5 Questions You Should Ask Yourself to Improve Your Life

The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement — Helmut Schmidt.

One of the biggest misconceptions in life is believing that busyness means business and activities mean results.

The biggest problem with this notion is that most hard-working people don’t bother to monitor their progress or measure their results. Measuring busyness is easy. All that you have to say is I’m busy. On the other hand, measuring productivity is harder because you have to show progress and results.

In the last ten years, I noticed that the word busy is becoming a badge of honor, a default response to every question you ask anyone. It is being used as an ego boost disguised as a complaint.

I recently challenged a client who is always busy that she is not busy. She is just tired. The moment I told her that she was tired, she stood silently for a few seconds before agreeing with me and said: “I’m ambitious, I have to keep going, I have to do this.”

She was conditioned to work hard, but she knew that she was not busy when I sat down with her and asked her a few more questions. She was tired because she was focusing on the wrong priorities.

Let me share a few questions that you need to ask yourself to create work worth sharing.

1. Do you lack clarity?

“It’s a lack of clarity that creates chaos and frustration. Those emotions are poison to any living goal.” — Steve Maraboli

If your to-do list is a mile long, you are not ready to take action.

You are content with being busy. Busy gives you satisfaction and keeps you safe. Busy convinces you that you are doing something and something is better than nothing. However, if you are that busy, you lack clarity.

What if you ask yourself, “What are the three things that I need to accomplish today?” That is dangerous because if the three things do not move your life and business forward, you must admit that you lack focus and clarity.

2. Are you busy?

“You will become impressive the day you stop trying. You will become successful the day you stop being busy.” — Maxime Lagacé

If you are struggling with taking action, and if you are struggling with showing progress. Commit to doing one meaningful act for 30 days.

Replace thinking with doing. Do something. Use your knowledge to start something worth sharing. Amazon was an idea until Jeff Bezos decided to take action. Click Funnel was an idea until Russel Brunson designed his first funnel.

3. Can you handle failure?

A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying. — B. F. Skinner

Let me clarify. You can not take action unless you are honest with yourself. If you can not handle the truth, stay busy and not take action.

Taking action requires you to test your ideas. Unfortunately, testing ideas leads to failure more than success. You have to be comfortable that most of your ideas are worthless, and that’s okay. You only need one successful idea to change your life.

Transforming an idea into a reality is never an easy task. It is very difficult. Giving ideas life” is extremely similar to giving birth to a child. It is painful but beautiful at the same time.

Own your ideas, own your journey, conquer your fear, fail a lot, and celebrate your successes.

4. Do you know how to say no?

“Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.” — Josh Billings

Do you know how to say “No.”? Doing work worth sharing requires you to say no to side projects and unnecessary tasks.

You are distracting yourself if you say yes to projects that do not help you get the three things done on your list.

If you can not say no, learn how to say no strategically. Say “let me think this over” or “John is better equipped to handle this issue.” Always ask for more details. If the project is not critical to your organization or success, avoid saying yes.

Robert Brault said, “We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.” So don’t be distracted by lesser goals. Stay focused.

5. Do you allow yourself to get bored?

Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity. — Robert M. Pirsig

Unstructured time is free time without a specific plan. Creating routines, setting priorities and scheduling tasks are critical to your success.

On the other hand, this structure can lead you to be tired, overwhelmed, and too busy to do work worth sharing. Unstructured time allows you to be you without feeling guilty about doing nothing.

Unstructured time can lead to boredom. But, getting bored is good for your mind, body, and soul. Being bored recharges your brain and allows your creative juices to flow without direction.

Get bored and create work worth sharing.