Last year I wrote an article which can give you some tips on how to seize your day in 2013. With everyone coming up with all kinds of new years resolutions for the start of 2013 I wanted to remind you that sometimes seizing the day is all it takes for you to make small improvements to your lifestyle.
Why would you want to seize the day? Well in my case I’m 50 years old. I’ve started my online business in earnest in the last 18 months, and there have been many doubting voices that do not believe we will accomplish all our dreams. So in honesty I wake every morning driven in a very small part by the desire to demonstrate my success very visibly to them. But in the main it just makes sense to make the most of my talents, my skills and the time that I’ve been blessed with.
The ill health that I have suffered in the last 12 months has acted as a massive wake up call. We really don’t know how long we have being able to perform at our peak, bringing our best to what we do day after day, so when we can, we got to put it all in. I went through a period where it was hard for me to even to get through a day, my head felt like it was trapped in a vice and was being squeezed from all sides.
I now take nothing for granted. I see each morning as my eyes open wide as a gift of another day of life. There is only today. Just today. ‘Future’ is simply a hope. You can’t rely on tomorrow. So seize your day, every day, make every second count. I’ve come to realise each moment in our life is precious.
Your ability to focus on the things that matter can make all the difference between success and failure. You cannot do everything, but you can do the one or two most important things until they are satisfactorily completed.
There is a rule that says that every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in execution. The time you take at the beginning to think about what you are going to do, before you start, ensures that when you do begin work, you will be focusing on that activity that can have the greatest possible consequences for yourself and your business.
Refuse to ‘‘major in minors.’’ Keep asking yourself, ‘‘What’s really important here?’’ Your ability to ask and answer this question will keep you on track and often avoid you spending time doing the stuff that is so time consuming yet so unproductive.
It’s amazing really how many people frequently allow themselves to become overwhelmed with trivia spending time doing stuff that really won’t make the slightest difference to their life.
My business partner now there’s a methodical bloke if I’ve ever met one. He certainly wastes no time doing anything that doesn’t have high producing results. He values his time like no other person I’ve ever met. He refuses to waste a second.
At times, I simply drive him to the point of insanity. Where there may be a few really important posts needed with high yielding keywords, ready to drive in huge amounts of traffic and income needing me to write them, and their I am writing article after article generally with a personal development theme in response to either a chat I’ve had with someone or an email I’ve read that I’m responding to in an indirect manner. This to him is me being me, at my very best, as well as at my very worst.
You see that is the remarkable difference between Neil and me. My favourite passion is to create inspiring, motivational personal development articles in the hope that I can inspire just one person to change their life for the better. Neils favourite passion, well it’s sleeping. He loves it. He can do it at any time. For as long as he can do it for. Thank God we found another passion for him, and that’s building awesome, powerful websites, which I admit keeps him awake while I’m asleep and has probably reduced his sleeping hours by at least fifty percent on a weekly basis.
He now has a reason to seize the day, every day. He is building something awesome. It uses his talents, skills and strengths. When combined with those of his partner, me, we’re pretty good at what we do, and put every ounce of what we have into creating the best business we can.
But Neil does have to keep me on the straight and narrow so that we are seizing the day instead of letting me wander off in all directions, getting lost somewhere in the blogosphere. His a bit of a dictator really. But he needs to me, keeping me on the straight and narrow making sure I use my time doing activities that pay off the best. He knows I’d happily spend hours helping others chatting to them for no reward. So sometimes he makes me work. He directs me.
He has set up a system to ensure we get the most out of each and every day. It would work even if he went back to his 24/7 sleep pattern, well that is as long as I kept working hard, but alas I need him to much for that.
At the beginning of each day, we make a list of everything that we have to do during that day. Go over the list and number the top ten items.
We then ask ourselves, “If we could do only one thing on our list today, which one task would it be?” We place a ‘‘1’’ next to that task. We repeat this exercise until we have prioritised all 10 tasks, organized from one to ten.
Then, we force ourselves to start immediately on our number one task working on it single-mindedly until it is complete. Refusing to do anything else until it is completed.
If we get everything completed early, and we don’t want to run off into the sunset we ask ourselves this one question:
What can I, and only I, do that if done well, will make a real difference?’’
What is the most valuable use of my time right now?’’
This is going to be different for both of us, because our talents are so different. Whatever we come up with for our answer we know what are highest priorities are.
We just both know life is too short and precarious not to seize the day, and in 2013 we want everyone of you to do what we do, and that’s put everything you have into making your life great.
Let these quotes inspire you:
“Carpe diem. Seize the day.” John Keats
“Nothing is worth more than this day.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The future starts today, not tomorrow.” Pope John Paul II
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” Henry David Thoreau
“Dream as if you will live forever; Live as if you will die today.” James Dean
Thank you for joining me Today! Make this your best year yet, seize the day, every day! If you don’t I may just set Neil on to you. You’ve been warned.
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