Boa日記帳

One thing which separates high achievers from regular people: intention. Meaning, if you get up every day and just coast wherever events and situations take you, you're going to end up somewhere other than the ideal place. To reach your utmost potential, you need to steer your own path via daily habits which prime you for success. Here are the things executives say help them get ahead in business and life.

1.Write down little tasks in the morning to clear your head
"As a founder and a mom, my multiple roles bring on a vast array of responsibilities, big and small. I quickly learned that tasks like 'put more batteries in the remote' or 'dust keyboard' can bog me down so much that I'm unable to focus on my priorities. I learned from the book "The Artist's Way" that doing morning pages to relieve my consciousness helps to remove these distractions first thing and help me to start my workday right. So I've created a habit where I write down these tasks and put them aside in an effort to clear my head. With this exercise being done before my coffee is poured, I feel so much more happy and relaxed to handle the more significant initiatives throughout my work day."

— Mandeep Shahi, cofounder and managing partner of ZENMED, an award-winning health and wellness brand with tens of thousands of followers on social media and users around the world

2.Ask yourself if it will matter in a day, week, month, or year
"There are so many things on my plate at any given time that it becomes difficult to prioritize and focus on the right things when faced with an avalanche of responsibilities. How is it possible to get it all done? The answer is simple: it isn't. We must work smarter, not just harder, and we must reconcile ourselves to the notion that it's impossible to get it all done. To deal with my day-to-day responsibilities and to focus more easily on what really matters, my daily habit is to apply a ruthless guiding principle to prioritize my to-do list each morning; I ask myself one simple question: 'Will this still matter in a day? A week? A month? A year?' I then focus on the items that will have the deepest long-term impact [so that] what's important is not getting lost in what's urgent. I find this method is also very handy when gauging a setback or a win. Ask yourself the same question and you'll gain a perspective on how much emotion to dedicate to the matter."

— Theresa Forman, president of McMillan, a 23-year-old independent creative agency with a global clientele that includes Trend Micro, Schneider Electric, United Rentals, Commvault and DFIN

3.Look to different industries to develop your own unique business concepts
"My most creative and successful ideas have been formulated by looking at best practices and successful innovations in industries that are totally unrelated to mine. When you're successful, it's easy to get complacent. And too often, looking only at your competitors will give you only incremental improvements and perpetuate 'good enough' results. By looking outward, you not only draw on your own ingenuity and motivation as a leader, but it also gives you the power to drive key innovations that have the potential to transform your business and leapfrog the competitors, whether they're traditional or non-traditional."

— Sue Marks, founder and CEO of Cielo, a global recruitment process outsourcing provider, EY Entrepreneur of the Year and three-time winner of the Working Woman 500 designation

4.Only check communications a couple of times a day
"I used to pride myself on being responsive to emails, Slack, and chats until a friend pointed out that I was priding myself on being bad at my job, because my job was to give serious thought to big projects and decisions. Don't get in the habit of constantly interrupting your work flow to check communications. Set the expectation that you'll respond once or twice per day, and stick to that. Being responsive means destroying your attention span and letting happenstance drive your priorities."

— Steve Newman, serial entrepreneur and current founder and chairman of Scalyr, a log management and observability platform that works with customers like OkCupid, Giphy, Zalando and more
Originally published at: topplay habbits