If you’ve strategized, planned, and performed to your best, and are now looking for a guided path to reach your full potential, maybe it’s time to get yourself a life coach.

A life coach is a trained professional who can help you achieve all-around development and attain your full potential across several aspects of life.

Like an athlete has a coach to work on specialized parts of their fitness and gameplay, ordinary people can also adopt an organized strategy for self-awareness and improvement. A certified life coach can help them through this part.

So, what exactly does a life coach do?

A life coach works with people to help them make upgrades in their lives and move ahead from whatever is making them feel stuck. Your coach will help you set goals depending on your priorities in life, and then devise a plan so you can achieve them within a set deadline.

They don’t teach anything new. Rather, coaches work on the belief that every person has everything inside themselves to make whatever life upgrades they desire. The coach works more as a facilitator than as a teacher.

This is life coaching summarized on a broader scale. At a micro level, life coaches have their area of specialization. Some work in relationships, some in career, some in family and private matters, some in goal-accomplishing, fitness, habit building, and the list continues.

This post is the ultimate guide to getting started with working together with a life coach. If you’ve ever considered upgrading your life with the help of a trained professional, this article can be your cue to start doing that right away. Read on for some insights, and don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments.

Who needs a life coach

Technically, any person can hire a life coach, no matter what phase of life they are at. Coaching can be an incredibly eye-opening experience and can make several hurdles seem less daunting.

However, certain situations can become much easier with a life coach’s expert guidance, for example, switching jobs or shifting careers, and undergoing a significant life change like moving to a new city or entering a new relationship. 

Aside from that, there are several signs that working with a life coach can make your life significantly better. These are:

• If you find life meaningless or fail to see a purpose.
• If you feel constantly dissatisfied, no matter how many accomplishments you have under your belt.
• If the people around you feel like you’re pushing them away. 
• If you’re always under a lot of stress.
• If you’re trying to build new habits or break old ones.

No matter what your situation is, coaching helps you become self-aware and gives you enough clarity to view life from a different perspective. That’s why it’s important to be very careful and pick the right life coach whose coaching style and budget match your requirements.

Most coaches offer a free clarity call to help you understand if they are the right fit for you. Make sure you check out our actionable tips to make the most of your first call with your prospective life coach.

How can a life coach help me

As mentioned before, working with a life coach has several benefits. Coaching can be depicted as reevaluating. It’s tied in with figuring out how to reframe your perspective and directs your capacity to deal with the hardships involved in what Werner Erhard called “the being of a human being.”

A life coach helps people to push forward in areas where they feel stuck — be it individual goals, relationships with others, how they wish to make a living, what they want to accomplish in life.

1. Helps you gain clarity around your life’s purpose.
2. Equips you to seek solutions to specific problems in life.
3. Makes you more self-aware.
4. Helps you make a plan and stick to it.
5. 5. Helps boost your productivity.
6. Holds you accountable.
7. Inspires you to constantly re-evaluate your thinking and beliefs.
8. Helps you nurture better relationships with yourself and the people around you.
9. Helps you be more grateful and have a positive outlook on the effect others have on your life.
10. Makes you more likely to accept constructive criticism.
11. Makes you more empathic and compassionate, so you can see and feel the world through the perspective of another person. 
12. Helps you make better decisions. 
13. Keeps you motivated and disciplined.
14. Eliminates bad habits.

Aside from these, working with a life coach can have multiple other benefits like helping you manage your time more productively, making you more goal-oriented, eliminating negative thoughts, and overcoming your irrational fear and unnecessary anxiety. Statistics from the International Coaching Federation’s (ICF) Client Survey tracked down that 67.6% of coaching customers experience a more elevated level of mindfulness.

Is a life coach the same as a therapist or a mentor

No matter how similar their services might sound at first glance, a life coach is different from a mentor. 

Perhaps, the most critical difference between a mentor and a life coach can be summed up in the words of Coach Tony, the Founder of Coach.me: “Mentors are found by chance, and coaches are available right now. So, looking for a mentor means postponing your career growth, often for quite a long time. But, choosing to opt for a coach means embracing the next step to your growth right away.”

A life coach is also different from a therapist. 

Whereas a therapist looks into a person’s past and helps them tackle unresolved issues there, a coach looks on to the future and helps a person design better goals, stick to them, and in general improve the quality of their life by working on what they promised themselves. 

What are the long-term impacts of having a life coach

Life coaching is often a time-exhaustive project and may require several months before you start seeing the results. However, if you keep working hard with your coach over an extended period of time, the impact of life coaching can be all-encompassing. Some of the many ways a good life coach can impact you are:

1. Helps you achieve your goals

With a life coach’s help, you can design an exclusive arsenal of explicit tools and techniques for achieving all the objectives you set for yourself. Thus, you don’t have to experiment or waste time in trial and error. You’ll get the perfect strategy that’s tailor-made to your goals, strengths, and weaknesses, and can help you make your dreams come true with the least resistance.

