An easy way to change your life for the better

There are 312 people hanging in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But I noticed that for a hitter, the difference between best and average for the season is 18 hits. Then, according to statistics, the average player needs to hit one more ball every 17 games to get into the Hall of Fame. Just one. And what is the result!

The conclusion is one: to be successful, you need to find a simple but effective way to gradually and consistently improve your results.

I have found that small but consistent changes over time can make a difference in your life. You will become healthier, more successful, and happier. You can improve this world bit by bit!

Save and receive interest

Let's start with a topic that is usually not discussed. This is money. Even in a job interview, it's hard to be honest about money. Employers usually hire people who are interested in the less mundane aspects of the job. And that is great. But let's be honest. We all need money. If you need to repay a loan, if you dream of visiting other countries, living in a good house in a decent area, the money issue is extremely important for you. This cannot be denied.

Money is a good example of the power of small incremental changes. The first small change is a change in the outlook on the situation. The principle is extremely simple. If you want to make a lot of money, do something that usually brings a lot of income.

I have been observing this pattern for many years. Talented and quick-witted people in finance and corporate law always become rich, or at least wealthy people. However, the income of many writers, anthropologists or actors with remarkable talents and intelligence often leaves much to be desired.

Ben Stein, American economist

This is very useful advice, especially if you are interested in fields such as banking, engineering, business consulting, or biotechnology. These are very lucrative industries, so jobs in them are better paid.

But what if you are passionate about something more creative and want to work by vocation, such as writing stories, doing anthropology, or acting, not to mention working for nonprofits or academia? Then, too, the great power of small changes will come to your rescue.

The result is made up of gradual savings, deposits and interest earned. Don't waste your time. By putting aside even a small portion of your monthly income and making deposits, you will accumulate a significant amount over time.

Get in shape

About 18 months ago, I attended a business event in Istanbul for the Spencer Stuart company I work for. We recruit people for leadership positions for many of the world's leading companies. It is through my work that I know so much about building a career and achieving success. Over the past 22 years, I have recruited over 600 top executives, including CEOs of companies like Twitter, Intel, Yahoo, Hulu, New York Times Company and MetLife, as well as directors of many well-known non-profit organizations such as Sesame Workshop.

In Istanbul, I stayed with the nice guy Kaan Okurer, head of our Turkish branch. Kaan looked much better than the last time we met. His body has acquired a noticeable relief.

I asked Kaan how he managed to achieve such amazing results. “If I say it, you won't believe it,” he replied. I begged for a long time, and in the end a colleague told me what was the secret of a great shape:

I take every opportunity to walk. But what helps me the most is one cool app that I was lucky enough to stumble upon. Now I use it all the time. It's called The 7 Minute Workout.

At first, I was rather skeptical about what I heard. What can a seven-minute workout do? Do not make me laugh! I grew up at a time when everyone believed in the principle "You can't catch a fish from a pond without labor." How can you achieve meaningful results in just seven minutes a day? As it turned out, you can. It's all about the power of small incremental changes.

In a short time, this workout has become extremely popular. Perhaps many of you already know about it or are already using this application. If not already, believe me, you should start. The complex really works and takes only seven minutes. Seven minutes is almost the same as five minutes. And five minutes is practically nothing.

You can't find an excuse to skip a workout like this. If you have an early flight, there is nothing stopping you from setting aside seven minutes to train in the morning. If the deadline is running low, you can use those seven minutes to take a break from work. If you are terribly tired and it is time for you to sleep, you can still afford to go to bed seven minutes later.

But don't think that everything is that simple. A workout that produces results cannot be easy. Especially at first. The set consists of 12 exercises (standing and jumping, regular squats and squats against the wall, lunges, push-ups, crunches and planks), which complement and enhance the effect of each other. Each exercise is done at full strength for 30 seconds, followed by a 10-second break.

You can do all this anywhere: in a small dorm room, in a hotel, or even in an office. No additional accessories required. A seven-minute workout in this mode is equivalent to a regular one-hour workout. And the application itself is very convenient.

A pleasant male or female voice tells you how to do a particular exercise correctly, and from time to time encourages you with approving phrases. The app also has dedicated alerts, a countdown and an activity calendar.

