3 Tips to be More Productive Everyday for 2018

https://youtu.be/BYysbgjbxZQ

Hi! Today I’ll be sharing 3 tips to help you or your children make your days more productive.

Being busy doesn’t mean you are being productive.

Being productive means getting high-quality work done in a short time. So how do we produce good quality work in a shorter time?

 

3 Tips to be Productive Everyday

Tip number 1 is focus on just 3 action steps per day.

This means taking out your organiser or your phone and typing out only 3 things to do TODAY which help you reach your ‘big goal’.

Let’s say your big goal is to finish your work in the office by 6pm everyday. Or to score a B in your Maths mid-year exam.

Write down 3 things you can do today to help you reach that.

If you do this everyday, you should be closer to getting that B or finishing your work on time like you planned.

These 3 action steps by the way, should not be about running errands, doing laundry or the daily grind. The 3 steps should bring you closer to a ‘big goal’ that you have.

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Tip number 2 is know your Peak Work Time.

You’ll notice that you are super creative or hyper productive during a certain time everyday. It’s usually a 3-hour window. Maybe you are most productive from 11-2pm, 8pm-11pm or 7-10am. Everyone is different.

Do your important tasks during your peak work time. If you do this, you’ll produce high-quality work which makes you feel happy and satisfied.

So maximise your Peak Work Time and get all the important tasks done during that 3-hour window.

Your less important tasks can be done after or before that.

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Tip number 3 is do your worst task first.

Get the most dreadful task done first thing in the morning.

When the most dreaded task is over and done with, you will feel a sense of achievement. This sets a good tone to your entire day.

Prepare yourself to do this ‘hated’ task the night before.

Write it down on a piece of paper, gather all the materials you need to do this dreadful task and just execute the next morning.

When you start the day finishing the most unpleasant task first, you’ll feel good and get more things done than most other people in your office or school later in the day.

So I hope these 3 tips help you or your child be more productive.

If you like this video and think it will help your friends and family, share this video with them.

Have a good week!

Motivation: 1 Way to Excite Ourselves About Work or School

In this blog post, I’ll be sharing 1 way for us to become excited about work, our business or day-to-day duties in a more detailed manner.

(You can apply this to your children to get them excited about school too.)

So the secret to becoming excited about our lives is to dream big.

What’s the link between dreaming big and getting excited about work or school?

Dreaming big will give us motivation every single day. When we dream big, our minds will go a little wild and we’ll feel excited, joyful, happy, confident – you name it.

In fact, our dreams or goals should make us excited. If they don’t, it means we need to dream much bigger…until we feel the excitement.

What Drives You to Work Everyday?

Let’s say you need to motivate yourself to go to work today. What are your big dreams which push you to work everyday?

Are you saving money for a 3-month holiday? Saving money to pay for your HDB flat in full? Saving money to give your child the best of everything? Saving money so you can quit your job? Start a small business?

As long as your big goal makes you excited, it should push you out of the house and make going to work a little easier 🙂 

If you are a stay-home-parent, you can also have a big goal. For example, your goal might be to coach your child until he or she gets straight As in the next exam. Or you might have a goal to coach your child such that he or she will be able to enter university in future.

How to Get our Children Excited about School

You can excite your children about school by asking them to dream big too.

Maybe they have a seemingly far-fetched dream such as wanting to be an astronaut or to be a world-famous actress. It doesn’t matter.

You can link their dreams with school.

My Experience…

When I was a school counsellor, I had a student who was passionate about being a famous actor on the Suria channel. He told me, ‘I don’t need to pass my ‘N’ Levels to be a famous actor. So I don’t need to study.’

To make him more driven about school, I linked his dream to school. I told him, “If you want to be a big star in Singapore, you’ll have to play many roles – an actor, TV host, singer and more.

“To be a big star in Singapore,” I told him, “you need to be fluent in Malay and English. You need to be disciplined. You need people skills. You need to express yourself clearly and think quickly on your feet.”

So where can he learn all these skills?

I told him that he will learn all these skills by taking part in school events.

For instance, joining CCAs, performing onstage during Teachers’ Day or other school events. Actively taking part in class, asking questions and making presentations in class. Last but not least, making an effort to excel in English and Malay.

The student digested everything I said. He agreed with me although I could see he wanted a shortcut and the easy way out. He wanted to just skive off school and magically become a successful actor.