Periodically reviewing your objectives or sharing any obstacles you encounter on the way to a coach can be supremely helpful. You can avoid unnecessary mistakes if you keep talking about your plans from time to time with your coach.

2. Offers a perspective shift

You get an unbiased, third-person’s point of view on any hurdles that might be stopping you from reaching your goals. This can be a significant impact because most people tend to get stuck in a specific worldview, often banging their head against a closed door while turning a blind eye to a new window filled with opportunities open right in front of them. 

3. You’ll have a role model

A life coach can be a good example to emulate. They can be a positive influence on your life. Your conversations will spark your curiosity and give you a burst of motivation to make your journey easier.

4. You’ll run out of excuses

Of all the problems that hold us back from the life we truly want to live, most are in our heads. When a task seems difficult, we make excuses and refuse to find workarounds that might make the job easier.

In such a case, having a life coach can serve as the ultimate accountability boost. Since your coach holds you responsible for meeting your goals on time, you’ll no longer have any valid excuse that the task is “too hard” or that the process takes “too long.”

5. You feel encouraged

An important part of achieving your goals on time and enjoying the process is celebrating small wins. A life coach will help you do that and make you feel appreciated. 

You will also have a better understanding of your own strengths. Your coach will assist you with identifying and fine-tuning them so you can get out of the loop of negative self-talk and learn to look at what lies ahead instead of focussing on the opportunities you might have missed.

What to keep in mind before considering life coaching

However, as incredibly effective it might be, life coaching is definitely not a magic pill. Employing a life coach won’t bring forth a sense of “instantaneous achievement”. Here are some potential pitfalls of life coaching, and the prime reasons why so many people have a negative impression about having their own life coach.

1. Life coaching doesn’t give immediate results

A common misconception among people is that a life coach will provide you actionable steps which will help you achieve your goals immediately. Sadly, that’s not the case.

A life coach will help you understand your goals, your strengths, and your weaknesses, and then design a strategy that works best for you accordingly. Ultimately, the onus for doing the work is on you, as is the responsibility of updating your coach about small wins and hurdles you face along the way.

2. Life coaching can’t treat mental health issues

As mentioned earlier, a life coach is different from a therapist. If you have a mental health condition like ADHD, depression, or anxiety, only a qualified professional can help you.

However, it is possible to get results if you are seeing a therapist and a coach at the same time, as long as you keep separate expectations from both. 

3. Life coaching will only work if the coach is suited to your needs

A relationship coach might not be able to help you get a salary hike. Similarly, a fitness coach might not be able to help you with your alcohol addiction.

Since coaching is such a specialized field of study, you can only get results when you hire someone who is specifically suited to solve the problem you are seeking to resolve. In addition, the coach’s coaching style has to align with yours, and your way of tackling situations has to be matched. That’s why a clarity call is so important so you can make sure of all these before making a commitment and then regretting it if things don’t work out as you had planned.

How to work with a life coach

If you feel like you’re ready to work with a life coach and welcome transformation into your life, here are the steps you can follow to make sure you have a good experience the first time around:

1. Find a coach

A good place to look for prospective coaches is by browsing through a coaching directory. Get yourself a life coach now from the Coach.Me directory of some of the most high-rated life coaches in the world.

2. Hop on a clarity call

As mentioned before, most coaches offer a free consultation call so that you can have a conversation with them. To determine if a coach is best suited to what you are looking for, you have to know the tips to make the most of your first coaching call. Check this article for a few tips to help you choose the right coach.

3. Your first coaching session

Life coaching is like a partnership where two people — the client and the coach — work together to achieve a common goal. During your first life coaching session, your coach won’t impose their wishes on you or force you to make any decision whatsoever. 

They will simply let you talk and help decipher your goals and what habits or limiting beliefs are stopping you from reaching them. Since coaching sessions are confidential, you can feel free to express your innermost thoughts, feelings, and opinions without the fear of judgment.

4. After the first session

In all probability, you will leave the first session with lots of ideas buzzing around in your brain. It’s best to journal your feelings so you can compare them with later sessions as you progress. Your coach will also likely give you a set of tasks you’ll complete before the next session.

5. Subsequent sessions 

There are no standard guidelines about how long a life coaching session should be. It can last from a few minutes and go up to a few hours. Likewise, the frequency of the calls also varies from coach to coach, and you can work on a cadence that suits your goals and the urgency of your current motive behind getting a coach for yourself. 

Find more resources about life coaching here

1. Why Would a Person Pay for a Life Coach?
2. What Do People Expect From a Life Coach?
3. 8 Myths About Life Coaching
4. How Long Should You Work With A Life Coach?

But now is not the time to be half-hearted, not the time to fear and doubt. But now is the time to be steadfast, fierce, and firm to pursue your long-dreamt career. Now is not the time to be persuaded by difficulties and challenges. Because according to Carlton Fisk  – “It’s not what you achieve, it’s what you overcome – that’s what defines your career.

Advancing in your career may be challenging but highly attainable, especially when you get help from experts, particularly a business coach.

