The Competency Trap

Routines and rituals are sets of habits that, when practiced consistently, lead to profound, long-term results. Most billionaire routines start early in the day and include exercising, reading and contemplating.

It doesn’t matter when you do your routine activities. What counts is that you commit to doing them — even when you don’t feel like it.

Billionaires love setting aside alone time. .. To think. They might do this by meditating or some other relaxing activity they enjoy.

Successful organizations start having rigid corporate cultures, which crumble when the outside world evolves, which is always inevitable.

The rules and assumptions that companies operate on, become embedded, making the employees blinded from any potential future innovations.

... is a reluctance to give up on the past spendings and investments made on projects or products that are no longer providing any return.

The managers are usually unable to make strong decisions and keep adding costs to failed (or about to fail) projects.

Productivity is directly related to your energy level.

Find your most productive hours — the time of your peak energy — and schedule Deep Work for those periods. Do low-value and low-energy tasks (also known as shallow work), such as responding to emails or unimportant meetings, in between those hours.

Before going to bed, spend 5 minutes writing your to-do list for the next day. These tasks should help you move towards your professional and personal goals.

You’ll be better prepared mentally for the challenges ahead before waking up and there won’t be any room for procrastination in the morning. As a result, you’ll work faster and smoother than ever before.

Encouraging people to be curious generates workplace improvements.

When we are curious, we view tough situations more creatively. Studies have found that curiosity is associated with less defensive reactions to stress and less aggressive reactions to provocation.

Curiosity encourages members of a group to put themselves in one another’s shoes and take an interest in one another’s ideas rather than focus only on their own perspective.

Thus, conflicts are less heated, and groups achieve better results.

Interdisciplinary teams have to leave room so that real work can get done. Because they have multiple projects, they try to limit the loss of brainpower by working for days together on one project instead of jumping between tasks.

Working together in this way ensures that people know everything that is going on, and this allows for debate and questioning that comes with bringing diverse thinkers together.

Successful teams allow for mistakes. The team members feel safe to be as creative as possible.

Every aspect can be re-engineered to allow for internal team feedback, allowing the team to self-manage, and for the team to know that their individual successes are meaningfully linked to the success of the group.

Many skilled people excel at single loop learning where they become accustomed only to success. 

They aren’t used to failing, so they struggle to learn from their mistakes and often respond by blaming someone else.

“their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it the most.”

• Stop getting defensive. Instead, collect and analyze relevant data, draw conclusions and test  them.
• Change your mental models. Problem-solving isn’t a linear process where you can make one decision and then sit back and await success.
• Fail early. Fail fast. If you learn to deal with failure you can have a worthwhile career.

Start the day with your #1 priority.

Getting up early isn’t enough. You need to put first things first. When you put your top priorities first, then you ensure they make it into the bucket of your day. After your main priorities have been completed, the rest will fill the gaps.

The best athletes and entrepreneurs aren’t focused on being the best; they’re focused on constant self-improvement.

Concentrating on the process is best for both performance and mental health. It lifts off your shoulders a huge burden, so you can concentrate on the things you can control.

Knowledge is always evolving and advancing — if you want to evolve and advance with it, you need to keep an open mind.

And to keep an open mind, leave your ego at the door. 

Anyone entering the freelance world with the notion that they can “plan their work, and work their plan” will face frustration.

The needs of customers, and sometimes events beyond control, will eventually lead freelancers in new directions. Those try to stick to a chosen path  risk falling behind the marketplace. 

People who are learning agile are talented at knowing what to do when they don’t know what to do. That pretty much sums up the life of a freelancer. 

They excel at learning from their experiences. They then take those lessons and adapt them to succeed in new situations.

1. Manage your moods: If you start the day calm it's easy to get the right things done and focus.
2. Don't check email in the morning.
3. Before you try to do it faster, ask whether it should be done at all.
4. Focus is nothing more than eliminating distractions.
5. Have a personal system; most productive people have a routine.
6. Define your goals for the day the night before.

If you check your emails first thing in the morning, **you're setting yourself up to react.

You're not planning your day and prioritizing, you're giving your best hours to someone else's goals, not yours.