Set yourself up for success with these 9 daily habits

Daily habits differentiate the ridiculously successful people from the average and mediocre people.

We obsess about success.

We love stories of highly successful people.

And we long to have the same success.

This is why we follow celebrities and influencers. Looking from the outside, all we see is the success and evidence of the success they have achieved. What we hardly see is what it took for them to achieve that success.

The multiple failures.

The sleepless nights.

The thousands of dollars they spent learning from personal coaches.

The hours spent developing their craft.

The daily repetition of critical habits they had to endure week after week, month after month, and year after year.

When they work on their craft, they make it look easy to those watching from the outside.

If you have access to the backstage of the lives of these successful people, you will get some incredible information about who they really are, what makes them tick, and, most importantly, what makes them so successful and productive.

“Whenever you see a successful person, you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.” — Vaibhav Shah

Here are 9 things they do every day to achieve the kind of success we admire:

1. Focus on the return on time

Successful people know the importance of time. Lost time can never be regained. So they don’t hesitate to invest to buy back time.

They will outsource tasks to get more done.

They will invest in mastermind programs, mentors, and coaches to shorten their learning curve.

They don’t hesitate to take massive actions when the opportunity is right.

They track how they spend their time by the hour.

In fact, ultra highly successful people track their time by the minute rather than by the hour. They are aware that there are only 1,440 minutes in every day and that there is nothing more valuable than time.

They know that money can be lost and made again, but the time spent can never be reclaimed.

2. Focus on “One Thing”

If you’ve read the book, “The ONE Thing” by Gary Keller, you will appreciate the importance of this.

Successful people identify the one critical goal that if accomplished, everything else becomes irrelevant.

Once this “one” goal is identified, they set aside a block of time each day to work on this “one” important goal.

Successful know what their most important goal is and they work on it each day without interruptions.

If you want to model successful people, ask yourself…

What one task will have the biggest impact on reaching your goals?

What is the one thing I can do that will make everything else irrelevant?

3. It’s all about the calendar

Unlike the average person that focuses on a to-do list, successful people focus on their calendars daily.

Their calendar drives everything they do on a daily basis. They plan their calendar daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. And they have developed a daily habit of respecting their calendar by committing to their scheduled tasks.

Throw away your to-do list. From my experience, my to-do list never runs out of things to do each day. Instead, it grows each day and becomes a painful reminder of my failures.

Uncompleted items on your to-do list lead to stress because of the Zeigarnik effect, which, in essence, means that uncompleted tasks will stay on your mind until you finish them.

So, get rid of your to-do list.

4. They journal every day, in a notebook

I’ve always known the importance of keeping a journal but have never done it consistently in the past until I started writing on Medium about 45 days ago. Now, I journal every day just as I write on this platform every day.

And keeping the journal on an actual notebook where you put pen to paper rather than typing on an electronic device makes a lot of difference. There is nothing I can say that will convince you until you try it yourself and experience the difference.

Successful and super-productive people carry their notebooks wherever they go. They free their minds by writing everything down as the thoughts come to them.

Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes.

5. They schedule a time to process e-mails

For many years, I was a slave to my emails.

I will check my emails anytime I see the notification.

Replying to emails immediately made me feel productive.

Until I realized I was working till midnight trying to get actual work done.

Now, I’ve learned to buy back some time by scheduling times during my day that I check my emails. But I still find I’m not as disciplined as I need to be on this.

Successful people don’t “check” their e-mails throughout the day. They turn off all notifications and they have a scheduled time in their calendar when they process emails. It may be once a day or once every two days. Other successful people simply outsource this to an assistant.

6. They get paid for meetings or they avoid them at all costs

If you’ve worked in Corporate America or Corporate Canada, you will agree with me that most meetings suck productive time.

Meetings are notorious time killers.

They hardly start on time.

Often have the wrong people in the meetings that can’t make decisions.

They have no decisive agendas that lead to an actionable conclusion.

And they run longer than scheduled.

Whenever you can, don’t waste your time in meetings. If you have to do them, hold fewer meetings, and keep them short and to the point.

Mark Cuban was once asked to give his best productivity advice, he said…

“Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.”

7. They say “no” to almost everything

If you’re like me, you would have struggled in the past to say “No”.

Learning to say “No” more often than you say “Yes” on a daily basis is one character trait that will accelerate your success.

In his book, Essentialism, Greg McKeown, says it best…

“A Non-essentialist thinks almost everything is essential. An Essentialist thinks almost everything is nonessential.”

Billionaire Warren Buffet once said…

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”

If you want to be successful, learn to say “No” quicker than you say “Yes”.

8. They delegate almost everything

This is one that continues to hunt me, but I’m learning slowly.

Super successful people don’t ask, “How can I do this task?” Instead, they ask, “Who can do this task?”

They are always in search of the “Who”. They recognize that focusing on the “How” will lead to…

Procrastination.

Delayed projects.

Crushed dreams.

Super-productive people know there are millions of other people out there that are much better than them in getting tasks completed faster and better than they can. So, they don’t hesitate to delegate and outsource.

9. They don’t guess their way to success

Successful people don’t hesitate to invest in mentors. They know that having the right mentor can save them from mistakes, increase their probability of success, and accelerate their growth.

They identify someone that has accomplished what they want to accomplish, and they pay their way to get access to that person so they can learn quickly and buy back time.

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re an employee, a business owner, or someone looking to achieve success in whatever you’re doing, there are things you can learn from super successful people along your journey.

It takes work. But by taking baby steps each and every day, you will get the success you deserve.

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