Author: cbarney.45

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” – John Wooden

Take the time to do whatever task you’re working on and to do it correctly. If you’re too busy to “do it right” then you won’t have time to do it a second time or a third time to correct the mistakes you made when you haphazardly completed it the first time.

Ask yourself, do I really need to be doing this task? If not, can you delegate it to someone who has more time and is more capable than you at the present moment?

Before delegating to someone else, ask yourself, does anybody need to complete this task? Sometimes we fall into a routine of doing something because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” But if it doesn’t need to be done at all, why waste your time or someone else’s time? Eliminate what you can.

Lastly, if it is something that needs to be done, can you figure out a way to automate it? Do you have systems in place that allow you to save more time and to still get the work done by automating the task? This will probably require some more time upfront, but once you have the systems in place to automate the redundant task, it will help you in the long run.

“The soul that is within me, no man can degrade.” – Frederick Douglas

Nobody can make you feel bad unless you give them that power over you. It is up to you whether or not you relinquish that power. In order to combat that, you must continually work on strengthening your mind and your emotions. 

Nothing is bad unless you think it is bad, just like nothing is good unless you say/think it is good. If someone states something that could be construed as rude, you have the choice to let it affect you. 

“Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.” – Marcus Aurelius

“Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds.” – George Eliot

We have the power of choice – to choose what we do (or don’t do) every day. The decisions we make are what makes us who we are. In the end, you may say a lot of things or have a lot of interesting ideas, but if you don’t follow through with them, it doesn’t matter. They are empty words.

“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.” – Epictetus 

Don’t be a “know-it-all.” It’s only your ego that is standing in the way if you don’t allow yourself to tell someone that you don’t know the answer to a question.

Most of the time, you’re not fooling anyone if you act like you understand something, but really don’t. That will lose you points with whomever you’re talking to. But to say that you don’t know and to be genuinely curious/ask good questions? Then that person will be more likely to want to help you and teach you. 

The key here is to ask good questions though. Don’t ask easy questions that can be easily looked up on Google. You should do research on the subject if you don’t know about it, learn the basics, and then ask questions to “the expert.” If you are asking basic questions for basic ideas, you are wasting their time. And if they’re truly an expert, they will get annoyed that you’re asking questions that should not require their attention. 

The Kaizen Method…continuous improvement (even if it means getting 1% better every day).

Sometimes you feel like you need to do something big, something drastic, to make your life better. But big changes can be scary. They can be risky. Only you can weigh the risks to the rewards to see if it is truly worth it.

But there is another way to change your life. If you improve one thing per day, or get 1% better at something per day, and you continue to do this for years and years, your future life will be dramatically different than your current position.

It’s like an airplane changing direction just 1-2 degrees…the trajectory from your course correction changing ever so slightly can take that plane to a different location thousands of miles away from its original destination. 

If you are like that plane, and can fractionally change the direction of your life each day, you too can change your destination/future.