What Is Your Valuable Skill? Are You A Master At It?

In all human endeavors, there are four levels of accomplishment:

1. Incompetence

Regardless of how smart or gifted you are, to learn a new skill you must go through a period of not knowing — of taking the baby steps and stumbling. This is the very necessary stage of incompetence. Being incompetent is nothing to be ashamed of. Not trying to learn something because you are afraid to show incompetence is.

2. Competence

If you persist in your learning, you will eventually arrive at a level of skill that is competent for most situations. For example, you will be able to play the piano at parties, dance at weddings, or write an effective business letter. It takes time to become competent. I’ve suggested, half seriously, that it’s always the same amount of time regardless of the skill: 1,000 hours (with a 30% discount if you are lucky enough to have masterful instruction).

3. Mastery

Most people stop learning after they achieve competence. They know enough not to get fired, laughed at, or rejected (in other words, enough to avoid pain), but they have no desire to go beyond that. The few people who are not satisfied with merely “good” push on and continue to practice and learn for years and years. At some point (and my guesstimate for that is after about 5,000 hours), because of all that extra work and especially because of that extra attention, they achieve a level of accomplishment that distinguishes them from their competent peers. They become masters of their skill. One person out of a hundred competent people achieves mastery.

4. Virtuosity

The virtuoso is not only extremely focused, determined, hardworking, and persistent, but also divinely gifted. He is the one master out of a hundred masters that has a genius for the skill that allows him to be a world-class performer. Even so, the virtuoso must put in the time — I’d guess a minimum of 25,000 hours — working at it. Like Michael Jordan, Fred Astaire, even Bill Clinton, and others of that ilk. Back to you. If you want to keep your job, you need to become competent at a skill that is valuable to your business.

If you want more than that — if you want to become extremely successful, make a lot of money, have control over your future and influence over your peers — you must step up to the next level: You must become a master at your valuable skill.

So today, ask yourself two questions:

1. “What is the valuable skill I am developing that is contributing to my company’s goals?”

2. “What do I need to do to achieve mastery of that skill?”

Break the necessary tasks down into years, months, and weeks. Then put them on your daily “to-do” list and start to feel the progress you are making.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the Internet, and that will never change.
 

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Why You Should Write Down Your Goals

I recently read about a study in a book called “Look Within or Do Without,” by Tom Bay. According to Mr. Bay, Harvard Business School did a study on the financial status of its students 10 years after graduation and found that:

* As many as 27% of them needed financial assistance.

* A whopping 60% of them were living paycheck to paycheck.

* A mere 10% of them were living comfortably.

* And only 3% of them were financially independent.

The study also looked at goal setting and found these interesting correlations:

* The 27% that needed financial assistance had absolutely no goal-setting processes in their lives.

* The 60% that were living paycheck to paycheck had basic survival goals (such as managing to live paycheck to paycheck).

* The 10% that were living comfortably had general goals. They thought they knew where they were going to be in the next five years.

* The 3% that were financially independent had written out their goals and the steps required to reach those goals.

Yes, the results seem a little too perfect, but I’m not surprised at the overall implication. I work with many bright, ambitious people who have everything they need to get what they want – and who work nonstop – but fail to make the progress they desire. Yet when I suggest they could do better by setting goals and writing them down, as well as planning their days, getting in early, and doing all those other things we talk about each morning, much more often than not my suggestions are met with amused derision. I understand why you’d want NOT to write down your goals. It seems so contrived. So banal. You think that it may work fine for someone much less intelligent – much less individualistic – but that it’s not for you. Yeah, that’s the way I used to feel.

For years, I felt that way about anything that smelled of positive thinking, personal power, or self-help. Then, almost by accident, I stumbled onto Stephen Covey's productivity and time-management program – and that changed the way I thought about self-help. Prior to that, I had small successes, but felt like I was spinning in place. Since the humbling experience of admitting I could do better by structuring my life according to the banalities of good advice, I’ve become much better at defining and reaching my goals and finish virtually all of my pet projects. If goal setting can work for Harvard Business School graduates, shouldn’t it work for you too?

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…
 

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]