The Power of Repetition

Repetition sounds boring! But what if you knew that by investing in disciplined repetition, you could shift from achieving moderate success to achieving breakthrough performance? Would you consider it then? James Clear, a top Leadership blogger, offers a profound message on how to achieve your goals by focusing on what Malcolm Gladwell describes as '10,000 hours of disciplined practice'. He demonstrates that repetition doesn’t need to be boring if it is disciplined and intentionally focused on reinforcing the behaviors that serve you well, and refining and improving them over time.

The strongest performers are those who will invest in a daily practice of reinforcement and refinement. Body builders have known this for years. They do a disciplined daily practice, not an occasional marathon lifting session. Achieve your most stretching goals by instituting the right kind of disciplined daily practice in your life. Read James Clear’s post here.

Butting Heads With Your GenX Successor

There are many reasons you might butt heads with your GenX successor.  Maybe you don’t see eye to eye on how to handle the financials, or they have a new ‘vision’ for your business and you don’t like it, or they just hold their writing pen the wrong way.  As Boomers retire, Generation X (and Millennials) are inheriting their businesses and they have a whole different outlook on life.

According to Retire Retirement by Tamara Erickson some common reasons Boomers and X’ers butt heads:

• Boomers value individual achievement and recognition while Generation X focuses more on team success.
• Boomers are competitive and operate on merit-based systems and use money and positions as markers of success.  On the contrary, Generation X does not care as much for competition.
• Generally, Generation X demonstrates less commitment and less interest in working as hard as Boomers. 

Although you may think Generation X’s way of doing things is crazy -- and to you it may be -- they are the future. Building into your workplace more of the things that get GenX’ers motivated could increase productivity and improve relationships.

How can you motivate your GenX’ers today?  

I'll Write About Procrastination Tomorrow

Okay. I’ll be real with you. I meant to start writing this post yesterday.

So why am I sitting here working under a crunched timeline? 

Well, because… I waited.

And why did I wait?

Allow me to answer that question, with a question:

Why, only in the last 24 hours have the pleas of my desk top, closet, and filing cabinets to be meticulously organized… become so darn…seductive?

That’s right – these are the ramblings of yet another unsuspecting victim of procrastination.

…or, the ramblings of the proud new owner of a client filing system that is color coded and alphabetized by middle name…depending on the way you look at it.

Procrastination is nothing more than borrowed time charged on a high interest credit card. It allows us to splurge our time on things that don’t need to be done when we can least afford it.

When the bill comes due we are left with two very undesirable options:

• Scramble to make the deadline
• Miss the deadline and pay the penalty

How do you stop procrastinating? Yikes…that’s a topic for another day…

Let’s start with the reasons why we procrastinate – Do either of these hit home for you?

1. You are energized by the rush that comes from knowing you have to pull out all stops and accomplish something against an upcoming deadline.
2. You are de-motivated with the work you are delaying. The job is big and feels overwhelming, you are not sure where to start, or maybe the work is dull and sucks the life out of you.

Knowing why you are procrastinating, naming it – takes away its power and will often enable you to take that first step.

Taking the first step means you are no longer procrastinating… you’ve started!

What project or task do you need to take the first step on today? Go ahead. Get started.