Entries from June 2007 ↓

Conclude The Day With Positive Reflection

I came across Motivation or Action First? and it motivated me to share my simple practice.

My day starts at 6:00 and ends by 1:00 late at night. Walking the dog, taking kids to school, work, house keeping, self development, blogging, love. I am not workaholic - I just try to collect as much experiences as I can during the day, preferably productive ones - here is my simple recipe for this - Plan, Execute, And Celebrate. Obviously with such workload, I need mental support. Shrink is not an option - expensive, too much time to spend, and why I need someone to tell me how I need to live my life anyway?

So I motivate myself by positive reflection each day by the end of the day - I do it with myself, my 7 year old daughter, even told my mother to do so. The result is always the same - at least good mood, at max more power and motivation to do more.

The practice is simple - ask yourself about 3  simple things that were successful today - it can be anything - traffic was good, the coffee was tasty, passed the test, had a nice call from old friend or my mom or dad, kids told me their stories, completed most of the daily to-do list tasks. After admitting I had the whole three good things during the day I feel motivated for even more to complete. Even when the whole day was a disaster then I turn to The Mindset Of Failure which helps me extracting the most even from failure.

The techniques is not new but simple and works for me.

Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one” - Hans Selye.

Plan, Execute, And Celebrate

I found this gem via The Best of the Internet 6-3-07 - JP Morgan’s Guaranteed Formula for Success - go read it.

[Spoiler] - it says:

  • Every morning, write a list of the things that need to be done that day.
  • Do them.
  • My addition would be (and that is exactly what I do) - celebrate even smallest achievement. It gives me even more motivation to keep things done.

    Here is my practice:

    • List achievable to-do list and allocate time - this one is essential.
    • Execute against the list despite distraction  - there is always distraction around.
    • Celebrate even smallest wins

    Never Set Final Price Up Front When Negotiating

    I would love to avoid negotiation and just get what I want. Turns out it does not work like this. I needed to negotiate my salary, my home price when I was selling, when I was buying new one, and some more cases. I’ve done couple of times same mistake telling the other party up front “this is my last price - take or leave it”. The end result was either I was compromising on less or the other party would have walked away. In both cases I was a bit disappointed.

    Negotiation is and art, which I do not posses yet but learn toward it. One lesson I learned is not setting final price up front. It kills negotiation. From my understanding negotiation’s purpose is to let both parties achieve win win situation, so it is good to support negotiation vs kill it.

    “Start out with an ideal and end up with a deal.”- Karl Albrecht