The Business Coach

To advance in your career, first and foremost, you should have the will and determination to hit your end goal. Also, you should be ready to surmount every obstacle, and most of all, humble enough to seek guidance from a professional business coach. By doing so, you would get the appropriate direction you need as you grow.  

Getting help from a business coach will make your journey easier, focused, and brings you more clarity into your goal. Also, when you have a business coach, you can pursue your career with little or no time wasted in things unnecessary and inappropriate. 

You do not need to spend time going through everything they have already encountered. And that includes freeing you from experiencing failures that a coach might have experienced. 

Why Need a Business Coach?  

When you think that a business coach does nothing to your career, think otherwise because a business coach does so many things to help you grow.

1. A business coach helps build self-confidence.

Self-confidence is one of the most important things you need to possess to advance in your career successfully. However, as a neophyte, you do not yet have the necessary self-confidence to go along. 

Thus, a great coach’s support gives you space to work on challenges that you encounter along the way. You will also have a certain level of grit, knowing that your coach’s expertise guides you.

2. Help build actionable plans.

An actionable plan is an essential part of the planning process to help you achieve a goal. And so, it is crucial that when you are working on your career, you should build your actionable items. And you can perfectly build it with the help of your coach.

In making an actionable plan, be sure to make a SMART goal. Meaning it must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. Without the proper guidance from your coach, chances are, you would make plans that may be unrealistic, unimportant, and unactionable. 

And these unguided plans might waste your precious time and potentially lead you off-track along the way.

3. Creates Accountability

Accountability in business is a very critical component. If you get help from a business coach, it does not mean that they will do the work and be accountable for your success; instead, they will focus on helping you and help you realize the things you should be responsible for, like working on yourself or your goal.

Also, a business coach will remind you, motivate you, and act as a sounding board. And most importantly, a business coach will stand in front of you, helping you recognize and highlight personal blind spots that may hinder every reasonable thing on sight.

4. Share vast expertise

A business coach can never become one without the vast expertise and knowledge they possess. That expertise is so valuable for them to do their task effectively. And you will be as lucky to have been coached by somebody who is already good at what they do. Those things are what you need to ace your career, as they also did.

5. It helps you act on unconscious incompetence.

A business coach provides you an additional set of eyes to look at what you believe you do not know. Because according to Donald Rumsfeld, “There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Thus you need the help of a coach to help you know the things that you unconsciously do not know.

Key Takeaway

When you want to advance in your career, it is always a good idea to get a business coach’s help to guide you, mentor you, and ultimately help you realize your goal and help you succeed.

Just give your best, be teachable, proactive, and be ready for the challenges. 

So, what are you waiting for? Get yourself a business coach now from our directory of some of the most high-rated life coaches in the world.

Any coach who guarantees that he can “Fix your life” or “Help you reach your ultimate potential immediately” is somebody I’d be incredibly skeptical about working with.

Our lives are real and reality is never a straight line. There are no quick fixes or shortcuts. We have highs and lows. We’re simply human, and now and again, we’re likely to feel lost and alone.

In this fast-paced world, we need something long-lasting and genuine that will help us through those low occasions and assist us with benefiting from the highs of life. In particular, we need a mechanism in place to assist us with relying on our instincts and make our lives follow the direction our heart desires.

As mentioned before, life coaching is certainly not an instantaneous fix-everything, magic pill arrangement like a few people say it is.

Those sorts of arrangements don’t exist.

This might have burst your bubble of happiness a little, but how viable life coaching is relies up to a huge extent on YOU. The main one who needs to do all the fixing is still YOU. The mentality and responsibility you bring to the table will determine how successful life coaching turns out for you.

Recruiting a life coach, without putting in the work and hoping things will change is like purchasing a treadmill and assuming you will lose weight. YOU WON’T GET RESULTS UNTIL YOU PUT IN THE EFFORT. That’s the plain, unadulterated truth. Like every other aspect of life, you’ll receive on in proportion to what you put into it.

You could have Tony Robbins as your coach, and still not get any outcomes if you’re not able to invest the effort, thought, and work that it takes to gain ground.

Having said that, life coaching IS, as I would like to think, potentially the MOST successful device for gaining individual headway, since it’s a future-engaged, continuous relationship that raises your mindfulness, your self obligation, and your self-conviction.

What’s more, when that occurs, the future simply opens up like a flower!

Everything relies upon what you really need to accomplish with the help of a coach. People have utilized coaches who have been incredible sounding boards, offered them support, assisted them with appreciating the big picture. A good life coach can also explain what a person needs to accomplish and assist them with reaching that goal.

This is what you can do: record where you’d love to be in your life in the following 6 months to 1 year. Look at these aspects of your life: Career, Health, Personal Growth, Money, Relating, Fun, Setting (your home/workplace), Partner and think of at least one result for each of these aspects.

Conclude which are the aspects you’d prefer to zero in on the most and work out an arrangement with your life coach to assist you with moving towards these results. Get clear how you need that person to help you, then, at that point go looking for a life coach who specializes in these areas of your interest.

