant task, it is avoiding pain and pushing it back for later, it is neither starting nor completing a task.
Procrastination is ruled by fear, memories, avoidance of negative emotions, avoidance of pressure. Procrastination is often times linked to being a perfectionist.
Everybody procrastinates in different areas of their lives. You are a procrastinator if you:
lack motivation and resilience.
are often overwhelmed and frozen by tasks at work.
are afraid of failure or success, are afraid or paralyzed by the limelight.
don’t know where to start, are waiting for the right time and for everything to be perfect.
don’t find the time.
don’t feel like doing anything.
are waiting for all your ducks to line up in a row.
make excuses for your excuses.
doubt yourself and the task that you have to undertake.
don’t meet deadlines at work.
unable to make decisions or are motivated by the last minutes pressure.
How to stop procrastinating?
Leaders don’t have the luxury to procrastinate because it is similar to self-sabotage. However, they are all subject to it to some extent.
Indeed, the more the task is daunting , the more we push it back. The more we push it back, the less time we have, the more the task becomes daunting.
Stop procrastinating will help you gain a sense of satisfaction and will increase your chances of success.
Take care of yourself first and foremost. Procrastination can affect different aspect of their lives as well.
Assess your strengths and weaknesses, be confident in your own abilities and maximize your potential.
Learn self-discipline and increase your emotional intelligence. This will help you monitor what you say about yourself and to yourself, make clear and immediate decisions, to fight and understand your emotions. Don’t be afraid of challenging the status quo. Don’t let fear dictate your behavior and your decisions.
Avoid overwhelming yourself, overthinking or over-analyzing a task.Measuring how difficult the task is and being afraid of failure will deter you from achieving any consequential result.
Our perception of pain is programmed by past society and by past experiences. To get rid of that perception, visualize your success and your task accomplished.
Write down what you have been procrastinating on and why. Write down 3 tasks that you must do. Work 5 minutes on each task successively without distraction.
Break down on task in smaller feasible steps. Take the first step, focus on one step at a time and create momentum.
Prioritize these steps: discern urgent tasks from important tasks, use the 80/20 principle. Take care of the hardest and most important task first and focus your energy on that.
Estimate and isolate the time needed to execute your task. You can set a deadline and use a timer
Commit to your tasks.
Measure your progress and remind yourself of your accomplishments.
To manage your time appropriately, anticipate obstacles, withstand challenges and find solutions.
Make sure that your workspace is organized for the work at hand.
Stay away from distractions. Stay away from internet and social media, turn off your phone, don’t check your emails.
Develop a sense of urgency. It is critical to remind yourself that you will lose the opportunity, to remind yourself of the consequences of not making decisions or taking action, to remember that there is no right time to accomplish your task.
Create a vision board in order to better visualize your goals.
Create a routine and aim for the long-term.
Don’t try to be perfect.
Surround yourself with like-minded people.
Watch motivational videos to get you started.
Don’t wait until you are 100% sure. The perfect time is now.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
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