Getting Leverage on Yourself

Is there anything in your life that you know you should do, but aren’t doing it?  Maybe it’s something simple like flossing your teeth every morning, or more complicated like executing your marketing plan and talking to 5 new people every day.  It doesn’t matter what it is for you.  We all have something.  It’s often a little thing we are capable of doing, know we should be doing, and if we do it there will be a genuine improvement in our lives.  But somehow, it never seems to happen.  Sure, you might do it for a week or two, but then you end up traveling for work, go on vacation, or just get “busy” and before you know it, we stopped doing the thing.

So, what’s the solution?  It’s called getting leverage on yourself.  I got this concept from one of my many self help gurus.  The idea is that you need to pick something painful.  It could be financial, it could be cleaning someone else’s bathroom, or giving away some favorite possession.  You find a good friend, someone that you can truly trust and explain to them exactly what you need to be doing.  You then tell them what you are going to do and how often, and what happens if you skip it for even one day.  Then you make them process to hold you to your word.  Let me give you an example…

Let’s say you really want to learn a new skill.  It will require you to take some online classes.  But the problem with online classes is that you can work at your own pace (which means years to finish a single class).  So you tell your best friend that you are going to do one lesson per day until the class is complete.  You will email them each day telling them what lesson you completed.  If you don’t email every day, then they should cash this $1000 check.  And here’s the important part.  Hand them a check, made out to them.  Tell them if you fail, the $1000 belongs to them, cash the check immediately.  The $1000 is arbitrary, but you need to make it something that hurts.  Something that will light a fire under you ass to stay committed.  After all, doing one lesson a day isn’t that hard, but it’s not as easy as sitting on your ass after work and watching TV.

I’m personally in the process right now of figuring out what I really need to be doing and I want to try this.  How about you?  do you have something that could dramatically improve you life if you would only commit the time to do it?  If so, give this approach a try.

Thanks for reading,

As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,
Mike