Jim Rohn And His Impact On My Life

Jim Rohn was one of America's foremost self help

philosophers. He was at once very profound and yet

very simple to understand. His advice was at once

simple to implement and yet almost magical in its

results. How does he do it?

I want to share with you some of his key

principles.

The first principle. Focus on 5 or 6 key things in

any area that you want to master.There really are

no more factors than these.

In other words the Pareto principle.

For example to get to a higher standard of living,

higher in all respects, Jim says we need to focus

on fundamentals such as happiness, action instead

of delusion, discipline,etc.

Another principle of his that took me a while to

grasp is that you need to work harder on yourself

than you do on the job. But when I grasped it it made

a big impact on my life as you can see by my story.

I have been a project manager for a few years or

rather I was leading teams. When things got bad

such as when someone was absent or we were in danger

of missing deadlines I just rolled up my sleeves and put in

extra time. Sometimes that helped and

sometimes it did not. When you are working

continuously till 11 PM you tend to make mistakes.

I was working hard on my job as you can see. Then

I took a certification exam in project management.

I spent 3 months preparing hard for it. I was

working on myself by improving my project management skills.

The payback, I recently completed a 10 month long

complicated project without missing the deadline

by even one day!

One of the reasons why Jim's philosophies are

simple to implement but almost magical in their

results lies in the very nature of us human beings

- what is easy to do is also easy not to do.

That is it. Jim's principles are easy. But since

when did that make them easy to implement. It is

the same with common sense is it not. How common

is it?

My personal example with this is similar to what

Jim shares, the habit of eating an apple a day.

Most days at work, I am fried by 6:00 PM. I come

home and plop. But on those days I have the

foresight to bring an apple and get to eat it in

the evening I am a different person.

To prevent what is easy to do from becoming easy

not to do make it a habit. I made physical

workouts a habit.On those days I don't workout I feel

unclean like I did not bathe or brush my teeth.

One of Jim's most powerful philosophies is that

in whatever area of life you want to succeed you

need to educate yourself in that area. This blew

my mind away because I am the classic case of

someone pursuing education for the sake of education

and not for an objective other than the vague one

of landing a great job. I got a bachelor's in

engineering and two masters in computer science

and business administration.

To become a more effective project manager I

educated myself in the art and science of project

management and of course continue to do so.

This sounds like an obvious example. But to become

a better husband you need to educate yourself. To

become a happier person you

need to educate yourself as well. You thought

happiness was a by product of some thing else such

as a big promotion etc? So did I.

As a project manager I love the next principle -

don't start the day until it is finished. What

does Jim mean by this?

Each evening write out what you want to accomplish

the next day. You could list only the most

important tasks or you could write down what you

want to do in each time slot. It is upto you.

The results are almost mystical! On those days

that I do this I accomplish far more sometimes

every thing that I listed down than my normal days

when I just drift from one fire to another. It is

not like I am trying set myself up for success

either by listing just the easy stuff. I am not

trying to prove anything here. Try it. It will

probably be the most gratifying thing you did that

day.

The last principle I wish to share is also my

favorite.

Just get started.

Tiny acts done daily compound to a remarkable level

in a very short period of time. Andy Jenkins calls

perfection the lowest level of achievement and 'doing' the

highest. Mike Litman says it is more important to

get going than to get it right.

When I wrote the book on 'True Stories of

Personal Achievement', available for free on my

website, the graphics on the cover were

amateurish, the formatting not so great. But the

content was and that was more important to me.

When I started out with my website to sell comics

I was the one who became a comic with the number

of mistakes I made. But for them I could not have

created a far better website with a far better

process. But make no mistake knowledge is

important you will end up a motivated idiot if you

have one without the other.

I shared several of Jim's philosophies that

impacted me personally with you. But don't just

follow them blindly. Try them out and if they work

make them a part of your own philosophy.

In Jim's own words if you want for example to

multiply your income by 3, 4 or more times you

can't say to the company "I need more money".