I had to inform him that big stars are very intelligent people. You may not need straight ‘A’s to be a successful star, but you’ll still need good people skills and working habits – habits which you pick up in school.

So that is an example of how you can link your child’s ambitions – no matter how far-fetched they seem – to school.

Once they see how school can help them achieve their big dreams, they will be more excited about school, CCAs and school activities.

As long as their dreams get them excited about school, it’s good enough.

Their ambitions will change as time passes. As long as they have big dreams at any point of time, they will be motivated to do their best.

That’s all for today and I hope it helps.

Have a good week.

One Way to Excite Ourselves about Work (or School)

One way to plant motivation in our children (and ourselves) is to encourage them to dream big.

What’s the link between big dreams and motivation?

It doesn’t matter how ‘crazy’ their goals seem.

Any goal which excites our children to study, get good grades and take part in school activities is a good one.

Successful, all-rounded teenagers dare to dream big.

Underachievers usually don’t have clear goals.

Neil Armstrong dreamt of flying to the moon since young. His mother encouraged him although it was an impossibility back then. We all know the ending to this story – he became the first man to walk on the moon

It doesn’t matter if our children’s ambitions seem far-fetched right now. Ambitions will change as the years pass.

As long as the goal excites them about school, it’s a good one.

We can apply this tactic to ourselves so as to motivate ourselves to be more excited about our work and business.

Have a good Monday ahead 🙂

The ABC Formula Which Makes Your Teen Feel Empowered When Facing Problems! (Positive Thinking)

Let’s discuss how we can switch negative thoughts to positive thoughts using the ABC formula.

Why would we want our teenagers to learn this? It’s because optimistic teenagers can bounce back from failures or mistakes fast. When they recover fast from mistakes, they can plan and strategise their next action, instead of drowning in embarrassment, anger or sadness – which is not very productive.

Optimistic Teens Do Not Break Down When Facing Problems

Optimistic teenagers can handle problems calmly because they don’t think that every failure or mistake is a disaster. So if a positive teenager fails a Maths test for the second time in a row, he or she will change studying methods, choose to be more active in class, form a study group and so on.

On the other hand, a negative teenager will start beating himself up by thinking, ‘I’m a failure. I’m a loser. I can do nothing right. I’m useless…’ and so on.

This negative attitude will most probably drag and in the end, the negative teenager is likely to do nothing to change habits, strategies or studying methods. That’s because he or she believes he or she is born a failure and nothing he or she does will help.

What happens after that? With this mindset and attitude, the teen is likely to keep failing test after test, exam after exam.

How to Use the ABC Formula to Switch to a More Empowering Mindset

In short, a positive student believes that his or her methods and habits need to improve, whereas a negative student believes that he or she is the problem – and is helpless about it. In some cases, a negative teen believes that the teachers, parents, tutor, friends (and basically everyone else except himself or herself) cause the failure. In other words, a victim mentality.

So in the ABC formula, the ‘B’ – which stands for ‘Belief’ – needs to change.

A stands for Activating event (in the above example: failing a Maths test twice in a row)

B stands for Belief (in the above scenario: A negative teen believing that he is a ‘loser’ and is ‘helpless’ about it)

C stands for Consequence: (in the negative teen scenario: He or she will keep failing Math as the teen chooses not to change any studying habits)

For an optimistic student, the ABC acronym looks like this:

A stands for Activating event (in the above example: failing a Maths test twice in a row)

B stands for Belief (in the above example: A positive teen believing that he or she needs to change studying habits, be more proactive in class and spend more time revising Math)

C stands for Consequence: (the positive teen will feel more in control of his or her life and more empowered to face problems head-on. Changing strategies = a change in results = possibly a pass in the next Maths test)

 

In conclusion…

That’s how we can change our thoughts from negative to more positive using the ABC formula. We have to change our beliefs about a particular event or incident.

Our methods, habits or strategies might be causing the ‘problem’. So we change these and keep tweaking until we get the results we want.

I hope this sharing helps you somehow. Please share this post with your friends if you find it helpful!

Have a good week!

Making Mistakes Is Good! Here’s why.

https://youtu.be/tdNW9T1DIlA

Our children (and us, included) will make many mistakes in life.

Here’s how we can reframe thoughts and motivate them/ourselves once something ‘wrong’ is done!