Successful entrepreneurs are an admirable breed. There are good habits and qualities possessed by successful entrepreneurs that many of us could emulate as we go about our daily lives. This group of people tend to acknowledge that the journey toward success is laid out in the smaller steps that take form in positive everyday habits.
Throughout my interactions with friends and acquaintances who are fairly established entrepreneurs or business people, it’s easy to observe patterns of good quality habits in their behaviour and regular routines. These habits are cultivated into their lives as a means to spur them into action and acts as foundations for success. Here are ten good habits that everyone who yearns for success and higher productivity should learn.
1. Have A Routine
Creating a stable but flexible routine can help you to become more organised and efficient with your time. There are benefits in sticking to a routine as it helps you plan your days ahead and establishes a repetitive pattern for you to plan your days around. Repetition is key when trying to cultivate good habits and sticking with them. Given that there can be no single routine that works universally for everyone, start creating your own routine by sitting down and working out a schedule for the week. Plan your days down to the hours, prioritise by asking yourself what’s important and what you should be doing each day after accessing your responsibilities and circumstances. Once you get that down, it’s a matter of discipline to stick with the schedule and make it routine. Also, don’t be afraid to tweak your routine and make adjustments as necessary.
2. Plan Ahead
Successful entrepreneurs will usually get a head start on their day by planning ahead. In fact, most entrepreneurs I know are looking ahead on a weekly basis. Planning your day works hand-in-hand with coming up with a routine, but it’s the part where you get into the finer details of your day. Get ahead of your day or week, but be flexible enough to leave some room for anything else that may come up unexpectedly.
3. Read widely
Successful businessmen are always recommending new books to read. From Bill Gates to Barack Obama, there’s a never-ending list of books that successful people are reading. It’s great that they never shy away from sharing what they’ve read with the public, which means plenty of inspiration for you to start reading. You could also just follow your innate curiosity to explore or learn up about a topic that you’ve always wanted to understand. No matter your age, you should never stop learning and continue to be curious. Aside from the knowledge gained, reading also helps improve your language proficiency and ability to articulate your thoughts or ideas. Set aside time in your daily routine for some habitual reading.
4. Live Actively
A healthy body is a healthy mind. While many are aware of the importance and benefits of exercising, making time for it is another matter. No matter how busy, successful entrepreneurs are always carving out time in their schedules for a good sweat. Keeping the body active and healthy helps them cope with stress, prevents being burned out, and boosts their mood. Regular exercise also has a significant impact on the brain, keeping it sharp and fresh, boosting productivity. How do these people carve out time for exercise despite their busy schedules? One possible way is to wake up earlier. Try starting your day with a workout and see if you feel charged to take on the rest of your day.
5. Sleep Enough
Sleep deserves a separate mention of its own because far too many people underestimate its importance to our well-being and cognitive functions. The mindset that ‘sleep is for the weak’ tends to be prevalent in a society that chases productivity at the expense of one’s health. But without enough sleep, our performance will most certainly decline, especially if there is consistency in getting under 7 hours of sleep per night on average. Some successful people have even adopted short naps into their lifestyle. Famous power nappers who have gone to great lengths to nap on a daily basis include Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Aristotle, Ludwig van Beethoven, and a whole lot of U.S. Presidents.
6. Simplify Tasks And Goals
With high goals (goal setting tips) and ambitions, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks you have to accomplish and the amount of effort required to reach your goals. The trick is to break them up across manageable timelines and take one step at a time. This is important to keep your motivation sustained and momentum going. Most people make the common mistake of attempting everything at once, only to feel discouraged halfway.
7. Track Progress
The road to success is long and paved with challenges. Having long-term goals and breaking them down into short-term goals can help sustain the drive and motivation to stay on track. This is why successful entrepreneurs tend to track their progress and reward themselves for every milestone reached. Another reason for tracking progress is so that you do not lose sight and stay focused on your long-term goals. You’ll also be able to know if you’ve strayed too far off the course and have a sense of where you are on the road to achieving your goals.
8. Network All The Time
Making new acquaintances and connections might seem like a daunting task to some (tips to start networking), but success was never built alone. In almost all cases, the journey of a successful entrepreneur is a collaborative one. The more people you become acquainted with, the more resourceful you become, along with the benefit of increasing your worldview. Networking can become more targeted toward a specific community of like-minded individuals, rather than just randomly befriending everybody you see. That being said, if you have plenty of time and energy to befriend the next person you see, why not? Be open, sincere, and non-judgemental when making new contacts and doors of opportunities will open up to you as an entrepreneur.
9. Relax To Recharge
Most successful entrepreneurs that I know places a high priority on time for relaxation and unwinding. These are times where they usually feel most inspired and even cook up their best ideas. The idea of relaxing varies from person to person, so it’s good for you to identify hobbies and activities that you enjoy and puts you in a state of relaxation. Successful entrepreneurs use relaxing times to recharge and re-energise themselves, so don’t be trapped into feeling guilty for taking some time off for yourselves. Relaxation is a crucial habit that is part of the journey.
10. Make Time For Family
Some highly successful people sometimes appear to be automatons that work non-stop, but the truth is, they’re just human beings who need human connections. After all, what good is success if it can’t be shared with the ones you love? Successful entrepreneurs know the importance of making and spending quality time with friends and family. No one should neglect this aspect in pursuing success because you don’t want to reach the top only to be all alone.
Final thoughts
If you put together all the habits listed above and incorporate them into your everyday routine, you’d see that it’s a blend of productivity, learning, and relaxing that sounds very much like a balanced a fuller life. Success may come under varying circumstances for each individual, but the basic lifestyle framework that these people work on are quite universal. While it’s no guarantee that you’ll achieve success by adopting all the above habits into your daily life, you can be sure that it will make you a better and more functioning person regardless.
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