You've just got to say to yourself "I need a

correction in my philosophy"

For the Youtube Video on this article click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GSPZ0NlrNY

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Also my blog is now integrated with my website.

Here is the link my new blog:

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When I reflect

The first time I came across a well argued reason to spend time on thinking was in John Maxwell's great book "Thinking for a change". He listed 11 thinking styles. Reflective thinking was one of them.



Personally to me this is the most important style to adopt.
I never realized what I was missing until I started to slowly develop the habit of reflecting.



Books that I used to read without as much as missing a beat spending time on reflecting, suddenly leapt to life.



True learning leads to behavioral change. But to effect true learning requires reflection.



When I started reflecting on, well, reflecting I realized other disciplines encouraged this as well. Being a project manager I give an example from this discipline. As part of the project management process an important step prior to closing a project is conducting a "lessons learned" exercise. All the team members gather and discuss all aspects about the project, what went right, what went wrong and what can be done better.



The reason it is so important to take time to reflect is that we live in a stimulii rich world. We are always doing something. We are working, reading, listening to the iPod, etc. I was once on a short plane ride when the guy next to me pulled out a small DVD player and spent the next 45 minutes watching a movie on it.



Maintaining a diary is a great way to practice the habit of reflection as is sitting still for 20 minutes. But the latter is so difficult especially when I have two very active toddlers.



I am still a long way from becoming a reflective thinker but I have come far enough for some observant people to remark that I am a reflective person. For me that is a great compliment.



It is from the habit of reflection that I have gained valuable nuggets of wisdom. For e.g. I think really well during unearthly hours between 11:30 PM and 3:00 AM in the night when most normal people are asleep.



Another example, I realized that to take my online business to the next level I need to divide my time across three categories: learning, thinking and doing. Learning is about picking Internet Marketing skills, thinking is about brainstorming ideas for traffic generation, content creation etc. Doing is about the mundane every day activities that I must perform to keep the lights on. I need to create a plan to ensure I perform activities across all these categories.



How valuable are these insights?



Is it worth the effort to take the time to reflect to gain such wisdom?



Reflect on this ...

Outliers - The Story of Success By Malcolm Gladwell

I just finished reading "Outliers" by Malcom Gladwell.



This is by far better than his hippie, new age voodoo book called "Blink".

The long and short of the book:" hardwork + initiative+ ambition +(opportunity/family background) = Success."

The whole premise of the book is that the story of the bootstrapping lone ranger that single handedly overcomes life's obstacles and rises to the pinnacle of life, is well, a myth.

As I read his book I had the uncanny sensation that I was reading my own life story especially when he recounts the stories of two individuals Chris Langan and Oppenheimer.

Both these men were geniuses.

You probably heard of Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.


You may have never heard about Chris Langan and that is the whole point.


Chris Langan was born a genius. He had taught himself how to read by the age of three. He breezed through school never having to take notes or prepare for exams like us mere mortals.


He liked academia.


Where do you think he ended up.


In a bar working as a bouncer!


The difference between the two was that Chris Langan lacked practical intelligence.


Social psychologists define practical intelligence as the ability to say the right thing at the right time to the right person.

I define social intelligence as "Street Smarts".

One telling example of the lack of social intelligence in Chris Langan was an anecdote where he argues with his Calculus professor and is rebuffed by the professor who says that Chris Langan lacks the intelligence to appreciate mathematics.

In the entire conversation Chris never managed to convey to the professor how good he was at Calculus and how much he loved to engage in its discussions!

In an equally telling example there is a stroy about how Oppenheimer manages to get away with just a probation after he was caught attempting to poison his tutor in college.

But how does this story relate to the argument that the book weaves. Here is how. Oppenheimer's father was a wealthy businessman. From a young age he was exposed to the wheeling dealing and learnt much about human psychology.

Chris Langan's father was a drunkard who used to beat his kids. Chris and his siblings grew up deeply distrustful of authority.

It was Chris's upbringing that turned out to be his undoing.

Malcolm cites cutting edge research to stress the importance of practical intellience.

I cite my life lessons.

