10 Tips for self-development

Believing is an action

Making statements of wanting to change when lacking action and the belief that you can actually change, is nothing more than trying to pet yourself to not feel bad about your lovely bad habits that are hard to let go of.

If you wish to contribute to your own self-development you need to build a system for yourself based on what works for you. To change and experience change one must understand that changing today does not imply staying changed tomorrow and the days to come. Rather than beating yourself to change, develop, and work on habits and routines that will contribute to a better you daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.

Remember everybody is different but we can always utilize the same modified methods and strategies to achieve certain goals.

1 Find your daily inspiration

It is crucial for you to have driving factors that continuously help you with self-development. Finding your motive to get up every day and put yourself through hardship is definitely something you should take time to figure out if you don't wish to give up on your first day/week.

2 Invest in your strength

Everyone has one or more things they do better at than other things. If it takes you long (5 seconds +) to even mention these to yourself then, you're most likely uncertain and perhaps confused about what these might be for you or you just have no idea.

Investing/building on your strengths requires time and continuous execution. If you're in the software development industry or design industry then you should be familiarized with having to create many different, sometimes repetitive designs or versions of a product that might not ever be seen or released. If you're not familiarized with this then you're probably doing something wrong or you're not doing what you should be.

3 Overcome your fear

Fear often tends to push you the opposite way. To overcome your fear, first, you need to identify the type of fear you're facing. Is it fear of failure? Fear of success? Or fear of missing out?

Fear of missing out "Fear of missing out is a social anxiety stemmed from the belief that others might be having fun while the person experiencing the anxiety is not present. It is characterized by a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing."

If you find yourself experiencing this, please walk away from it. It will not only be the best for you but for those who might be affected too. Jumping into activities because of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) often tends to not end well.

Fear of failure: One of the reasons why people tend to not move forward with a plan, project, or idea, is the thought and possibility of experiencing failure. This alone is enough to shake many and stop them from even getting their feet off the ground. But allow me to remind/inform you that you achieve success by failing, failure is one of the most important aspects of success. By understanding failure and what it means to you, I believe you will have a different view on how to get the best outcome.

Fear of success: Sounds weird right, but it is true and it does exist, people fear success, as much as people would rather succeed than fail, they still might feel fear towards success and this is because succeeding may come with many more responsibilities to handle, you have to become more cautious of everything you do, say, accept or reject.

Instead of looking at fear as the enemy, use it to your advantage, you will be amazed.

4 Comfort zone

This is definitely a phrase even babies have heard at least twice. Keeping it short and concise, if you really want to improve and contribute to your development, then you should avoid anything that makes you too comfortable and stops you from executions.

Building stability and being stable is not a comfort zone, a comfort zone is anything that enables you to relax too much, be sluggish and not really care about important duties to the point of immobility.

5 Keep an eye on the clock

There are 24 hours in a day and there is only so much that a person can have done in 24 hours. If you really struggle with time management then it is probably true that you never took time to understand and study yourself. Here's a scenario of how a person with "really bad" time management spends the day:

Time spent sleeping, 8 hours (16 hours left), time spent on a mandatory routine such as school or work 8 hours (8 hours left), time spent on other tasks at home, about 2 hours (6 hours left), time spent on social media, about 3 hours (3 hours left), time spent with family or friends 3 hours (0 hours left) and this is without mentioning other things a person might have in the day that will eventually drop the time to negative digits (using more than you can have).

Now, if you were already doing some analysis you would have probably noticed that there is no time allocated to self-development, which is really bad for someone who wishes to change and improve. Your time might not be spent exactly like that but, I believe it should give you an idea of what poor time management looks like.

Remember to always take 1-3 hours to work on yourself, if you're in the holiday season where there's no work or school, then your minimum time should be at least about 3 hours allocated to self-development. This might be reading books or articles, watching educational videos related to what you do, or what you need to know/ learning, putting in the practice (getting your hands dirty).

Additional tips:

• Don't spend more time than you have available!
• The more you recite "I'm tired" the less you will get done and achieve.
• Spend no time on cheap talks.

If you're building a business you will have to make investments and sacrifices, a lot of sacrifices, just make sure you're not making the wrong ones. How do you know that they are the wrong ones?

1. They don't contribute to your psychological/mental health
2. No contribution to your ability to perform
3. Pure entertainment activities
4. They give you more reason to rest than evolve
5. Excuses

6 Count your money

Finance is one of the most important aspects of life people should really be cautious about. If there is something you will want to do is count your money, count what you have so that you don't ask yourself where your money went (it didn't go anywhere it was just probably thrown away).

To reduce your expenses, you need to cut expenses, get rid of the liabilities, and accumulate assets. If there is something you spend a lot of money on that does not help you in any way, then it's probably a good idea to cut it. It is very important where you decide to invest your money. Seek financial education.

7 Find new ways/paths

For the sake of innovation and growth, you should always find and have different ways of completing a task, different methods of completion. This will not only amplify your angle of view but also add to your arsenal of skills and knowledge.

8 Write to yourself

This might sound very weird to some people and normal to others but, personally I tend to do this because it helps me not only lay out my thoughts, helps to create structure and a space for analysis. As human beings, there is only so much that we can keep in memory, it is very easy to forget about the great idea we had last night or the clarity on a certain theory I got from listening to a podcast.

Writing to yourself will help you:

1. Remember your thoughts/ideas
2. Create structure
3. Organize ideas
4. Be presentable to yourself and others
5. Keep the promises you made to yourself
6. Remember why you even got started

9 Be open to revision and criticism

Revision is a process that takes time and it always pays off. Reviewing your work or the things you do, is the most crucial part of it all. If you're up to something and you don't wish to review it, then just know that there is probably an issue present which you might have missed, "sadly".

The number of things we can easily miss when performing a task is enormous, especially for people who are just getting started. Hence always remember to review before moving forward.

A review process can take anywhere from hours to days depending on the size and complexity of the task. You might be seeing this and saying that's too long, "days!". Yes, I get it but you should understand that if you wish to get better then you need to look back in time and reflect on the decisions you made, the "you" of today will not be the same as the "you" of tomorrow. Getting different lenses on whatever is being reviewed is a good thing to do, it will be very helpful to have someone else do the revision/review if what was done is some type of task or project that will be shared with people.

10 Find your balance

Above all, you need to find a balance. Finding the right balance can be hard, one it's because you're trying to add too much into the mix, you're trying to hold more than you can handle or the order of the things is all over.

To get hold of balance it's important that you get hold of your time, your time belongs to you and no one else, it is up to you who will get the privilege of being shared with.

Remember that there are 7 days in a week and you don't have to do every single thing in a day, split your duties throughout the week, and have days allocated to certain tasks without touching the others. This will help you create a space where you don't perform two or three completely different tasks one after the other which can slow you tremendously if you're not used to task switching and if you have concentration problems or take longer to concentrate.

Grow wise and knowledgeable, not crippled." -- Júlio Tati