Here's How To Jump Start Your Monday!

Today’s Productivity Tip: How to Get Started When You’re Feeling Stuck

Today’s tip: Do the Next Thing

Starting a busy week can leave you almost paralyzed and not knowing where to begin. There’s only one surefire way to get yourself moving forward and conquer that mountain of tasks:

Try This:

Whenever those overwhelming feelings take hold, here’s your answer: Just do the next thing. Yes it sounds incredibly simple, but when your mind is cluttered with a multitude of tasks and concerns you need a narrow focus of energy.

Here’s how:

1) Close your eyes and visualize the most important task in front of you

2) Write this task down in your daily planner or a notebook

3) List the first physical step you must take to get started, make it an achievable activity

Some examples:

• Clean off the top of your desk
• Sort your inbox
• Review yesterday’s notes
• Return an email or phone call

 4) Do it!

5) Do the next thing — carry the momentum into the next logical step

Here’s Why:

Crossing that first item off your list gives you a tremendous sense of achievement. It’s a real motivational push that sets in motion the process of getting stuff done. Remember: You can’t get anything accomplished until you accomplish that first task. Get it done. Then, move on and conquer things one-by-one. You’ll be amazed how quickly your stress level will dissipate. Go have a productive week by narrowing your focus to one task at a time!

Written by Jeff Doubek at Daytimer.com

5 Ways To Change A Habit

Habits make up 40 percent of our daily behaviors, according to studies. And yet, because habits unfold within our basal ganglia – one of the oldest parts of the brain – they often feel nearly unconscious. So how do you change a habit? By diagnosing it’s components, and reprograming the behavior. Here’s how to do just that:

1. Identify your habit’s routine

There is a basic pattern at the core of every habit, a kind of neurological loop that has three parts: A cue, a routine and a reward.

To understand your habit, you need to identify the components of your loop. The easiest place to start is with the routine: what behavior do you want to change? (For instance, I once had a bad habit of eating a cookie from the cafeteria every afternoon.)

2. Experiment with different rewards

Rewards are powerful because they satisfying cravings. But we’re often not conscious of the cravings that drive our behaviors. To figure out which cravings are driving particular habits, it’s useful to experiment with different rewards. For instance, on the first day of my experiment to figure out what was driving my cookie habit, when I felt the urge to go to the cafeteria and buy a cookie, I instead went outside, walked around the block, and then went back to my desk without eating anything. The next day, I went to the cafeteria and bought a donut, and ate it at my desk. The next day, I bought an apple and ate it while chatting with my friends. Eventually I figure out that what I was really craving wasn’t cookies, but socialization: Whenever I went to the cafeteria, I saw my friends.

3. Isolate the cue

Every habit has a cue, and experiments have shown that almost all habitual cues fit into one of five categories:

Location

Time

Emotional State

Other People

Immediately preceding action

So, if you’re trying to figure out the cue for the ‘going to the cafeteria and buying a chocolate chip cookie’ habit, you write down five things the moment the urge hits (these are my actual notes from when I was trying to diagnose my habit):

Where are you? (sitting at my desk)

What time is it? (3:36 pm)

What’s your emotional state? (bored)

Who else is around? (no one)

What action preceded the urge? (answered an email)

After just a few days, it was pretty clear which cue was triggering my cookie habit — I felt an urge to get a snack at a certain time of day. The habit, I had figured out, was triggered between 3:00 and 4:00.

4. Have a plan

Once you’ve figured out your habit loop — you’ve identified the reward driving your behavior, the cue triggering it, and the routine itself — you can begin to shift the behavior. You can change to a better routine by planning for the cue, and choosing a behavior that delivers the reward you are craving. What you need is a plan.

A habit is a formula our brain automatically follows:

When I see CUE, I will do ROUTINE in order to get a REWARD.

So, I wrote a plan of my own:

At 3:30, every day, I will walk to a friend’s desk and talk for 10 minutes.

It didn’t work immediately. But, eventually, it got be automatic. Now, at about 3:30 everyday, I absentmindedly stand up, look around for someone to talk to, spend 10 minutes gossiping, and then go back to my desk. It occurs almost without me thinking about it. It has become a habit.