Sadly my story is more similar to Chris's than Oppenheimer's.


Be warned, a high IQ is not enough.

In fact Malcolm cites research that proves that beyond a certain level, I believe 120, IQ does not really matter.

Another environmental factor is the culture of the society we live in. Malcolm goes on to give the best explanation of how culture affects us that I had ever read anywhere in a fascinating chapter titled "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes".

There is an account here of how often Korean Air was crashing its planes. If not for the tragic results this account is comical.The main culprit for the crashes was culture.

Korea is what is called a high PDI (Power Distance Index) culture. Because co pilots and flight engineers were so deferential to the captain, the highest authority on the plane, there was poor communication and co ordination in the cockpit.

Once this was mitigated Korean Air crashes reduced dramatically.

I am a project manager so team work and communication is very important. I can't help but think of the outcome if we were to apply a similar mitigation strategy to corporate life. How much better would the project success rate be.

Finally this is the book that explains why some Asian cultures have a very strong work ethic. You can blame it on rice paddy cultivation. This kind of farming requires intensive manual labor and sophisticated planning and co ordination. Japanese farmers and Chinese farmers in the Pearl river delta therefore developed a culture of rising early every day and putting in long and intense hours required to successfully farm the rice paddies. This culture created the work ethic that has put some Asians and Asian countries on the ascend.

Hmm! Rice is the staple crop in South India as well but the author , as is the case with many westerners, is predominantly focussed on China.

Not in career development books but in this one did I find a great formula on what makes for a satisfying career, a satisfying business and a satisfying everything .

The formula ->"Complexity, Autonomy and a Relationship between reward and effort"

Read this book to get a 50,000 ft perspective on the major revolutions in human history and how some people were well placed to benefit from it. This will sensitize us to any revolutions we are already living through.



Read this book to understand that the relationship between an individual and success in life is far more than about just the individual. It is about riding the wave of opportunistic family upbringing and being placed at the right location at the right time.


Read this book if you want to get depressed about its underlying theme of fatalism. In one chapter Malcolm claims to predict one's success based on one's birth year and family background. How depressing can that be.



Hard work, ambition and initiative are necessary but apparently not sufficient.


Malcolm does however say that hard work pays especially working really hard. The chapters that deal with the 10,000 hour rule and the rice paddy cultivation allude to this.


In the end Malcolm leaves us hanging on whether hard work by itself is enough or not. He does not really clarify that.



Key Phrases That I Like In The Book



The Matthew Effect - "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath"



Chinese Proverb - "No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich". (What a fantastic work ethic!)

The Phenomenon Called Eben Pagan

Recently I attended the Guru Mastermind Content Summit in LA held by Eben Pagan.

There were about 500 of us. From all over the USA, Canada, Mexico, UK, Switzerland and Australia.

It was held on January 23 and 24 and was worth every penny of my money and every second of my time.

In fact it was worth more than that.

I first came across Eben Pagan as Eben Pagan the Internet Marketer. But quickly realized he was different from your usual Yanik Silver, Stephen Pierce and Rich Shefren type, not to demean anybody at all.

Eben believes that a stronger "You" will lead to a stronger business and therefore he focuses on a holistic approach. His "Wakeup Productive" product is one stunning example of this. He does not just teach about Internet Marketing, very substantive as that is, but also about life.

In fact we were given a very brief preview of his new product "Cool,Calm and Collected' on stress relief. I will most likely purchase this. This guy oozes talent.

His lucidity and profundity make for an almost hypnotic message.

I liked the content of the summit, it is about creating information products.

I will post the highlights of the 2 days conference to my blog soon.

But why am I going gaga over Eben Pagan and his conference?

Have I really achieved a difference?

Not yet but soon.

In one of the exercises he made us do, I had to write a pitch using one his frameworks.

I dreaded to begin, nothing seemed to flow from my mind.

But once I started I ended up with some of my best content. I will be creating a pitch page out of that exercise that will take my landing page development to the next level.

I am really excited about that.

