I was reading the Arabic translation of an English book that I owned to be able to find better words to use for my Arabic podcast. The translation was excellent and kept the spirit of this favorite book of mine intact. Then I noticed a mistake in translation where the translator missed negating a sentence that the author did. The first thought that came into mind was: oh I have to find the email address of the translator and notify him to make sure he fixes this in the next version! Then, I noticed my thoughts.
Continue reading “Find The Good”self-improvement
No book will save you
Don’t get me wrong. A book after another saved me when I needed saving. But it’s time for me to stop “the hunt”. And you too.
You will save you. You appreciating what you already gained. You using all the resources you have instead of looking for the new shiny thing out there. You getting engaged with the ideas you read. You implementing what you learn. You taking action and learning from your own mistakes. You learning from others’ mistakes without having to go through their whole experience. You reflecting on your days and weeks and months and years. You changing course when things stop working. You pushing forward knowing it only might be the dip. You announcing your commitments and living up to them. You sharing what you think. You asking for feedback and accepting it as the gift it is from the generous souls in your life. You showing up without seeing tangible progress daily trusting that the compound interest will be totally worth it.
It’s you first.
Then find people who are like you and carry on together.
You can’t do it alone.
This is How You Get Better
This is how we get better in knowledge areas we’re interested in:
- We read about what we want to learn about.
- We improve how we think/work/live by implementing what we learned.
- We share about it by writing/podcasting/art making…etc.
- We read some more.
- We fine-tune what we learned and keep sharing.
As I commit to writing more here daily, I am finding that I am better understanding the topics that interest me most and get me so eager to share about in this space and in other mediums.
It’s really fascinating.
My Workday Startup Ritual is how I stay laser focused
My ideal workday startup ritual consists of the following steps:
- Arrive to office.
- Fill up my water bottle.
- Light up my office candle (stays on for an hour).
- Read for 5 minutes from a work related book (finished reading “To sell is human” like this, currently reading “The motivation manifesto”).
- Scan my annual and quarterly work goals and weekly tasks sheet.
- Do the 10-minute check-in as mentioned in the amazing book Start Finishing by answering:
- Has anything significant changed between now and the last checkout? The key word here is significant. Some events do change the course of your day. For instance, your kids might get sick and you’ll need to change your plans to be able to take care of them.
- What did you plan for today? This is where you review the plan you made for yourself the day before.
- What’s one thing you’re going to start on right now? This step is all about setting the intention to focus on this one thing for your next time block.
- Time block my day using my passion planner. I learned this productivity method from Deep Work book, and I believe this is a very important step to keep me focused during the day and mindful of shifts in my schedule and outside interruptions and self-initiated distractions.
- Start working on my most important task.
Goal Setting Series: Part 1-Reflect on the Past
We practice goal setting all the time in business settings. If you’re an employee you usually receive your goals every year or every six months, which would align with the strategic goals of the company. At the end of the semester, you review your achievements with your boss against the defined goals, you discuss what worked, what didn’t, and why.
However, we usually coast through our personal lives, letting things happen to us and reacting as necessary. We are not charting our own paths to where we want to go. We are walking pre-defined paths for us. That’s why our days and years look a lot like each other. We are not living goal-oriented lives, we are not living on purpose. This gap in goal setting between our work life and personal life was an insight that clicked for me in a conversation with a business leader and a mentor I’m lucky to have met called Iman Mutlaq. I’ll be always grateful for helping me notice this.
It’s true, many of us set new year’s resolutions, but resolutions without a plan are not goals, they are only hopes and aspirations, and that’s why they fail by mid-February.
Lucky for you, I have good news. Goal setting can be done anytime. You can do it at the beginning of each year, on your birthday, every month, every quarter, or whenever you decide to pursue something new. As Lara Casey always says: “There is nothing magical about January 1st“.
In this series, I will share with you what I have learned about goal setting from my favorite authors on the subject Michael Hyatt and Lara Casey.
This Post is part 1 of 4.
Goal Setting Starts in the Past.
Your past has only one value, learning from it. Reviewing your past will help you design the right goals for yourself. If you start goal setting by reviewing the past you’re more likely to set meaningful goals that you will invest time and effort to achieve.
First: Do a Life Audit
Our lives are multi-faceted as Michael Hyatt asserts. Our lives are not just our careers or health or families. These life domains are all connected. When we’re not doing well in one domain of our life we can feel it impacting the satisfaction we have in other areas.
We start the life audit by rating the key life areas on a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 means you are not satisfied and want to see a big change there and 10 means you’re happy with how you’re showing up in this domain. While at it, write a few words about the reason you selected the score for each domain. State facts and how you feel, honesty is key here because the opportunity for improvement starts taking shape now, the lowest scores indicate the bigger opportunity to make a change.
Life domains are differently grouped depending on the writer, you can add categories or remove those that don’t apply to you. Feel free to make your own life categories that work for your unique life.
The categories I recommend are:
- Health: How you feel about your body.
- Mental/Emotional: How you feel about your psychological well-being.