Many will give you the first clarity call for free so you can give them a shot. Schedule such a meeting with 2 or 3 coaches then, if you believe you got extraordinary value from at least one of the meetings, think about putting resources into paid coaching.

So, what are you waiting for? Get yourself a life coach now from our directory of some of the most high-rated life coaches in the world.

Business & Career Advice

My view is often guided by the framing of the business world as a competition between hubris and competence. We come down on the side of helping people succeed through extreme competence.

Getting a new job or promotion:

• How to Get Promoted ~Heather Hund
• How to Achieve Your Most Important Career Goal ~Rafael Sarandeses
• I Learned the Secret to Interviewing And Got Five Times More Job Offers ~Heather Hund

How to be more influential:

• How to Be a More Influential Person ~Chris Sowers
• A Practical Guide to Influence for Introverts ~Kate Jones

Management:

• Leadership Essentials: Six Key Habits to Living and Leading at Your Best ~Kendra Kinnison
• What People Don’t Tell You About Product Management ~Jason Shen
• The Manager’s Guide to Cultivating Flow at Work ~Kate Jones
• How to Be a Better Manager by Understanding the Difference Between Social Norms and Market Norms ~Chris Sowers
• Situational Leadership and How the Best Managers Keep Star Talent ~Matt Trainer
• What Happens When Values-based Leadership Isn’t Good Enough ~Chantal Laurie Below
• The Complete Guide to Establishing a Collaborative Company Culture ~Claire Millard
• Three Strategies to Ensure Meetings End on Time ~Patrick Ewers
• How to Motivate Your People Through Change ~Kate Jones
• How to Become a Legendary Leader in Five Minutes Per Day ~Patrick Ewers
• How to Thrive With a Team Morning Meditation ~Mark Moschel
• Complete Guide to Delegation for Leaders ~Patricia Thompson, PhD
• A Script for Firing People ~Coach Tony
• Project Planning Tips and Tales for Makers ~Gareth Branwyn

Play to your strengths:

• How to Leverage Introversion as a Career Strength ~Larry Cornett
• Why Successful People Learn to Ask for Help ~Ryan Engelstad
• How Improving Your Receptivity to Feedback Can Supercharge Your Career~Matt Trainer
• How to Learn to Negotiate Easily (For Those Who Avoid It) ~Heather Hund

Entrepreneurship:

• The Definitive Guide to Understanding Proactivity and Becoming a Proactive Entrepreneur ~Patrick Ewers
• How to Fail When You’re Used to Winning ~Sarah Milstein
• How to Stop Tinkering and Become Somebody Who Ships ~Jason Shen

Business Networking

My take here is that the advice breaks down a bit between personality types. A lot of introverts feel like they need to be better networkers, and so they’re looking for explicit strategies.

If you self-identify as an introvert, you probably want to start with these three articles:

• Networking for Introverts ~Patrick Ewers
• Icebreakers ~Michael Thompson
• Master the Art of the Icebreaker ~Patrick Ewers

For all networkers, there are two additional basic skills:

• How to Remember People’s Names ~Patrick Ewers
• How to Say No to Requests ~Patrick Ewers

For advanced networkers, here’s how to tweak your approach to be even more successful:

• How to Leverage the Power of Curiosity to Build Relationships and Generate Breakthrough Opportunities ~Patrick Ewers
• How to Seize Attention with the Secrets of a Sideshow Barker ~Hernan Cortez

Email Habits

If you want to be a more efficient emailer, start with this article, which has been tested through hundreds of one-on-one coaching experiences:

• 21 Days to Inbox Zero Habit ~Marshall Hughes

After that, try these three skill upgrades:

• Use Inbox Shadowing to Free Up 8 Hours or More Per week ~Patrick Ewers
• Complete Guide to Writing Perfect Introductions With Examples ~Patrick Ewers
• How to Conquer Email with the R.A.P. Framework ~Niklas Göke

Writing

For inspiration, start with how successful writers start and end their articles:

• How Great Writing Begins ~Jason Shen
• How Great Writers End Their Articles ~Jason Shen

After your first draft, know that excellence mostly comes down to how much effort you put into editing:

• How to Edit Your Writing in Three Passes ~Niklas Göke
• The Complete Guide to Editing Your First Draft Like a Pro ~Bryan Collins
• The Ultimate Workflow for Writers Obsessed with Quality ~Rob Hardy
• Will This Tool Make You a Better Writer? (Yes) ~Niklas Göke

Public Speaking

One great article on how to prepare based on TED experiences:

• How to Dramatically Improve Your Public Speaking ~Jason Shen

Then two articles on how to overcome your anxiety:

• How to Manage Your Fear of Public Speaking ~Sarah Milstein
• Case study: How to Conquer Fear and Loathing of Public Speaking ~Larry Cornett

Please tell me you read the goal-setting section. Otherwise, productive just means busy, and there’s no value in that. To what end do you care about productivity?

