As the CEO of a top South Florida catering firm, I try to stay ahead of the competition by keeping up to date with my reading. One of my favorite weekend reads is the Harvard Business Review.
In a recent issue, an ad for Heidi Grant Halvorson’s book, 9 Things Successful People do Differently caught my eye. The book is awesome and I’ll share the key points with you. If you like the teaser, then you might wish to purchase the book from Amazon.
1) Get specific. SMART goals matter—meaning Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time Bound. “I want to lose weight” is not good. Good is, “I want to lose 10 pounds by March 31.”
2) Seize the moment. This means you need to decide when and where you’re going to do what you wish to achieve. The author calls it “If-Then” planning. For example, “If it is 4:00 p.m., then I will write those long-overdue menu updates.” Another good one is, “If I am getting too distracted by colleagues, then I will stick to a five-minute chat limit and get back to work.”
3) Know exactly how far you have left to go. Study after study proves that you will be more likely to achieve your goal if you think in terms of this: “I have 40% left to reach my goal” rather than “I have achieved 60% of my goal.” This helps to sustain your motivation.
4) Be a realistic optimist. For me to be the starting center for the Miami Heat at this point in my life is absurd and far from realistic. Realistic optimists plan on succeeding, but they know how hard it will be. I like to say, “If it were easy everyone would be doing it.” If you want to read more about this, grab a copy of Relentless by Tim Grover. There you will see how the Michael Jordans and the Kobe Bryants of the world got to where they are today.
5) Focus on getting better, rather than being good. The belief in fixed ability is wrong. Get better goals work better than be good goals. Getting better step-by-step can result in being good. But small steps work better than thinking that you can go from a novice to an expert in a microsecond.
6) Have grit. Grit is the willingness to commit to long-term goals and to persist in the face of difficulty. As for me, I have to continually remind myself be patient. I have no problem hanging in there with the long-term goals, but I become incredibly frustrated when things don’t happen as quickly as I would like.
7) Build your willpower muscle. This is avoiding doing things that you honestly do not want to do. Build your willpower by picking an activity or avoiding one that fits your goals. Simple things like avoiding sweets, refraining from cursing, or even brushing your teeth with the nondominant hand are simple steps to building up your willpower.
8) Don’t tempt fate! Remember that your willpower is limited so trying to quit smoking and lose weight at the same time is doing just that. Or in catering, building your sales team without having your culinary and operations ready for the boost in revenues is virtually suicidal. Do things in small doses.
9) Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do. Don’t think about white bears will have you thinking about them. Or don’t throw the hitter a strike down the middle. There it goes, over the fence. The mind does not recognize the word, don’t. Replacement plans replace a negative behavior with a positive one. If you feel like yelling at your chef, instead, take three deep breaths first.
See you next month at CSES2016, where I will be presenting two seminars: Keep Your Kitchen Cooking by Booking Business at Every Opportunity and Ten Places Money is Still Hiding in Your Catering Business. Bigger and Better for 2016. Click here for more information.
Get Fresh February 2016
eNews February 2016