Keep in mind that it is tough to get his attention. I was rebuffed three times at the conference when I attempted to ask him a question. Women have a better chance of getting his attention!

It is only going to get worse. It appears that at subsequent summits there will be more guest speakers and so we will see less of him on the stage.

Also we had to resort to extreme note taking. No handouts or reading material for the attendees!


Nevertheless watch out for this young man. He seems to read everything and know all the wise guys (both the serious and the fun ones). This guy is super smart and is only going to get bigger... much bigger.

What I learned at Disney World, Orlando, Florida

We visited the park in the last week of December 2008.

The flight tickets were expensive, the rental car was expensive, the park tickets…exorbitant, the lines long!

We learnt an expensive lesson that you can all benefit from. After all why be the fool when I am one already!

Immediately obvious were the huge crowds everywhere. You had to stand in line for 25 minutes just to grab a vegetable roll at a food stand!

But there was something more subtle that I noticed, Disney runs an efficient organization. I noticed a lot of Disney employees picking up trash and keeping the park spick and span despite the huge crowds.

Also impressive was how everything kept humming. Once you go on the various rides and attend the various shows you begin to appreciate the enormous number of moving parts in the form of toys and other gadgets. However not one of them was malfunctioning. Keep in mind that the parks operate long hours sometimes up to 1 AM into the morning and then reopen at 8 AM .There is very little recovery time for the moving parts.

Crowd control was another great Disney trait. We had to wait 2.5 hours for some of the rides, but the wait was bearable because the line kept moving, in myriad serpentine forms. The movement created an illusion of progress and helped us keep our sanity. We had two kids in tow, one 3 years and the other 2 and they lasted the entire length of the queue. For one of the attractions, the fireworks show called ‘Fantasmic’ the crowds were so large, it was a 6000 people stadium, and we were so far back in the queue that we never expected to make it to the show in time. But turns out not only did we make it, we got to park our strollers in the designated spot and find good seats all before the show started.

But please try to minimize your interaction with Disney employees if you can. I had an encounter with a rude employee at the City Hall in Magic Kingdom that ruined a part of our park experience.

Aah...Disney world…great operations but rude people. Why can’t they just fire the rude ones? Are they in business for their employees or for the customers?

Do not visit Disney in the week between Christmas and New Years. It is not worth the hype about special holiday decorations. And do not bring kids around the age of 3 to the park. Of the four days that we visited the various parks the most fun my 3 year old son had was when he played with my friend’s son at their house!Kids that age just do not get it. They miss out most of the fun. And the long lines mean we the parents do not have a chance either.

Do not plan 4 consecutive days at the parks. You end up spending atleast 8 to 10 hours daily at the park. While the rush will keep you going it will eventually make for a very tiring vacation. Plan a break between the park visits. There are many great beaches not too far from Orlando which will make for a nice departure.

If you only to plan to visit the Disney parks in the Orlando area then consider booking into a hotel with free shuttle services to the parks. The car rentals plus the 12 dollar daily parking fee quickly add up to a tidy sum.

Of all the parks Magic Kingdom was the best, it was truly magical. Of course this is a purely personal and subjective assessment. Animal Kingdom was more like a zoo plus it closes early because the animals chose not stay up late for our convenience. So plan on getting there early if you still wish to visit it. Disney studios is not bad but it is more for bigger kids and adults.

Also if this is your first visit with the family and if you are there only for a few days then it is not worth spending 50 dollars more for the ‘hopper’ option. You have enough to keep yourself more than busy in each park.

200 success tips from Robin Sharma

When I first came across this book I simply put it aside :)

You see I did not know who Robin Sharma was and had no interest in wasting my time reading everything I get in my inbox.

And then...I started noticing this guy every where, on CNN, in newspapers, the internet...

So I went back to the book and started reading it.

Boy was I glad I still had the copy.This is a great book. His tips are short but very profound.Read it but more importantly reflect on it and you WILL become a changed person.

You can get this and other books by subscribing to my newsletter at www.ebook-of-the-week.com.