My own goals for productivity include things like having a positive impact and making money. But they also include goals like being able to say on Saturday, “I didn’t work on productivity all week just to have to work on the weekend.”

Productivity Tactics

Hacks, tips, assessments — there’s a ton you can do to maximize your productivity.

• Finding Your Right Productivity Style for People Who Resist Productivity Advice ~Liz Sumner

Systems:

• Implement the Marc Andreessen Productivity System in Trello ~Bryan Ye
• This Weekly Planning Routine Puts You In Control ~Rafael Sarandeses

Skills & Habits:

• Eight Health Habits You Can Use to Build Energy and Get More Done Every Day ~John Zeratsky
• Four Strategies to Reduce Interruptions at Work ~Patrick Ewers
• How to Consistently Start with Your Most Important Task First ~George Halachev

Counterintuitively, productivity doesn’t mean working all the time:

• Taking Intentional Breaks at Work ~Marta Brzosko

Delegation:

• How to Hire and Train a Virtual Assistant to Multiply Your Time ~Richard Phu

A case study in tracking your time:

• Lessons Learned From Tracking (Almost) Every Hour in My Year ~Willem van Zyl

Cure Technology Distraction

This section has a lot of articles because technology distraction is so pervasive. You basically have to go device-by-device and service-by-service until they’re set up to allow you time to focus.

The most important rule is that technology should be your tool, not your boss. I’m partial to my own article as a starting point. It’s a 75-minute read, which should signal that it’s thorough. But I also hope readers see the length and clue into how much work they have ahead of them to reclaim their lives.

• How to Configure Your iPhone to Work For You, Not Against You ~Coach Tony

For Android owners, try this article:

• How to Create a Zen Experience On Your Android ~Chris Jennings

Given that my iPhone-specific tutorial is so long and extreme, you should also consider the following shorter tactics:

• Beautility, My Ultimate iPhone Setup ~Jason Stirman
• Five Steps to Breaking Phone Addiction ~Megan E. Holstein
• How to Make Your iPhone Black & White ~Megan E. Holstein
• A Phone Setup That Will Make You More Mindful ~Niklas Göke

A lot of tech distraction comes down to social media apps. The articles below have you either change their settings or give them up entirely.

• Is Twitter Better Without Vanity Metrics? ~Niklas Göke
• How to Go on a Social Media Hiatus ~Alec Zaffiro
• How to Stop Wasting Time on WhatsApp ~Niklas Göke
• How to Stop Being Addicted to Facebook ~Niklas Göke

Our computers have the same distractions as our phones. But so far, we just have this one article:

• How to Setup Your Mac for Focused Work ~Niklas Göke

Sometimes the technology distraction has a real human being behind it:

• The Complete Guide to Dealing with Online Trolls ~Ragen Chastain

Cure Procrastination

The roots of procrastination start in the emotional centers of our brain. Normally, we won’t even notice the subconscious emotions that trigger it. Thankfully, there are a number of tested tactics to reduce and maybe even cure procrastination.

This series starts with the world’s leading researcher in procrastination, followed by applied tactics from top coaches, and then ends with a science fiction piece about what would happen if we could design a device that would apply these tactics for us.

• How to Use Psychology to Solve the Procrastination Puzzle ~Tim Pychyl
• How To Conquer Procrastination With Three Self-Awareness Techniques~Niklas Goeke
• How To Use Software and Apps to Beat Procrastination, Pt 1 ~George Halachev
• How To Use Software and Apps to Beat Procrastination, Pt 2 ~George Halachev
• How Artists and Creatives Can Beat Procrastination ~Bjorgvin Benediktsson
• The Complete Guide to Being On Time ~Robert Bateman
• Science Fiction: The Mood Repair Device ~K. D. McAdams

Use Your Tech Tools More Productively

The following are skills to help you use your tools more productively.

If you’re on a Mac:

• How to Move Around Your Mac at the Speed of Light ~Niklas Göke

If you’re on Windows:

• How to Configure Your Windows Global Hotkeys ~George Halachev

Different ways to use your web browser:

• How to Set Up Firefox for Productivity ~Niklas Göke
• How to Save 10 Minutes Per Day While Browsing The Web ~Niklas Göke
• A Complete Guide to Being Faster in Chrome ~eorge Halachev

Even more tools:

• How to Think Clearly with Evernote ~Niklas Göke
• How to Get the Most Out of Your Calendar ~Niklas Göke
• How to Implement a Killer GTD System in Google Sheets ~Mike Sturm

For your phone:

• Battery Life Hacks ~Niklas Göke
• Configuring Your iPhone for Maximum Privacy and Security: Web Browsing ~David Koff

Office Design for Productivity & Creativity

A four-part series from an architect who specializes in applying scientific research on productivity, creativity, and flow. All by Donald M. Rattner, AIA

• How to Use the Psychology of Space
• How to Use Noise to Improve Creativity
• How to Use the Psychology of Light and Lighting
• How to Use Music to Boost Your Creativity

Before you work on getting stronger, more efficient, or more charismatic, ask yourself: “to what end?”

