As someone who speaks with hundreds of advisors every year, I can confidently say some of the best self-improvement resources available to us are not found in the places we look. We spend so much time pondering and planning our business, we often forget we also need tools and information to help make us more effective personally – as advisors, as CEOs, as leaders, as people.
So much of what makes a good leader and a successful advisor is dedicating time to improving yourself in order to better serve the needs of your team, your family, and yourself. As I like to say, the happier you are, the more effective you’ll be to everyone in your life.
Over the coming weeks, in this Xperts space, I’ll be sharing some of the personal improvement tools I have incorporated into my life that have made me a smarter CEO, a healthier husband and father, and a happier person.
This week: What I’m Tracking
- TrackYourHappiness.org – This website is a scientific research project that investigates what makes life worth living, i.e., it tracks your activity throughout the day and measures the things you most enjoy. This tool is great for two reasons: one, it forces you to be cognizant of your actions throughout the day, and two, it allows you to see what factors are associated with greater happiness. Once you understand what makes you happy, you can shift your time to focus more on the things you like to do.
- Productivity Management System – This is also a great efficiency tool I’ve been using for over 20 years and trust me, it works! As a business owner, your time can easily be sucked up by the daily minutia, rendering yourself ineffective and incomplete at the end of every day. This tool provides one of the best ways to track and divide your daily activity into four quadrants: Important and Urgent, Important and Not Urgent, Not Important and Not Urgent, and Harmful/Wasteful. Think of it as a scorecard for your productivity. Click here and enter the code “productivity” to download the free tool now.
Check back to see “What I’m Reading and Watching” and “What I’m Eating.”
Ron Carson is Founder and CEO of Carson Wealth Management Group, a wealth planning firm in Omaha. In 1993, he founded the Peak Advisor Alliance, a coaching program for financial advisors, and has also written a book on building a practice, Tested in the Trenches.