Interesting Traits of Highly Effective People: Part I

Dad.

I am waiting for the laundry. There's about 35 minutes on the clock and I can't seem to be able to sleep with machine going "whoochuk whoochuk woochuk" every time. So here I am putting some thoughts on electronic paper. 

For about a year now, I have been looking into high achievers who seem to somehow find success in whatever they do again and again and again. Which made me think out of the box and deconstruct what really makes them them. It's interesting because these successful, efficient people not only find time and progress in their field but in any field they seem to put their thoughts on. Is it just they were born with ability to pick up any skill or is it a mixture of habits, practices and mentor-ship that places them among the top 5-10%?

Yep, turns out it's all on their technique to learn and implement and engrave habits.

Tim Ferriss, who worked on the 4-hour books on health, food and work, has ever so succinctly analyzed and broken down the habits of  120+ top achievers on his latest book "Tools of Titans." The book proves, without any doubt, that such "success" are replicable by having certain common traits that can be immediately implemented on our daily life to make a tangible change. 

Here's what has worked for me and I will probably have post detailing each trait that talk here:

Key Trait 1: Having The Right Mentors and Learning To Be Mentor At The Same Time

Isolating who is important and who I look up to while at the same time being able to mentor someone else. What I mean by that is that I should be an average of the friends and people that I hang out with. That way I have three stages of learning: Learning by copying the mentor, learning by implementing and experimenting on myself while learning by teaching it to someone who looks up to me. 

I will have a post on how to identify mentors later. As for now, this idea has been very powerful. And the beauty is that this has brought a positive change in me. 

Key Trait 2: Learning By First Doing, Then Taking A Class And Then Doing Again
One very effective way to learn anything; from coding to writing to cooking to brewing is this: If I am new to something, I use the brute force technique. I try to force my way into finding a solution to a problem I have without actually knowing what I am actually doing. With that experience, I then re-enforce that learning by taking a lecture- online or offline- and understand what I was actually doing. Using this new found knowledge, I would then implement on a slightly complicated problem to further test what I have learnt.

Usual way of learning is: Take a lecture-> apply
My way is: Brute force my way to learning a new skill->take a lecture-> reapply

Key Trait 3: Having A Morning Routine
My mom always told me to make my bed when I woke up. I never understood why but I would do it anyways. What that actually would do was to set the tone for me by doing something small, I would gain momentum to do another small thing and so on. By the time I left the house, I would feel as if I had accomplished something. You win the morning, you win the day.

My morning routine for a month has been:
Wake up-> make bed->do guided meditation for 20 minutes->take cold shower->iron->walk to office (for a week which takes about 40 minutes). By the time I arrive at the office at 9-9:15, an hour before my work starts, I feel like I have already had these little "wins" which would set the tone for the whole day quiet nicely. 

My laundry's done, need to dry them out and get some sleep. Will have a second part posted up.