Ten Resolutions The Most Successful People Make And Then Keep

Posted: January 03, 2013

[caption id="attachment_11076" align="alignright"]image: forbes.com[/caption]Most people make personal resolutions at the beginning of each new year. Sometimes we're successful at keeping them, sometimes we're not. Should you be making business resolutions, too? Successful people make business resolutions, and stick to them. Here are a few to get you started for 2013.

Well, it’s that time again—time to start rolling out the New Year’s resolutions. Some of us will vow to eat less, exercise more, live in the moment, be more grateful. You may even decide to bury the hatchet with the family member who makes you so crazy.

But what about your New Year’s business resolutions?

This time of year is a great time to start making—and keeping—business resolutions, too. But sadly, like our personal goals, we often make them (year after year) with sincere intent only to see them quickly fall by the wayside, as we revert to (bad) habits that we have vowed to break.

But what about the most successful people and their resolutions? Have you noticed how the most accomplished people just seem to identify important things and consistently get them done?

Study successful people long enough and you start to pick up on the resolutions they seem to consistently make.

Here are ten of my favorites:

#1 Spend more time on the not-to-do list

Strategy is the art of sacrifice. That’s why you may consider creating a larger clearing for what really matters by first identifying, and then avoiding, what matters the least. Your time is a treasure to be invested. Creating a list of things that you are not going to do, allows you to invest more of your treasured time on the few things that matter the most.

#2 Essential first, email second

What’s the first thing you do in the morning? For many of us, it is looking at email. We wake up with a renewed mind and spirit, ready to take on the world, and then we immediately allow ourselves to be distracted by an insignificant email. Instead, wake up, take on the most important task of the day, and then (and only then) hit the email.

Read the entire article Ten Resolutions The Most Successful People Make And Then Keep, at forbes.com.