10 Habits of Successful People: On the Shoulders of Giants
Success leaves clues. We can learn a lot from the habits of successful people. They are successful for a reason and as Howie discussed in a previous video, a great way to be successful is to copy someone who is already successful.
Today we will take a look at some of the habits of successful people, 10 of them to be exact. Hopefully, you can take some of their habits and use them to make yourself better!
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
In his 2017 letter to shareholders discussed skill: “Beyond recognizing the standard and having realistic expectations on scope, how about skill? Surely to write a world-class memo, you have to be an extremely skilled writer? Is it another required element? In my view, not so much, at least not for the individual in the context of teams. The football coach doesn’t need to be able to throw, and a film director doesn’t need to be able to act. But they both do need to recognize high standards for those things and teach realistic expectations on scope. Even in the example of writing a six-page memo, that’s teamwork. Someone on the team needs to have the skill, but it doesn’t have to be you.” 2
Habits of Successful People #1: Surround yourself with people who can do what you can’t. You don’t have to be and cannot be skilled at everything.
Madonna
To keep up with a work schedule that begins at 11:30 am each day and ends at 3 or 4 in the am the following day, Madonna primes her pump with a disciplined exercise and diet regimen. She exercises 6 days a week for at least 30 minutes per session which includes a variety of training including weights, circuit training, martial arts, yoga, Pilates and more! Her extremely strict macrobiotic diet is mostly vegan and sees her eating smaller meals 6 times a day.
Habits of Successful People #2: The importance of exercise and diet. A good part of the reason for her being able to work the hours she does and look much younger than her 60 years is due to her exercise and diet regimen! And she could not do either without extreme discipline.
Huffington Post CEO Arianna Huffington
Credits much of her success to the fact that she has a balanced life which includes enough sleep. Her wakeup call happened when she passed out from exhaustion in her office in 2007 breaking her cheekbone. According to Huffington, “The more fully recharged and connected you are, Huffington contends, the more clearly you can look ahead. And “for me [looking ahead] was making sure that Huffington Post was a global company,”. 1 Recently she even pleaded with Tesla CEO Elon Musk to get more sleep after his much-publicized interview with the NY Times where he admitted to working 120 hours per week. Unfortunately, her advice seemed to fall on deaf ears!
Habits of Successful People #3: Get enough sleep – we all have different sleep requirements, but generally most adults need between 7-9 hours of sleep for overall health and well-being. So, get your zzzzz’s!
Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs
Did you know that Steve Jobs took a calligraphy class during college? Even though he dropped out of college in 1973, he still hung out around Reed College in Portland, Oregon. That is where he would drop in and audit a calligraphy class. Jobs would later credit what he learned in that class for teaching him about typefaces that years later inspired the typography we enjoy in today’s personal computers.
Habits of Successful People #4: Don’t be afraid to try new things in your life, you never know how they may positively affect your life not only now but in the future.
Novelist Stephen King
The fact that King has published over 90 books is no accident. His prolific writing can be explained by the fact that he writes 10 pages every day, which amount to roughly 2,000 words – after 3 months he has roughly written 180,000 words which according to him is “a goodish length for a book”.
Habits of Successful People #5: The power of consistency. Becoming good at something takes focused practice, every day.
Virgin CEO Richard Branson
Whenever I see Richard Branson he always has a smile on his face and seems to be having a good time. Whether he is on a hot air balloon or being part of a crew trying to break a record crossing the transatlantic in a speedboat, he always seems to be having fun. One of my favorite Branson quotes is, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to. There is no greater thing you can do with your life and your work than follow your passions – in a way that serves the world and you. As soon as something stops being fun, I think it’s time to move on.”
Habits of Successful People #6: Having fun! Life is so much better when you are having fun and Branson is a great example of that!
Bill Gates. Mark Cuban and Warren Buffett
These 3 utilize what is called is known as the 5-hour rule. The 5-hour rule is simply setting aside a minimum of an hour a day during the workweek to engage in deliberate reading and learning. I have read that Buffett spends most of his day reading and thinking, Cuban spends 3 hours a day reading, and Gates reads a book a week.
Habits of Successful People #7: In his book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey’s 7th habit is ‘Sharpen the Saw’, which is all about self-renewal and self-care. This includes reading and learning and improving yourself every day!
Legendary professor and management consultant Peter Drucker
There are so many instances when I was in the business world that I would see our company or other companies take an action or make a decision and that was it. No one ever went back to see how it worked out. I have also seen this happen in many people’s personal lives, including my own. Drucker had a great habit where he would write down what he expected to happen from a decision and then go back months later and compare what he expected to happen with what did happen.
Habits of Successful People #8: Learn from your previous actions, decisions, and experiments by going back to see how you fared. That way you can learn from them to improve future actions, decisions, and experiments.
Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, and many others
Habits of Successful People #9: Naps! You need to be careful about doing it at the office as many companies frown upon it. But that is slowly changing as many forward-thinking companies such as Google, Zappos, Nike, and Uber amongst others offer some type of napping benefit.
Oprah Winfrey
I wrote a recent blog post on the importance of being present and I just love this quote from Oprah where she discusses being present when interviewing someone, ”I am listening as hard as they’re talking and taking on the energy of whatever is going on in that moment” she says.
Habits of Successful People #10: Being present! Live in the moment. My favorite part of her quote is the part I bolded – “I am listening as hard as they are talking”. You can just feel how present she is through the power of her words – awesome!
Before we go, I thought I would end this post with an interesting habit from playwright Anthony Neilson who took part in a survey done by the Guardian who asked a multitude of creative artists how they got their creative inspiration.
Neilson’s response,
“Masturbate frequently. You’ll probably do that anyway, but you may as well make it a rule.”
I will let you decide if you want to add it to your self-improvement repertoire or not, just understand we here at Prime Your Pump are completely non-judgmental!
Until next time, when it comes to adding new habits of successful people – you do you, and as always..PYMFP!!
–Rick
Use It or Lose It – Habits of Successful People:
Let’s quickly review the 10 habits of successful people we covered today:
(1) Surround yourself with people who have skills you can do what you can’t like Jeff Bezos.
(2) Exercise and eat right like Madonna.
(3) Get enough sleep like Arianna Huffington.
(4) Try new things like Steve Jobs.
(5) Engage in consistent and focused practice every day like Stephen King.
(6) Have fun like Richard Branson.
(7) Make time for reading and learning like Bill Gates, Mark Cuban and Warren Buffett.
(8) Revisit your actions, decisions, and experiments so you can learn from them like Peter Drucker.
(9) Nap like Churchill and Einstein.
(10) Be present like Oprah.
When to Use It:
It depends on your lifestyle and what you already practice. Hopefully, you can add at least one of these habits to your self-improvement repertoire!
What Do You Think?
Do any of these resonate with you? Are there any that you will start practicing? Please share in the comments below!
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References
https://www.foodsforbetterhealth.com/queen-of-pop-madonnas-secret-staying-fit-healthy-age-58-18563
https://www.businessinsider.com/robert-palladino-calligraphy-class-inspired-steve-jobs-2016-3
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/49619-i-like-to-get-ten-pages-a-day-which-amounts
https://medium.com/thrive-global/the-biggest-brain-benefits-of-taking-a-daily-nap-c82d1b0f15a0
https://fictionwritersreview.com/shoptalk/masturbate-frequently/