Are you an egotistical, arrogant narcissist?

YOU ARE if you can’t delegate.

Delegation requires HUMILITY—recognition that you are not the only competent person in your organization or family.

Here’s the first step to building your humility: Admit what you suck at.

The problem is you think you can do everything better, quicker, simpler than anyone else, so you do it all yourself.

It’s not true, but

you must (arrogantly) think so or you wouldn’t be doing it.

Look, if you want to be a high-achiever you need to give up the activities others can do better than you so you can do what you are gifted to do.

The quality of your life and the quantity of your achievements come down to one metric read more »

The weekend before last, I filmed a video interview with The Voice winner Jermaine Paul.
Watch the interview HERE

You also heard Jermaine discuss his journey on the November SUCCESS CD and perform the release of his new single Everybody.

We all need to perform everyday—sales presentations, job interviews, staff meetings, networking introductions, fundraising pitches, etc.

Imagine performing for a live audience of thousands and a television audience of 10 million, all hanging on every note and pitch of your voice. Imagine battling head to head with some of the most talented people in the country and being judged by your musical heroes.

How does one prepare for such a feat?

Picture it—The audience is screaming on the other side of the curtain, your competition is pulling off stunning performances and your other competition are tuning their voices, dancing and jumping up and down, trying not to act like the nervous wrecks they are.

How do you find your creative center in that mess?

That is the question I asked Jermaine Paul.

You can watch him give the answer HERE. The short answer is: read more »

I interviewed renowned psychiatrist Ned Hallowell recently; he  specializes in Attention Deficit Disorder and wrote the book Delivered from Distraction.

He agreed that our overscheduled, overstimulated and overwhelmed culture is conditioning us to become more and more ADD.

As achievers we are especially susceptible to this as we usually become victim of our own ambition and enthusiasm.

I think many of us actually thrive on being busy… to our own detriment.

We want to “feel” like we are high in demand and being productive. But many times it is being busy to be busy, so we run out of time to actually do the difficult or scary work needed to really move the needle on our results and goals.

So here is a challenge I continually take on myself that I now offer to you…

Find your 5

• There
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  are probably five things you have done over the past three days that you probably shouldn’t have.

• Now look forward and find five things you are committed to that you probably shouldn’t be.

Start identifying those things that are causing you to be busy at the sacrifice of being productive.

Find your five things that you will vow to stop doing. Either delegate or delete

them permanently from your task list.

Make this on ongoing challenge for you—to weed your calendar more and more of the tasks, obligations and commitments you should not be allocating your precious time and creative ability toward… 5 items at a time.

What 5 things are you going to delete. Identify them and share you comments below.

Refueling the jets… Learning to Value Time Off

By the time you read this I am off on my 10-year wedding anniversary vacation trip through the South of France and Italy. In that honor I am republishing an article I wrote on high-performance productivity a few years back. Enjoy!

How does America regain its supremacy in the productive world?

How do YOU improve your personal productivity?

ANSWER: Go on vacation.

438 million. That is the number of vacation days Americans failed to take in 2007, according to Harris Interactive research group—more than any other industrialized nation.

Here is the result: America ranks No. 1 in depression and mental health problems. Americans are experiencing burnout, reduced productivity, diminished creativity, failed relationships, stress or stress-related ailments such as depression, heart disease or stomach ulcers in record levels.

Our entrenched puritanical conditioning, being valued on how “hard” we work, fear of being replaced or left behind, and our addiction to always being “busy” are actually not only destroying our mental and physical health, but also destroying our creative productivity.

This is especially true in our new global economy, where our advantage and future is read more »

Just joining us? Be sure to read Installment #1 and #2 and buy generic priligyef=”http://darrenhardy.success.com/2011/07/overachiever-vs-superachiever-3-of-4/”>#3

WARNING: There is kryptonite all around you!

There are great traps you will have to overcome to execute and stick to your five-point plan each day. These are three great warnings to look out for.

WARNING No. 1—“Yes”

You will have to become a master at saying “no.” This is one of the greatest distinguishing features of superachievers—not what they do, but more important what they don’t do. Their ability to keep the main thing, in fact, the main thing and not get mired in weeds of minor tasks is their genius. They major in the major issues and don’t major in minors, as many of the rest of us tend to do.

As Brian Tracy said, you need to develop “Won’t Power.” The power to declare and stick to all the things you won’t do, in order for you to stay focused on the things that matter the most to the accomplishment of your BIG hairy audacious goals.

WARNING No. 2—Being reactive instead of creative

Monitor and calculate your time between being reactive (reacting to communications, inquiries, requests and needs of others) and being proactive or creative—the time you are spending being productive and on target with your key priorities, not the priorities of others.

Think about it: email, texts, the phone… you are mostly reacting when you are on these devices. Don’t let them yank you around all day as if you were on the end of a string where someone else is your puppet master. Instead, be sure the lion’s share of your time is spent being creative and focused on YOUR few and high-value priorities.

WARNING No. 3 read more »