- Relationships: How you feel about your relationship to:
- Spouse/Significant other
- Friends
- Family
- Finances: Your personal or family’s financial situation
- Work: Your job, your 9-5, and side projects.
- Spiritual Growth: Your connection to God.
- Learning: Your educational development.
- Personal Environment: Your home and work environment.
- Fun & Recreation: Your hobbies, playtime, relaxation, and adventure experiences.
- Service & Contribution: how you serve the world/volunteering.
You can also take an assessment I really like by Michael Hyatt to assess how you are generally doing in life’s different domains by answering a series of helpful questions. Make sure to save your answers so you can go back to them after a while. I guarantee you will see improvements after you commit to setting goals in areas where your satisfaction was the lowest.
Second: Evaluate your past.
Select how far you’d like to go in your past, 6 months, one year, 3 years? Answer accordingly.
I assumed you want to go back one year and wrote the tips accordingly:
- Start with the positive: While our human tendency is to remember the negative first, it is recommended to start with the good. This will help us have the energy to complete the past exercise. Write a list of the wonderful things that happened to you. What are you most proud of? What worked well last year? A few ways to remember:
- You can consult your family and friends to remind you of your highlights
- You can check your social media posts to remember
- You can go through your camera roll.
- You can check your calendar or planner.
- You can check your goals from last time, and celebrate what’s done.
- You can check your past financial statements, this will remind you of your priorities and events.
- Name the challenges: Write a list answering questions like what did not work this past year? What disappointments or regrets did you experience? What goals did you want to achieve but did not? What were some blocks you faced? What achievements did you want to be acknowledged for but were not? It is hard to write our answers here. But power through it. This list will guide your focus when you set your goals, your challenges are your biggest opportunities for improvement.
- Distill the lessons: What did the positive and the negative from the past year teach you? Make them into short sentences of wisdom that you can repeat over and over to yourself.
Third: State what you are grateful for.
- Gratitude time: Write the names of people who helped you during this past year. Find a way to thank them for specific things they did for you or ways they stood by you. Feeling gratitude is one thing, expressing it to those who caused it is an another level. They will be so surprised, and you are going to make someone’s day.
Bonus Step
- Identify your hidden opportunity. The opportunity principle states that feelings of dissatisfaction and disappointment are strongest where the chances for corrective action are clearest. Consider your setbacks this past year, and brainstorm how they might point you toward your next opportunity.
Now you are ready to move on to the next step of goal setting which is: dreaming about the future.
New post coming up soon.
I’m deeply grateful to Michael Hyatt and Lara Casey for all that they taught me about Goal Setting that I have shared in this blog post.
You can listen to this blog post in Arabic through episode 7 of my podcast:
14 Tips for Waking Up Early for Beginners
- Define your why. The first thing I ask people who want to start waking up at 5AM is why do they want to do that? What’s missing that waking up would help them accomplish? Waking up at 5AM is not for everybody, especially not for those who already have the time to work on their self-improvement activities like journaling, reading, planning and so on during the rest of the day. Or those who appreciate their nighttime outings and want the freedom of going out any night of the week without thinking they will wake up at 5AM the next day. Write your why, which will motivate you when you lose your initial enthusiasm. Maybe it would be something like: I don’t want to feel the morning rush ever again. I want to feel I can start my day slowly and with intention. I want to go to work with my to-do list ready. I want to increase my knowledge/self-awareness/muscles.
- Work on your evening routine first. Observe your current bedtime and what gets in the way of sleeping on time. How does going out affect your bedtime? Notice your habits of consumption at night, whether content on TV or social media or food or caffeine. It is recommended to cut off coffee 6 hours at least before bedtime in many studies.
- Create something to look forward to in the morning. Examples could include fancy coffee or hot beverage, or a mug you get especially for this habit. A new shiny notebook and set of pens. An exciting book you want to read. An online course you subscribe to.
- Dedicate a corner in your house for your morning time. It could be a chair facing a window, it could be your kitchen table or a small desk you get especially to place your morning tools on it. I used an old outdoor table as a makeshift office for years before replacing it with my shiny new office from IKEA a few months ago.
- Look for or ask some friends to join you in this new habit for accountability and to create momentum. It’s much more exciting when you wake up knowing others are sleepy but awake like you. You can create a WhatsApp group and send good morning to each other, like I do with my small group. You can also ask to call and wake up each other if you don’t show up on time.
- If no one is interested to join your challenge in creating this habit, start a public challenge on your social media announcing your implementation intentions (this early, this many days) and report on your story daily indicating how super early you are and how far you are in the habit. This is how I started and how I recommitted to it.
- Speaking of social media, post that update or send good morning your 5am group then put your phone far away for an hour at least to do the things you wake up for. You can’t underestimate the allure of your phone screen and how it will steal precious minutes and attention from you if given the chance. I set appblock on strict mode the night before to guard my morning routine.
- Change your alarm ringtone, you got so used to your current one and your body is learning a new habit, so it needs a new trigger, Also put your alarm (I’m assuming phone) far from your hand’s reach so you have to stand up and walk to turn if off, and you might as well leave the bedroom as planned.