Your answer becomes your guiding mission. Then, set out to master habit-building as a skill. Once you do those two things, you can set out to tackle your dreams.

I’m a little bit prickly about people who don’t have an end in mind — and it’s not just readers who fall into this trap. Many gurus publish masterful works of productivity or fat loss, but seemingly don’t have anyone in their life who loves them (or vice versa). What has being thin and rich gotten them, then? Not much (IMO).

So, I don’t want you to fall into that trap of thinking that activity is the same as accomplishment.

But I also don’t want you to fall into analysis paralysis of whether your goal is good enough. The Goal Setting section below is meant to land you in a healthy middle ground.

After that, there’s a section on habit building and habit breaking. You can’t go anywhere without the ability to create consistency in your life.

The concluding section is about Emotional Rewiring. All of us are of two minds: one emotional, and one rational. This is best explained in the Kahneman book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Your rational mind is easy to convince — just gather research and facts.

However, your emotional mind must be rewired emotionally. This is the province of the wu wu, like magic crystals, mantras, etc. These interventions are irrational, and coming to grips with that was a big turning point in my own understanding of what works. As a science-loving rationalist, I go through these hokey seeming (to me) and sometimes metaphysical exercises with my own pragmatic mantra: “This is a useful mental construct.”

Goal Setting

These are broken down by scope. Most people at least consider New Year’s Resolutions. But also you should consider your life goals (and then regularly reconsider them), your annual goals (maybe re-evaluating mid-year), and then your weekly and daily goals.

New Year’s Resolutions:

• How to Achieve Your New Year’s Resolution ~ Max Frenzel
• What 26 Coaches Have to Say About New Year’s Resolutions ~Coach Tony
• Success Requires a Change of Mind, Not New Year’s Promises ~Gustavo Razzetti

Looking at the big picture of your entire life:

• How to Use the Japanese Concept of Ikigai for Happiness and Meaning ~Melody Wilding
• How To Chart A New Course For Your Life With 3 Simple Diagrams ~Michal Korzonek
• The North Star Approach to Goal Setting ~Patrick Ewers
• Why You Should Write a Personal Constitution ~Patrick Ewers

Looking at your year:

• How to Run Your Own Annual Review ~Jason Shen
• A Simple Plan to Win the Year ~Niklas Göke
• A Working Mom’s Guide to Conquering the Year ~Donita Brown
• How to Spot Your Next Big Opportunity With Humility Exercises ~Niklas Göke

Looking at your week:

• How to Break Down Your Goals Into Sprints ~Ryder Carroll
• The Shultz Hour: How 60 Minutes Per Week Can Yield Tremendous Returns ~Mike Sturm
• How to do Daily & Weekly Reviews ~Ryder Carroll

Looking at your day:

• The 48 Tomatoes Exercise Method for Time Management ~Mike Sturm

What to do when you fail to achieve a goal:

• Why We’re Horrible At Achieving Goals (And What to Do About It) ~George Halachev
• The Pitfalls of Overplanning and How To Avert Them ~Kate Jones

Habits & Behavior Design

Most people should read at least these first two articles. The first explains several popular models for forming your own habits. The second explains how once you have a habit, you can tune the difficulty of your practice so that you’re always improving at the optimal rate.

• The Simple Art of Creating Long-Lasting Habits ~Niklas Göke
• The Complete Guide to Deliberate Practice ~Jason Shen

Breaking bad habits:

• How to Make Sure Bad Habits Never Come Back ~George Halachev
• How to Break Bad Habits by Simulating Rock Bottom ~Ryan Engelstad

Optimizing & long term success:

• How To Avoid Plateaus in the Quest for Personal Growth ~Ryan Engelstad
• A Counterintuitive Strategy for Building a Daily Exercise Habit (Or Any Habit) ~Robert Hardy
• How to Start with Beginner’s Mind to Become a True Expert ~Marta Brzosko
• Improve Productivity Using Ultradian Rhythms ~Brad Buzzard
• Used Spaced Repetition to Supercharge Your Habits ~Brad Buzzard
• How to Be Happy and Productive with “Flow” Habits ~Patrik Edblad
• The Transtheoretical Model for Long Lasting Behavior Change ~Melody Wilding

Emotional Rewiring

It’s rational to have a bag of irrational strategies for rewiring your irrational emotions.

• The Complete Guide to Visualization for Logical and Rational People ~Melody Wilding
• How to Master Intentional Dreaming for a Satisfying Life ~David Paul Kirkpatrick
• Why Successful People Choose Self Compassion Over Self Esteem ~Melody Wilding
• How to Hack Gratitude with a Hedonic Reset ~Julia Clavien
• How to Make Better Decisions by Improving Your Intuition ~Melody Wilding
• How to Positively Reshape Your Core Belief System ~Piyush Kamal?
• How to Take Charge of Your Thoughts ~Marta Brzosko

It helps you sort through any ideas you generated during the day, and arrange your work plan around them to get the most out of the following day. If done regularly, this can be an excellent way to analyze all the lessons you learned and use them to move towards a better, stronger, and more successful version of yourself.

