As I walked out of the gym today, I saw the sign “Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going. Creating great habits are critical to your overall success (in the same way eliminating bad habits will do the same). As such, it motivated my blog for this week….Below are 5 great habits effective people do!

Before we look further into ‘effective people’, it is also critical for us to understand the difference between being efficient and being effective.

Efficient people get things done. They check things off their list, are very competent and are well organized.

Effective people do all the same things that efficient people do but they know what needs to get done to get the best results. They check the right things off their to-do list first and know what will make the biggest difference to their results.

Here are some key traits of remarkably effective people:-

1. They are clear on their goals and they use them to make their decisions automatic.

I believe it is important to firstly define your definition of success, followed by your personal goals, followed by your professional goals – in that order. These will help you define your genuine purpose and maximise your return of effort as this process assists you become clear on your why! After all….its not what you do, its why you do it!

Effective people establish a mixture of long term goals and short term goals that support them to keep them motivated and on track. To be really focused – have one big goal at a time that you are focused on to streamline your attention and eliminate distractions.

Effective people use their goals as an automatic framework for decision making, which becomes a lot easier (not just for yourself but for your team) when your goals are clear. For example, will this help our company:-

Sell 1000 units?

be the lowest cost provider?

Improve our service levels to over 95%?

Improve our conversion rate to 50%?

If the answer is ‘yes it will help me achieve my goal’ – they go ahead. If the answer is no, they don’t. Indecision occurs when there is a lack of purpose and direction.

2. They know their economic denominators.

Effective people know what their economic denominators are. These are different to their results or goals – they are the things they need to do every day/ week to deliver their goals/objectives. Successful people are successful as they routinely do the same things (just on different scales/levels). For example, while their goal may be to sell 150 of ‘Product A’ by December 2015, their economic denominators may be:-

To meet with 5 new clients per week

To conduct 5 presentations per month

To touch base with 5 existing clients per week

To therefore sell 300 of Product A, you would then just double your economic denominators.

3. They believe in themselves.

Effective people will push through the tough times which takes diligence, optimism and self-belief. If they fail, they will get up, wipe themselves off and try again, this time more wisely being clear on what the lesson was that they learnt.

4. They freely ask for help.

Effective people predominantly surround themselves with 1) people who have what they want so they can learn from them AND 2) people who have the skills they don’t.

They welcome new skills and ideas and are not threatened by them. They also know their hourly value and delegate out jobs to others that doesn’t equate to that (even if they know how to do that task).

Their core circle of friends are people they trust, have the ability to motivate and inspire them and in return, are also inspired by you.

5. They create systems.

Systemising your business processes or personal routines will not only assist in reviewing efficiencies, they will also assist in mapping success.

Systems focused around economic denominators will produce the biggest return.

Which of these 5 do you do well…..