Productivity

12 Quiet Habits of Enormously Successful Humans

07.10.2023 by Angel Chernoff // 23 Comments

May your actions speak louder than your words. May your life preach louder than your lips. May your success be your noise in the end.

The result of enormous success is often pretty noisy — lots of people talking, writing, and sharing stories about it. The actual process of achieving enormous success, on the other hand, is far more discreet. But it’s this process that happens quietly, behind-the-scenes, that makes all the difference in the world.

Marc and I are fortunate enough to know a number of enormously successful human beings. Regardless of lifestyle, industry or profession, they share many of the same quiet habits. And that’s precisely what I want to discuss with you today. Here are twelve key things the most successful people we know do quietly and diligently: [Read more…]

18 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I Was 18-Years-Old

05.19.2023 by Marc Chernoff // 18 Comments

This morning I was reading a book outside my favorite beachside coffee shop when an 18-year-old kid sat down next to me and said, “That’s a great read, ain’t it?” So we started chatting.

He told me he was getting ready to graduate from high school next week and then immediately starting his college career in the fall. “But I have no clue what I want to do with my life,” he said. “Right now I’m just going with the flow.”

And then, with eager eyes, he began asking me one question after the next:

“What exactly do you do for a living?”
“When and how did you decide what you wanted to do?”
“Why did you do this? Why didn’t you do that?”
“Is there anything you wish you had done differently?”
etc, etc, etc…

I answered [Read more…]

11 Easy Ways to Uncomplicate Your Life

02.02.2021 by Angel Chernoff // 57 Comments

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
— Clare Boothe Luce

Let’s start off here with a simple question:

What does your perfect day look and feel like?

Visualizing your perfect day is important not necessarily because it will be a recurring reality, but because it’s crucial to understand what a simple life — or an “uncomplicated life” — really means to you. And it’s different for everyone — for me, it means practicing my morning gratitude meditation, quiet writing and reading time, a few fours of focused time with our coaching clients, and doing something memorable with Marc and our son, Mac. For others, it’s a long morning walk, afternoon yoga, a productive day in the home office, and a hot bath before bed. And for others, it’s simply lots of time to focus on an important life goal, while still leaving enough time to get a good night’s rest.

Take a few moments now to visualize what a “perfect day” means to you.

Then shift your focus and consider all the miscellaneous, needless nonsense you get involved in on a daily basis, both mentally and physically, that goes against your “perfect day” philosophy.

Again, we can all agree that life is NOT perfect, and surely there are very necessary, hard things that must be handled every day. But there’s still a lot of mental and physical energy spent on matters that don’t deserve our time and attention.

Truth be told, the average day is actually pretty simple, but we insist on making it complicated. Let’s break the cycle! Here are a few easy ways to gradually uncomplicate your life — and yes, it’s a GRADUAL process, because it’s easy to change your life one tiny step at a time: [Read more…]

The Life-Changing Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time

11.19.2019 by Marc Chernoff // 24 Comments

Be the type of person whose values, priorities, and actions always agree with one another.

Why is it that over 50% of our new course students tell us they feel completely overwhelmed and exhausted in their personal and professional lives?

The answer may surprise you: It’s not the number of minutes they spend awake and working hard each day that’s the issue—it’s that they often spend 99% of those minutes juggling too many things at once.

Be honest…

Do you check social media apps on your phone when you’re sitting in meetings, or when you’re spending time with family and friends?
Do you eat lunch at your desk, or while you’re on the run?
Is the TV often on in your home, even when you’re busy doing other things?
Do you send the occasional text message while driving?

The biggest cost of doing multiple things at once like this (assuming you don’t crash from the texting and driving) is [Read more…]

5 Signs You’ve Been Doing Too Much for Too Long

11.12.2019 by Marc Chernoff // 21 Comments

When things aren’t adding up in your life, begin subtracting.

Busyness is an illness.

Think about your own life and the lives of those close to you. Most of us have a tendency to do as much as we possibly can—cramming every waking minute with events, extravagances, tasks and obligations.

We think doing more will get us more satisfaction, success, etc. When oftentimes the exact opposite is true.

Less can be far more rewarding in the long run. But we’re so set in our ways that we can’t see this.

And so…

When we work, we shift from one task to the next quickly and continuously, or we multi-task—juggling five things at once until the end of the day… and yet we still feel like we haven’t done enough of the right stuff.
When we finally break away for some healthy exercise, we tend to push ourselves as hard as we possibly can… until we’re exhausted and sore, and less likely to want to exercise tomorrow.
When we go to a nice restaurant, we want to try all the appetizers, drinks and entrees, indulging in as much deliciousness as we possibly can… and we leave feeling bloated, sometimes uncomfortably so, and then our waistlines stretch.
When we travel to a new city, we want to see it all—every landmark and every photo op—so we do as much as physically possible… and we return home from our trip utterly exhausted.

How can we tame our urge to do too much? [Read more…]