- Remember the 5-second rule. When you hear the alarm, count down from 5, 5-4-3-2-1, and launch out of bed like rockets launch into the sky. This would not give enough time for your foggy self-talk to start, which wants you warm and cozy in bed, forgetting and abandoning your budding habit.
- If your feel too sleepy after you wake up and want to go back to bed, remind yourself how you would feel in 2 hours if you stay awake and true to your new habit. Like I did once, blast some music in your earphones and do some jumping jacks to wake up that body.
- Make your habit rewarding. Use a monthly calendar to cross off each day you wake up with a big fat X. Don’t break the chain of X. Include the X in your social media photo.
- Set a reward for yourself when you complete X number of days in a row. Make it so attractive and worthy of your efforts.
- Remember, it takes an average of 66 days to make a new routine a habit. Keep going. Don’t assume it has become a habit too soon by giving yourself days off way too early. If you quit too soon you might think you are fine, and you don’t need it, but before you know it the old symptoms that propelled you to start will come back. They will not feel so great.
- Prepare for failure. Set a rule that if you break the chain, you don’t break it more than 2 days. Don’t let the perfectionist in you say it’s all or nothing (I thank this book for teaching me this). Forgive yourself and jump back to it because your previous efforts are not wasted. New neural pathways are being forged in your brain as you are creating this habit, and they will stay there for the days you break the chain as long as you go back.
Anything I missed? What’s your favorite tip? let me know your own secrets to waking up early.
What does Audible have to do with Traffic?
Everything.
See, I have an average of 40 minutes commute to and from work. In 2014, I started using Audible application on my mobile while driving, and it was one of the smartest things I have done. My library consists mainly of self- development, psychology and business books. My life has changed with all those books. They were my companions during travel that I barely listen to radio anymore
I tried to listen to short fictional story once, the narration was great but I prefer this genre on paper and kindle. Audible is fully packed with the best seller novels nonetheless if interested.
If you haven’t heard of it before, Audible is a company owned by Amazon with the mission to “Unleash the power of the Spoken Word” where you can find over 180K titles narrated by world-class narrators.
With my schedule, which is mostly like yours, the best way to get so much reading done is audible and I’m happy to have few friends and family members take my advice to use it.
New to audible? or thinking about joining? Here are my tips for a great and lifelong experience:
- The first book is free. If you like the experience you can subscribe for 14.95$ monthly which gives you one credit that allows to buy any book on audible no matter the price. If you see books much cheaper you can also buy them directly and enrich your library and save your credit for something else.
- Read book reviews before buying an audio book. Not just on audible, but also on goodreads to see if the content is worth your time not just the narration quality.
- Browse your favorite subjects and top rated books in your preferred genre and start with them first then experiment with not so famous books to get the habit going rather than getting discouraged by some titles. (I highly recommend to start with any book by Seth Godin or Brene Brown: The Power of Vulnerability)
- Speed up or slow the narration according to your preference and how you perceive the narrator. Many books felt much better when I sped up the narration by 1.2X
- Add audible shortcut to mobile home menu so you’ll start listening as soon as you get into the car
- If you don’t like a book you can return it. I did it only once because I thought the topic of the book would be different when I bought it.
- When you finish a book (self-development or business type books), don’t start a new one immediately. I recommend to do a quick re-listen. It has to be a fast one (1.1 or more) to review the key concepts and get them to stick, especially that you sometimes get distracted and paragraphs get read that you don’t even remember going through the first time. I didn’t do this until a couple of months ago and it made all the difference. Usually, I can’t wait to start another book after listening to one book for couple of weeks but trust me, this would do wonders to help you learn new ideas.
- Subscribe to audible’ s daily deal to get notified about discounted books for the day. So you can get books without waiting for your monthly credit.
- Add books to your wish list and audible will notify you if it’s on sale by email.
- Their customer care chat is very helpful, use it if needed.
- Ask for titles on audible that you can’t find and maybe they will consider your request. For example , I had all Zig Ziglar series and one was missing ( I think it was the goals program) so I asked about it. Few weeks later I found they added it. I’d like to believe i had something to do with it.
- Try the great courses series, lectures by great professors on various interesting topics. my favorites topics are business and psychology.
- If you have a book on kindle and you’re so into it that can’t stop reading it you have the option to buy the audible version at a reduced price if you see “whispersync for voice-ready” and the narration will start where you left off in your kindle
- You can also listen to podcasts, news on your audible. Choose your favorite channels and you can listen to nuggets of wisdom or humors segments everyday like HBR ideacast and TED talks. There are even audible original series which I still haven’t got the chance to listen to.
- You can bookmark audio segments you like and share them with your friends. I particularly do that for parenting books.
- I recommend not getting carried away by purchasing many books and take it one book at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed.
- I enjoy listening while doing some mundane house chores, that way I’m always learning.
- Getting a Bluetooth headset also really enhanced my listening experience.