Achieving Success

Life moves forward as we grow. As we overcome one obstacle and reach a goal, another obstacle appears. How do we achieve success for the next level?

First we can build confidence from past success. For me, that is getting into graduate school in US, successfully switched my major to a field that I knew little about — computer science– and then received my Ph.D. It is landing my first job, and then the second; getting my first government funding and so on. Maybe I should count more: wrote my first long English essay, ran 5k(3.1 mile) races, and now finished a 7.4 mile race. All of these successes, big or small, are things to celebrate.

To reach the next level, we have to change from both inside and outside. Our inside is the way we act and interact with outside world. It is our motivation, plan and goals. A goal can be achieved only when we form a solid plan, constantly checking our progress and remove all obstacles in the way. The outside is our environment and our social circle. We want to be in an environment that is stimulating and challenging. We want to be around people who have achieved the success we aim for. Those people are our role models and provide a roadmap to our success.

Productive joy

Anthony Robbins once said, “Everyone wants to feel happy. The only thing separating the successful and unsuccessful people is how they derive their happiness.” A person can seek happiness in drug, alcohol, food, or indulgence in sex. He can also seek it in watching TV, news, or sports. He can also seek it in raising a child, talking to friends or participating in local activities. The most successful people seek joy in their work: Be it building a product, writing research papers, or campaigning for office. They are the lucky people who found joy with their daytime job, and they get paid for doing what they love to do.

Successful founders like Michael Dell, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs created their own fun career from college years, and never changed it. Same thing can be said about Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Larry Page (Google) and Jerry Yang (Yahoo!). Their success gave them deep joy and expand their ability to bring more joy in their work. The precondition of such upward spiral is continuing success. If Bill Gates did not get his order from IBM, he would not enjoy his software giant today. If Jerry Yang cannot deliver higher growth from Yahoo! in the coming year, he will be soon out of his job. For a professor who wants to do frontier research, he needs to get big funding. Without that, he will soon perish.

Therefore enjoying a productive life is not a personal affirmation, but an interactive process with the your environment. You have to go though a competitive process to prove your passion and talents. Once supported with resources, you have to keep delivering what you promise. Only then you have the luxury of enjoying what you do.

Being productive means achieving success at every step.

Habit 3: First things first

The rule is simple: Put your energy on things that are most important to you. In other words, work from your priority list and always start with item #1.

Why don’t people follow this simple rule? One reason is that they have not thought through their priorities. It seems to them all the tasks are equally important. This makes people feel overwhelmed. To overcome this problem, we have to step back. It is absolutely crucial to identify our major goal and our priority. We have to look at a larger picture, to have perspective before we can move on. “But I am so caught up with my tasks,” a business owner may protest. This is not an excuse. Running business without priority set will lead to low performance and ultimate failure. If you don’t have a priority list, create it now. Don’t move until you have such a list.

Another situation is that people know what is important, but they feel the task is too difficult. A thesis that requires a lot of research, a phone call that requires a lot of courage, or a meeting that requires a lot of preparation are such examples. Many people dive into distraction in order to avoid the task: movies, chatting, surfing, playing games, or anything that can get their minds off the task. This is so-called “procrastination” syndrome. To over this problem, we need to break the task into small and easy-to-do chunks. The task doesn’t have to be fun. As long as it is easy, you will most likely do it. Once you get into a routine, the task is so effortless that you think it is fun. For me, I successfully started running in this way. Running 2 miles seems so hard to begin, but I tell myself: I will just run 10 steps, and then another 10 steps. Now I run 3 miles a day without much difficulty.

The best solution to alway adhering to “first things first” is having clear visions. When we visualize our goals, we get motivated and will not forget our priorities. Given that our goals are so vivid, working on our priority list becomes exciting. We feel fulfilled along the way.

In the chapter, Covey all discussed how to be an effective leader. This comes down to 5 steps:

1. Create desire results. Such results are shared between the leader and the follower
2. Create guidelines. Think through the basic standard that has to preserved when achieving the goal. Point out failure path (what not to do). But give people the responsibility of figuring out “what to do”.
3. Resources. Discuss resources that exist and the person can draw on.
4. Accountability: Discuss and agree on criteria for evaluation
5. Consequences: Specify reward and penalty for different results.

Covey applied the above steps to manage his son’s yard cleaning task. His son felt so proud and did an excellent job.

Efficiency of work

There is so much we want do, but there is so little time. Before we can realize it, a day is at its end. How I wish to stretch that 24 hours into some infinite line of road, if only I can hold it and let it expand. Unfortunately the iron law of physics does not allow any room for negotiation. The only thing we can control is the efficient use of our time.

High efficiency means getting things done fast and well. If we can finish 2 tasks instead of 1 in the fixed amount of time, then we doubled our output. This is equivalent to having our time doubled. In addition to doing things fast, we also need to do it well. That means we are clear about our goal and thus hit the target well.

How can we improve our speed? First, planning. When we plan, all the steps and time are well rehearsed in our mind. There will be no hesitation or internal debate on what we should or should not do. A clearly plan ensures that we are on target and work on the most import things.

Second, maintain high energy. When we are fresh and energetic, we tend to have good ideas and get things done faster. When we are tired, our mind drifts away and it is very difficult to concentrate. Then how we maintain high energy. One effective way is taking break. Force yourself to leave your desk every hour. Take a walk or do something light. A break allows your mind to regroup ideas, and allows you to relax your muscle.

The second way to maintain high energy is to have proper diet. Water-rich diet will makes us healthy and alert. Eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Drink a lot of water.

Thirdly, exercise more and exercise intensively. Intensive exercise can pump oxygen into our brain and flush out the toxins accumulated in our body. Every time you have an intensive workshop, you feel energetic, happy and ready on attacking difficult tasks.

In summary, breaks, watch-rich diet, and exercise will give us high energy. Hope we all experience that magic expansion of our 24 hours.