Simple Tools to Help the Success of Your Professional Development

Let’s talk about tools to help the success of your professional development. Now this could be potentially terribly intimidating because there are a few things that intimidate business owners more than the discussion of our technology stack. Now, when I talk about a tech stack, I can mean what you're using to operate day to day business operations, but also your personal tech stack; what you use to be productive. There are a handful of cool things that you can use to make business easier. Let's start with one of our favorite topics - professional development. There's so much information out there to consume. What can we use to consume it?

We all have our different ways. For example, I use audiobooks. There's this well-known quote that leaders are readers and readers are leaders, and I don't know about you, but that causes me anxiety hearing that because I do not have time to read. I have several different roles in my life that I have to play that limit my free time. You know what I do have time to do, though? I have time to multitask. Now, that may sound surprising because if you've read anything about multitasking, you know that multitasking is a fool's errand and  it can't be done except. But since 2014 alone using Audible, I've spent twenty days, six hours and fifty two minutes listening to audiobooks. That is over 130 business books that I have read in the past seven years. Studies show that your average person consumes less than one non-fiction book per year. So just try one per month. You're going to be 12 times better, wiser, smarter, faster, more informed than your competition. Do not be hesitant to give audiobooks a try. Do it at 1.7x speed. I find this is a good speed and actually keeps me from getting distracted. 

I have found that with most business books, with anything you need to hear it the second time to really get it right when you're listening at one point, seven speed, you can listen three, four, five times, which I do. That's why my total number is kind of small. One hundred and thirty over seven years because some of these three, four, five times so. So that's audible. Leaders are readers, readers or leaders. That's intimidating. I don't have time for it. Like I'm a business coach. I read books for a living and then summarize them for my teams. I don't actually read them. I listen to them while I'm driving to work, while I'm mowing the lawn, while I'm folding laundry. It’s simply a great way to manage your time and keep your personal productivity in tune.

Let's talk a little bit about personal productivity. How do you use technology to remember things and to make sure that you're doing things as efficiently as possible? In my experience, many people invest their time staring at a screen. So, take a break when you’re doing this. Most people say take a break every hour but I don't think that's enough. That's not breaking frequently enough. Every forty five minutes, take a break to keep your energy up. It does require a different kind of energy to be engaged in Zoom. Let me give you a bonus tip on Zoom - close off the self view. Here's why... It's going to take emotional energy to be doing that constant self monitoring, you're going to be driving yourself crazy; do I have a weird expression on my face, does my hair look okay, etc.? That's not natural. It is simply not natural, depending on what you believe about human evolution or being created. In any event, either we weren't created or we weren't evolved to look in a mirror. We were created or evolved to look at other people. Watch their expressions, not your own, turn off your self view. Little things like this are hard to remember but greatly help to better our time management and personal productivity. 

Pick a software to store your information and to remind you of it. I use Google reminders, my executive assistant and sticky notes amongst other things. Putting things together in one place will only help you succeed. Personal productivity, time management, professional development and working in your own unique ability all go hand-in-hand; pick one trusted system.