Want to Be Successful? Do These 7 Things in Your Spare Time

Replace your less productive habits with more beneficial ones to succeed as an entrepreneur.

by Larry Alton

Did you know startups fail about four times as often as they succeed? Do you know why it’s so hard to get a successful business off the ground? It’s attributable to a number of factors, one of which could be the way the founders are spending their spare time.
The productivity you can generate in your free time often carries over into the success of your professional endeavors, and you can bet that successful people use their free time for much more than relaxing on the couch or binging on Netflix.
If you’re struggling to find success as an entrepreneur, you might want to take a closer look at how you spend your time away from the office. Consider replacing some of your less productive habits with ones with better benefits:

1. Exercise

Working out is good for both the body and the mind. According to various studies, people who exercise 30 minutes a day, five times a week, enjoy better overall brain health, including uplift in mood, reduced stress, increased creativity and clearer thinking. Exercise is the best thing you can do to stay alert and alive while you run your business

2. Hobbies

Have you ever noticed that some of the most successful people you know also lead rather interesting lifestyles outside of work? That comes largely from the personal pastimes they choose to enjoy. Hobbies are a good outlet for stress and an excellent source of creativity.

3. Learning

Success often means fostering a love of learning. If you want to inspire a love of learning inside yourself, learn something new. Some people like to learn languages; others like to keep up with the latest technological investments. Most learn something that will be useful to them in their careers, such as IT basics. A strong atmosphere of learning new things can help increase personal and business productivity by 37 percent. With online tutorials, web-based informational courses and apps that offer assistance with just a few taps, you don’t have an excuse not to learn something new.

4. Mindfulness

There’s a reason yoga has become one of the most popular health practices today: Mindfulness can help you relax, improve productivity, facilitate creativity and maintain your general overall well-being.
It’s important to note that practicing mindfulness does not necessarily mean doing yoga or even meditating, though both of those practices will do the job. It could simply mean sitting in stillness for 20 minutes twice a day, or leaning back in your chair, staring up at the ceiling and forgetting the world for 10 minutes.

5. Service

If you’re losing sight of perspective and what matters to you most, take an opportunity to serve the less fortunate. Giving back to your community helps you to think about things besides work, which may enable you to evaluate how to improve your business. It’s the best way to put your life into perspective and reduce the stress that comes from constantly focusing on your own problems.

6. Reading

The best way to stay up to date with the activities of prosperous individuals is to read. Whether you’re keeping up on the latest news, studying a business-oriented self-help book or reading the biography of a successful person you admire, reading can help boost your creativity, improve your thought processes at work and enable you to de-stress after a long day.

7. Family

Take a break every now and then to devote your entire attention to those you love most. For just a few hours a week, stop thinking about the things that happen at work and enjoy what’s going on at home. Healthy, happy and profitable people understand that taking a break with their loved ones keeps them sane as they climb the ladder of success.

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How to Think Big as an Entrepreneur

Are you ready to go big in 2017?

Here's Why You Should Quit Reading and Start Doing

by Steve Tobak

When we moved to the mountains, we had absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into. During one storm we lost power for days and a landslide shut down the freeway. There were flash floods, deck umbrellas flying over the house and heavy metal lounge chairs ending up in the swimming pool.

After that experience we learned to deal with it … as did the California Department of Transportation and Pacific Gas & Electric. Twenty years later, we’re far more prepared and those mishaps are rare. But I do vaguely remember the Realtor warning us about that sort of thing. Did we listen? Apparently not.

People learn from experience. We have textbooks and lectures in school, but without repeatedly solving work problems, conducting lab experiments, taking tests, writing papers (and getting graded feedback on all of it) we wouldn’t learn a blessed thing.

Contrary to popular belief, we learn far more from experience than from books and blogs. Which begs the question, why are we all such information hogs? Entertainment I get, but all the self-help-style business content -- the lessons, habits, and listicles -- not so much. Most of it’s a complete waste of time. And I can prove it.

I was a straight A student as a kid, but when it came to language, I just couldn’t get it. My junior high French teacher suggested that, instead of just reading the lessons, I should speak the words and practice the translations aloud. He said our brains remember better that way. He was right. I ended up acing the class.

You learned to walk by taking a step, falling flat on your face, crying, getting back up and trying again. Eventually, you get it. I don’t care how intelligent or mature you are; if you had to learn to walk all over again, you would have to do it exactly the same way. No instructions, videos or books could substitute or accelerate the process. None.

That’s how the human mind works. We learn best from trial and error. We say practice makes perfect for a reason. It does.

To make matters worse, we’re usually far more resistant when it comes to comprehending information we don’t really want to hear. If it reinforces our belief system, we embrace it, feel good about it, get inspired by it. But if it violates our worldview or flies in the face of popular dogma, we reject it as nonsense.

I’ve been writing highly opinionated commentary on controversial topics for nearly a decade now. As you might expect, I’ve received countless comments and emails, but they almost always fall into one of two categories: positive feedback from those who agree with my point of view and negative feedback from those who don’t.

Stop and let that sink in for a second. It sounds almost obvious that it should be that way, doesn’t it? But if that’s the case, then why read it? I’ll tell you why, but you’re not going to like the answer. Mostly, we’re seeking self-reinforcement. And I’m sorry to say, that does not expand your knowledge one bit.   

The other day, I received an email from a reader, “Hi Steve, I just read your blog, ‘How to Deal with Jerks.’ Loved your tough love approach, especially the last sentence: ‘If you’re running for the exit of more than one company, the problem is you,’” she wrote. “Yup, it’s me.”

Good for her. By being willing to challenge her own strongly held beliefs, question the status quo, and hold herself accountable for her actions, that reader actually benefited from the post. Unfortunately, I can tell you that is rare. Maybe one in a thousand, if that.

Had I written the sort of nonsense you read all the time these days -- that life is too short to work with jerks -- it would have reinforced the popular meme that the problem is always someone else, which is simply untrue. But I bet it would have gotten loads of clicks, likes, retweets and shares.  

Some people are unusually open-minded and self-aware, but most just hear what they want to hear and believe what they want to believe. The only thing that will change their narrow-minded and self-centered viewpoint is real world experience. So here’s my advice: Quit reading and start doing.