5. Look for ‘keystone habits’

But where should a would-be habit master start?

Our lives are filled with habits, and time is limited. Knowing how to improve behaviors doesn’t resolve a central question: where to begin? Is it better to create an exercise habit, or reform eating patterns? Should someone focus on procrastination? Or biting their fingernails? Or both at the same time?

The answer is to focus on ‘keystone habits.’ Some habits, say researchers, are more important than others because they have the power to start a chain reaction, shifting other patterns as they move through our lives.  Keystone habits influence how we work, eat, play, live, spend, and communicate. Keystone habits start a process that, over time, transforms everything.

Identifying keystone habits, however, is tricky. To find them, you have to know where to look. To begin, ask yourself a central question: which habits are most core to my self image? Does exercise make you think about yourself in a different – and better – way? Then exercise might be your keystone habit. Or is it how you communicate with your spouse and kids? That might be your keystone habit. Or, how you get work done?

There are dozens of potential keystone habits, and my book spends significant time explaining how to identify and change them. But, at their core, they all share something in common: keystone habits shape how we think about ourselves. And all of them can be changed, once you know how to diagnose and influence the habit loop

Written by: Charles Duhigg

Security Job Motivation

David Cameron has launched a task force to help businesses motivate their staff which, considering the unemployment figures, might translate as misguided energy. How about some inspiration for the millions of jobseekers David? Here are a few tips to keep your grey matter stimulated.

Staying positive when you're searching for jobs we know is easier said than done, keep your eyes firmly focused on your SIA Licence, it's one positive and one you worked hard to earn. The major problem with on-line job applications is the lack of one-to-one communication, if you're not short listed you're unlikely to be told, unfortunately that's the way the job market works right now. There is one tactic you can employ here though. If there is a contact number, and you haven't heard anything for a few days, call to check your application has been received; if nothing else it shows your enthusiasm and opens up a dialogue.

Be sure your CV and cover letters are up-to-date. This might sound obvious to you, but if you use a standard cover letter for all your applications in a PDF format, chances are it's dated the day you wrote it; PDFs don't auto correct dates and times Microsoft Word will. Whether you're applying for a job as a SIA Licence Door Supervisor, Security Guard or a CCTV Operator the standard of your communications is important, use a spell checker; you'd be surprised at the number of spelling errors that crop up in job applications. A good tip here is to get someone to read your cover letter out loud to you. This might sound crazy, but it will give you a good idea how you sound to the recipient.

So now you've fired off ten CVs and had two calls for interviews. Celebrate! It doesn't have to be a slap-up meal at the Ritz, have a coffee or a drink with a friend. If you're really enthusiastic, who knows they might even pay! Rewarding yourself is really important; it stimulates bits of your brain called the lateral hypothalamus known as brain stimulation reward (BSR). Don't have too much stimulation though especially if your interview is the next day.

Don't become a job search slave; spending hours glued to your email inbox constantly tapping the refresh key can have a negative effect on your BSR. Treat your job searching as a routine task, create a manageable schedule of say three hours a day and stick to it. For the rest of the time do something positive, see friends, take a walk, but don't head for the TV remote control, daytime television is just as depressing as newspaper headlines about the recession.

Now you might think this next comment is really off the wall, eat well, being unemployed doesn't mean you have to eat junk. We're back to the BSR here, reward yourself with brain food, okay so you might not be the best chef, but remember fruit is the fastest food you can get your hands on and it's cheap too. It's important that when you do turn up for your interview that you look healthy and are alert. Snacking in front of the TV is great on a rainy Sunday afternoon, but too much of it can lead to depression which isn't going to help your motivation.

See interview knock-backs as positive practice not negative as a de-motivator. It would be great if you did, but it's unlikely you're going to get the first job you apply for. Every time you interview its practice for the next time, even great actors constantly revise their stage rolls that's how they perfect their skills in front of an audience. Do any of these sound familiar: Why bother I won't get it? It's a waste of time there'll be too many applicants? The competition is too stiff I give up. Erase any or rather all of these from your vocabulary right now! You will get there eventually persevere and remember to concentrate on your SIA Licence its proof you're worthy.