So, how can you go about making the GTD daily review a part of your daily schedule. This post includes some hand-picked tips from the users of Coach.me habit tracker and will help you build this new habit.

1. Do a quick morning review

As user, Richard Olpin puts it, “my morning review is a quick skim of my forecast for the calendar, flagged and due items, etc. Weekly I do a more comprehensive project review and decide my most important tasks for the next week.”

2. Split it into two parts during the day

Following the advice of user Josh Roman, here’s what you can do:

• View your calendar the first thing in the morning. Then, quickly review your projects and update any tasks before switching to the Forecast view. Then, edit your task list and move all of tomorrow’s tasks onto tomorrow’s calendar.
• In the evening, do a quick review of your Goals & Systems so you’re in the right frame of mind for the next day. Then, review your calendar for any hardscape items, and reorganize your calendar if needed.

3. Follow a 3-step process like the weekly review 

Just like performing the GTD weekly review, user Mascha van de Weersuggests following three steps to get your daily review done:

1. Check your calendar 
2. Check your next actions lists (if you have time during that day for any next actions).
3. Look in your inboxes to estimate and plan the time you need for processing.

4. Prioritize the tasks for the day

As user Dominik Jaworski suggests, here’s what you can do: “Plugin calendar (use it as a trigger list too), notes on iPhone and Mail (physical mail from last day and actual email). Then prioritize most important things. Do a quick check on your email including deleting spam, sorting out todos, etc. in less that two minutes. The rest goes to a list item “Mail” which usually gets done after the most important tasks.”

5. Get an accountability partner

Talk to someone about your goals of doing a GTD daily review every day. This can be a friend, a roommate, a partner, a sibling, or a parent. Roping someone in on your journey and having them hold you accountable can be a way to make sure you’re not alone on this journey. headshop

You can also hire an accountability coach. These are trained professionals who will help you build a new habit or get rid of old ones. Having a compassionate, professionally-trained expert by your side can be a wonderful way to make sure you don’t fall off the wagon while trying to build this new habit of performing a GTD daily review every day.

6. Bonus: Use technology

Download a free habit tracker where you mark each day on the calendar when you successfully performed your GTD daily review. Seeing an unbroken streak of indulging in your new good habit can be an incredible motivator to keep pushing you ahead on this endeavor of performing a GTD daily review every single day.

The GTD weekly review is a systematic review process of the work you did during the week, which includes, but is not limited to:

• The projects you completed.
• The work you hope to get done the following week.
• What opportunities you are waiting for next.
• All the work you should have done but didn’t.
• Ideas and opportunities you haven’t had time to think about.

An effective idea from the Getting Things Done book is getting to a state of “mind like water.” The weekly review is a great tool to help you reach that stage every single week. The only thing important is consistency.

So, how can you be consistent with your GTD weekly review? This post discusses some effective steps you can apply right away to incorporate this amazing productivity-boosting exercise into your schedule. 

Step one: Look back into the week gone by

Think of this step as looking backward to tie all the loose ends from the bygone week. Here are some steps to help you achieve the same:

1. Grab the journals and papers where you have kept track of your progress.
2. Go through your notes.
3. Look at your calendar and address the time slots that are empty and need to be filled up, or too full and need to be emptied.
4. Look at your email inbox. Did you miss anything?
5. Pause for a reflect on any new ideas that might come to your head regarding how you can make the most of the upcoming week.

Step two: Plan to make the most of the current week

The next step is to sort all your bearings and make the most of the upcoming week. Here are some steps you can apply to implement this phase of the GTD weekly review:

1. Look at what projects you have lined up next.
2. Consider and plan your next actions.
3. Review your calendar to see where you can fit these slots in. Make sure you include time for self-care as well.

Step three: Get creative 

The final step in getting consistent with your GTD weekly review is to get creative and think of all the ways you can get even more done in a short time. This step includes the following aspects:

1. Look at your “someday I will get these done” list and see if there is something you can ditch or accomplish right away.
2. What can you eliminate from your current list that will open up more exciting opportunities and help you get more work done?
3. What are some “big ideas” you have that you can execute right away?

Bonus tips to be consistent

Once you know what you can do to accomplish a proper GTD weekly review, here are some bonus tips on how you can be consistent with this new habit.

• Keep aside a few hours every Friday afternoon for your GTD weekly review.
• If Friday afternoons don’t work for you, you can also try to do your review on Saturday mornings or Friday nights. There is no hard and fast rule regarding when you need to complete your review. You can pick the time that works best for you, even if it requires a few rounds of iteration before you can zero in on the perfect time slot that works for you.

Get a habit tracker

Using a habit tracker to mark the days you stuck to your goal of performing a GTD weekly review can be an excellent way to make sure you don’t fall off the wagon. Seeing a streak of several weeks would be an excellent motivation to keep pushing yourself. It can also serve as a reminder of what you are capable of and how much remains to be done before you can reach where you’re supposed to.

