Who do you spend time with? Write out the names of the eight or ten people you spend the most time with. Place them in rank order, based on the amount of time (most to least) you spend with them. Then, look carefully at the five people you spend the most time with. It is likely that these people have the most influence on what you do, what you think and where you go in life.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
-- Jim Rohn, Author & Speaker
People: If you spend your time with people who are already highly respected and successful, it is likely that you are or will be too. However, if you are spending most of your time with people who are going no place fast, they can drag you down and hold you back. To change your direction, you may want to seek out a different group of friends.
Places: Where do you spend your time? The places that you frequent and spend time can also play an important role in your success or failure. Are the places where you spend the most time where people with high potential work, do research, hold discussions or just hang out?
If you are spending your time in the wrong places, you won?t run into the people who are generating ideas, achieving their goals and making things better around them. Those wrong places won?t contain the people or information you will need to find success. Therefore, for you to increase your chances for success, make sure that you spend your time in places that will support your goals. Don?t look for fish in a hardware store.
Information: Where do you get your information? As you know, information comes from many places, in many forms and in many degrees of accuracy and usefulness. Good information will help you achieve your goals. However, bad information will block your progress or send you off in the wrong direction.
If you are obtaining information that is out of date, inaccurate and unreliable, you are obtaining your information from the wrong places. Successful people put themselves in the middle of the best sources for the information they need. They know that powerful, useful, accurate and timely information is necessary for success.
Tools: Good tools are necessary for good work. If you don?t have the tools you will need to do the job, that job won?t get done at all or won?t get done right. If you want to be successful at whatever you do, pay attention to your tools.
Motivation: What inspires and motivates you? Successful people are acutely aware of the people and things that energize them. They tap those resources and motivators to push through the difficult times and improve the quality of their output. When you find yourself in a deep rut, you must have people, places and things ready to help you climb back out. Do you have a people and things you can call upon to help you get energized and revitalized? Even if you answer yes, maybe it?s time to find some new and better forms of motivation.
Opportunity: The more opportunities for success you get, the better. If you get up to bat only one time in your lifetime, there is little chance that you will get a base hit. However, your chances improve, as the number of opportunities (at bats) increase. Therefore, successful people strive to increase the number of opportunities that are presented and then make certain that they take full advantage of them. Are you getting enough (at bats) opportunities? Successful people spend there time where the opportunities exist.
If you want to be more successful, look at where you spend your time. Take a close look at the people, places, information, tools, motivation and opportunities that surround you. If your behavior and all of these factors remain the same, your outcomes will also remain the same. By making adjustments and improvements within these six critical areas, you can dramatically improve your performance outcomes.