On a positive note, if you need help with your CV, Get Licensed has launched a brilliant app to help you build a polished and professional CV in minutes. CViZ enables you to create exactly the kind of CV recruiters are looking for, and it's really easy to use too without any word processing skills needed. The CViZ app will provide you with a fully formatted PDF to store anywhere you like - you can even store your CV on your android phone to enable you to respond to job ads on the move within seconds.

The security industry is the fastest growing employer in the UK and is possibly the one and only sector that isn't affected by the recession right now. By staying motivated you'll soon find yourself in a rewarding job and remember your expert training with Get licensed is the one thing that will single you out from all the other applicants our reputation relies on your success.

The author Jay Haan,  is an experienced security job trainer and regularly writes on his blog http://siatraining.blogspot.com

How to Turn Your Ideas into Life Changing Actions

If you’re like me (and most people on the planet), you have plenty of ideas that could potentially change your life dramatically. Perhaps you’re thinking about losing weight, starting your own business or writing a novel; you might even have several great ideas jostling around in your head.

The problem comes, though, in the gap between idea and action. It’s easy to get excited by a great idea or an audacious goal – it’s a lot harder to put in the work that gets you from A to Z.

Here’s how to take those ideas and make them real:

1. Choose ONE Idea
   However many ideas you’ve got, try to pick just one thing to focus on first. That way, you’ll be much more likely to succeed: you won’t burn yourself out by trying to do too much, and you won’t find that some of your ideas are getting sidelined by others.
   
   If you’re not sure where to begin, choose an idea that will fit into your current life (with, perhaps, a few tweaks to your priorities and commitments). Don't quit your job in the hopes that your as-yet-non-existent small business will work out – instead, work on building up your self-discipline with a goal that you can achieve while in your current job, like losing weight or taking an evening class.


2. Create a Solid Plan
   Whatever your big idea is, there’s a good chance that other people have tackled something similar. If you want to run your own restaurant business, talk to restaurant managers, or look for books that could help. If you want to get fit and healthy, talk to your doctor or the staff at the local gym.
   
   Once you’ve gathered some advice about turning your idea into action, write a plan. Give yourself specific things to do. For instance, if your big idea is “write a novel” then your plan might look like this:
   
   • Summarize the key theme of the novel in one or two sentences
   • Write a short description for each main character
   • Plan out crucial events in the plot
   ...and so on.
   
   You might not be able to create a complete plan from A - Z right now, but you can at least map out the steps from A - B and B - C. Try to set deadlines for your first few actions, to help you get moving.


3. Get Support From Others
   Tell friends and/or family about your big idea. You might need to select the people you confide in carefully – who’s most likely to be encouraging and supportive?
   
   By letting other people know about your plans, you give yourself another reason to stay on the path towards your goal: if you back out now, you’ll have to tell everyone that you’ve quit. Plus, the people around you may be able to support you in practical ways – for instance, a colleague at work may have a useful diet book that they can lend you, or a family friend might share some great tips on running a small business.


4. Stay Focused
   Finally, you need to stay focused. So many people begin on the path to a fantastic goal only to give up before they’ve made any real progress.
   
   You might find that the first couple of weeks are easy: you’re feeling highly motivated, and you’re excited about your idea. After a few more weeks, though, you might find it tougher going. If you’re going to achieve your goal, you need to stay focused.
   
   That means getting into good habits, perhaps making time at the start of each day to work on this one key goal, or setting aside time at the weekends. It may also mean looking at the other commitments in your life – is there anything you could cut out, or cut down?
   
   The path to your goal won’t necessarily be easy – but it will be rewarding. By staying on that path, right to the end, you’ll achieve something you can be truly proud of ... and something that may just change your life.

What ideas do you have right now? How are you going to put them into action? Share your thoughts in the comments...

 Written on 2/21/2012 by Ali LukeAli Luke. Ali is a writer of fiction and non-fiction and a writing coach. Photo Credit:simmone riccardi