3 Personal Advice to Make 2015 Your Most EFFECTIVE Year Yet..

As 2014 slips away with a bittersweet feeling of emptiness and excitement.. I find myself pondering over the major events that happened,which will stay with me for the rest of my life..

Which made me think for the 3 best advice I have ever received in my life and that is what I wanted to share with you today.. and hopefully make a significant difference in your life too.

Advice #1

We're all going to make goals and resolutions.. but not all of us are going to be satisfied in the end. In my quest to create a dream life for myself, one defining attribute that I found in all successful men is that..

"They artificially create enormous pressure on themselves"

You see, it's only under pressure that we perform.. for example take your exams, job interviews, presentations, projects.. we perform our best(most) only when the time to deliver comes near.

Now take sports, the performance level of players almost doubles towards the end of the game or during a pressure match.

High-performance people do this all the time, they set bigger goals,their time lines are shorter, they limit their resources, they bet each other,they publicly commit to something,they talk about their goals openly..

..all these just to create the added pressure on themselves so they stay focused and perform at the highest level.

I do this all the time too, I make impossible time commitments, I find myself placing bets against me and willing to give away significant portion of a company or profits if I don't achieve my targets. Even in my consulting days, I used to do the same..I would take a very minimum administrative fee and rest 99% of my income is to be tied to performance only!

I can tell you first hand, not only do you achieve more.. but you force yourself to learn,build new habits and overcome your personal shortcomings that others with less 'pressure' will never put in the effort for.

So my first advice for the making 2015 your best year yet is..

"Increase your goals by 10 times, shorten your timelines by half and publicly announce and declare a reward if you don't achieve them"

I'm sure, you're going to surprise yourself with the results..and probably unleash tremendous amounts of energy and creativity that has been lying dormant within you.

Advice #2

"Focus on the few, not the many.."

Select just 1 or 2 projects from your plate and discard or delegate the remaining to others with complete control. I can't begin to tell you how my life has changed since I started doing this.

In the beginning of my career, I was doing everything that made me money or had some potential to make money. At one point I was running, 15-16 of my own websites, handling over 35+ clients and working on two very high powered startups with significant overheads in each.

Moreover the worst part being, I was involved in them personally and made all the major decisions myself. Well it worked out ok for me.. not in terms of finances, but in terms of learning a lot of different things in a short time.. and specially learning one of the biggest lessons in my life.

"You can't achieve anything great by spreading yourself thin"

What I realized was, successful people are laser-beam focused on one single objective, one dream, one goal..that they are trying to achieve with every atom of their existence. When you see the biggest achievers in our society, they not only had a business or a job - they lived it, breathed, it, ate it.. they were consumed to the point of being crazy with an idea or a goal.

I strongly believe that's the only way to achieve anything great, if you spread your resources & time on too many things - it is very likely you'll achieve mediocre results.

It is your duty to discard and free up your time, schedule, your mind and just focus with all you have one one project or idea.

As Andrew Carnegie had said some 100 years ago ..

"The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket grow.."

Where as Warren Buffet says..

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket and create multiple streams of income.."

Well as an entrepreneur with 10+ years experience, I would side with Andrew Carnegie.. because until you burn all your bridges, destroy all your backup plans & safety nets and with your very existence on the line - do you care to go the extra mile in accomplishing your goals.

Anything less will only produce results that are easily achieved by others too.

Warren Buffets way of thinking is good for investors and holding company owners who's rotating funds to create wealth. But for creators,designers,inventors,startup builders, the real entrepreneurs I think it's of paramount importance to throw away all the distractions and comforts and just focus one 1 or 2 great products or projects.

To further establish my way of thinking, here's one more example..When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he found that Apple were selling 8-10 different type of Macs, they had entered into printers, scanners, cables, portables and had plans to enter into even more markets based on what the market dictated..

But Jobs, after battling against the management for 6 months was finally able to chuck out all the products and most of the product development teams and refocused all the energy of the company into 4 basic products.

> One Desktop & One Laptop for Personal use
> One Desk & One Laptop for Professionals

- That's it.

In fact if you see, even today their product line is so small.. if you compared it to any other company it will be like a joke.. and when you compare their revenue and market it's almost seems impossible. Now Apple is an extraordinary company and brand.. and it doesn't fully justify my logic, so I would encourage you to further analyse this with your own research to start believing in it with full conviction. It is very natural for us to do too many things to feel safer and protected. Just analyze all great companies, all great people and see if this holds true. From Michael Angelo to Picaso, from Rockefellar to Bill Gates each one of them had focused their energy into one single bold idea.. in fact they only did about 5-6 major projects in their entire life.

I'm confident when you adopt this mindset in life "Less is More" - you'll end up achieving much much more.

Advice #3

"Don't think too much, Act"

People with great talents & gifts most often live a mediocre life.. because they never gather the courage to trust their instincts & abilities. They over analyze situations, try to avoid every mistake, and are scared of any kind of pain..so all these lead to inaction.

What I've adopted over the years is , quite simple "Don't think - Just Do It".

I do think, analyze, plan and do all those normal things that helps us arrive at a decision.. but don't do it as much as the other guy.. or most guys. I keep the analysis to the minimum, take very quick decisions. I know for a fact that all my decisions won't be right, even if I analyze them for months or for a few minutes - so I much rather save time by not over thinking an issue.

Many times you're going to be wrong, but when you work from your gut and start trusting your decisions - life becomes much easy to navigate through, and most often your gut already knows your destination and guides you the right way anyway.

Indecisiveness kills most careers and dreams, so my wish for you is that you develop more trust in your abilities and your gut so that every decision you take.. you can act on it without doubting yourself in the process.

To summarize all three ideas;

1. Create and exert tremendous pressure on yourself.
Do whatever it takes to tap into your peak performance.. increase you goals by 100 times, shorten your timelines to months & weeks (you'll surprise yourself), announce your goals to a whole lot of people, hold yourself accountable.

2. Focus on the few not the many.
This applies to projects, products, people, ideas or most areas of life. If you want to excel and make a real difference - you cannot do it without focus to the point of exclusion of everything else in life.

3. Don't over think, do.
Take decisions quickly, trust yourself, pile evidence to prove to yourself about you abilities.. and once you start believing in yourself more - you become a quick decision maker.

Decision making is just one part of the puzzle.. 'DECISIVE ACTION' is what gets you results though. As the saying goes "I don't take right decisions, I make decisions right'.


If your dreams are bigger than your current circumstances then this is what you're ought to do.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

If you find this helpful, let me know by hitting the 'Thanks' button.

Happy New Year and Wish your Most Glorious Years Are Ahead Of You...