Get an accountability partner

Having someone else perform a GTD weekly review every Friday with you can make building any new habit easier. You can join a community of people who are committed to boosting their productivity.

If you can’t find a friend who’s also learning to work on a GTD weekly review, you can hire an accountability coach to help keep you on track. These are trained individuals who will hold you accountable and help you get back on track if you ever fall off the wagon.

Are you tired of setting your priorities for the day and then go to with regret at not having completed them all?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with work and not sure which task to complete further, maybe the 1–3–5 priority setting method can help you overcome that feeling. This article is a beginner’s guide to this interesting new method called the 1–3–5 priority setting method to help boost your personal productivity as well as your productivity at work.

What is the 1–3–5 rule?

The 1–3–5 rule is simple: you need to commit to accomplishing three types of tasks every day to stay at your productive best: 1 Major Task, 3 Medium Tasks, and 5 Small Tasks.

This way, you can make progress on big projects and deliverables, complete all your small daily tasks, and also take care of any repeating daily commitments you might have. The reason this rule is effective is that it’s so simple.

How to make the 1–3–5 rule a daily habit?

Here are some tips on how you can make the 1–3–5 rule a daily habit and incorporate it into your lifestyle without consciously working too hard for it:

1. List out all your tasks for the week

Start on a Sunday and list every task you plan to accomplish in the upcoming week in your journal. Don’t think about how important they are or how urgently you need to accomplish them. The goal of this step is to get all the tasks in your head onto your planner or journal.

This is more of a brain dumping exercise and it serves the purpose of not having to remember your to-dos when you actually set yourself to achieving them the next week.

2. Divide them into groups

The next step is to group all your tasks into “major”, “medium”, and “small” tasks. If you’re not sure what criteria to consider while grouping them, here’s a guide to help you:

• If the task requires three hours or more to be completed, consider it a “major” task.
• If it takes one or two hours to be done, you can consider that task to be a “medium” task.
• If it takes thirty minutes to one hour, it’s a “small” task.

Aside from the time taken, you can also take into consideration the mental energy a task requires. Some tasks can be completed in a few minutes but take a huge toll on your energy.

3. Write your to-do list

Once you have all the tasks grouped, write a to-do list with one major task, three medium tasks, and five minor tasks.

You can either plan to-do lists for the entire week, or make your to-do lists for each day before you go to bed at night. Use a new journal to make this kind of list as it’s a radically different approach from your usual journal or to-do lists.

4. Start with the biggest tasks

When you’re starting your work for the day, you usually have the most energy and motivation. Starting with the most complex and time-taking tasks will help you get them completed, and thus start the day with a feeling of accomplishment.

5. Incorporate the Pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro technique is a great tool for boosting productivity. The concept is simple: you work in blocks of time (usually twenty-five minutes), interspersed with breaks where you can recharge.

Because you have those short breaks of five minutes strewn in so generously, you can get more work done in a short time. This helps you achieve more without feeling burned out.

6. Use technology

Get help from people who have experience dealing with your problem of not being productive enough. You can hire an accountability coach who will share helpful tips and tricks and also hold you accountable for your promise of sticking to setting the 1–3–5 method each day.

You can also get a habit tracker and mark each day on the calendar where you successfully managed to set your priorities for the day. Gamifying your habits can be a helpful way to get the most of this challenge and adopting a more productive lifestyle.

The Ivy Lee method is a simple daily routine for achieving peak productivity first documented in 1918 by the highly-respected productivity consultant named Ivy Lee. 

The method is so useful, that when Charles M. Schwab, one of the richest men in the world, went to Ivy Lee to discuss this, Lee didn’t ask for any consultation fee. Instead, he asked Schwab to practice the method for 15 minutes each day for three months. After three months, Schwab could pay Lee whatever he thought the method was worth.

How to apply the Ivy Lee method

This is a simple 15-minute routine you can apply each day in the morning to set your priorities straight and get the most out of your day. It involves the following steps, namely:

1. At the end of each day, write down six of the most important things you plan to accomplish the next day. Don’t write more than six tasks. Don’t settle for less than six tasks. Stick to the magic number — six.
2. Next, prioritize each task based on how urgent it is and how quickly it needs to be completed.
3. When you wake up the next morning, start with the first task on the list. No matter how tedious it gets or how tempted you are to move on to the other tasks, refrain. Be strong, and only move forward to the other tasks once your first task is complete.
4. After the first task is complete, move on to the next task.
5. Approach the rest of the tasks on your list in a similar fashion. At the end of the day, if any task remains to be completed, carry it forward to your list of tasks for the next day.
6. Repeat this process every day.

How to make this a part of your routine

When you have someone to hold you accountable and keep track of your progress, the journey towards being a regular writer and follower of to-do lists becomes easier and less tedious. You can hire an accountability coach to help you get back on track if you ever fall off the wagon. 

You can also download a habit tracker to mark the days on the calendar when you managed to stick to your habit of writing a to-do list daily.