Learn from your mistakes

When I graduated from business school, there were many roads ahead of me. Thanks to my wonderful teachers who posed challenging tasks and helped me reach my potential, I had every chance of finding a good job.

Even before graduation, I decided that I would choose the best place from all available to me. I analyzed what I want from my future work and settled on three criteria that I considered the most important. At that time, it was prestige, good wages and the opportunity to maintain the lifestyle that I liked.

I wanted to be proud of the company and the position I held. I was determined to make a lot of money. Besides, I am fond of sports and I need a lot of free time, so I did not plan to work 80 hours a week.

And I found a job that was perfect for me. I got a job at the investment bank Goldman Sachs. Well, I analyzed everything very well, but in the end it turned out that I made a terrible mistake.

My three criteria were really bad. I figured it out pretty quickly. I regretted my choice four months after starting work. Research has shown that the single factor that has a decisive impact on how passionate and satisfied you are with your work has to do with how you treat your coworkers. It is very important that you like the people with whom you share your workplace so that they command your respect.

I was convinced of this from my own experience. This does not mean that I was unable to make friends with my colleagues. They were good guys. I just didn't share their values. I didn't want to be like most of them. My colleagues were interested in the stock market, investments, capital pooling issues. They communicated with clients and among themselves only about money and markets.

But it's not just people that matter. The goal is important. Working at Goldman, I had little idea of what I was doing there. As an investment advisor, I was rather weak. I realized that you need to do what you are really interested in, what you have the ability for. Yes, all this is obvious enough without my words, but you will be surprised how many people make the wrong decisions, forgetting about the most important things.

But if I had not made these mistakes, I would not have been able to come to these important conclusions and would not have found a place where I have been working for 22 years. It took me a while to get into Spencer Stuart, but remember that only small incremental changes can be made to achieve meaningful results.

Change something for the better every week

This is not all that I have learned during my time at Goldman Sachs. Among the bank's managers was Richard Menschel, a living Wall Street legend. He once shared with me "the best advice he could give":

At the end of each week, set aside a few minutes for yourself to assess what you did in seven days and what did not go as planned. Take one specific step each week to achieve what you never did before. Let it become your habit. You will be amazed at the results.

In fact, he was talking about the fact that, gradually changing something for the better, you can achieve extraordinary productivity. This is the power of small change.

Set the right goals

For many years I was sure that each of us absorbs the desire to be the best of the best with mother's milk. But a few years ago I realized that excellence is not at all as important as I thought. Yet the desire to be the best can be used to your advantage. If you are passionate about achieving something important to you, this is great. It is important to learn to choose the right goals.

To stay on track and see how far you have progressed, set specific goals for yourself, write them down, and track your progress. When setting goals, some don't want to go into details. Abstract language reduces the risk of failure, but is ineffective. It is very important to set goals that are measurable by specific indicators. This is the only way to see what you have achieved.

I was once lucky enough to interview three-time Olympic swimming champion Grant Hackett. When Grant was still a teenager, he hung a chart on the wall of his room with the achievements of the athletes who inspired him. It reflected the best results these swimmers achieved when they were 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 years old.

Based on this table, Grant tried to achieve the same indicators as his idols at his age. He said that it helped him focus his efforts on something specific and increase his motivation for self-improvement.

It is very important to set intermediate goals for yourself: acquire a certain skill, complete an important project, read a specific book.

Your ultimate goal is equally important. Talking about her, I am reminded of an interesting assignment I was given while studying at business school.

We had to write an essay about how we see our life 20 years later. It was a lot of fun to work on this essay, and reading it over the years is also educational. Therefore, I highly recommend that you have some fun and try to describe your possible future after a specific amount of time. I'm sure this will help you set the right goals for yourself and stay on track to achieve them.

Develop leadership skills

I was fortunate enough to work with some of the world's most prominent leaders: U2 vocalist Bono, Facebook board member Sheryl Sandberg, Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers. In fact, I became convinced that most leaders consider the success of their subordinates to be their success.

To be successful, you need to think less about yourself and your benefits, especially in the short term. Instead, devote yourself to making the people around you successful.

If you focus on the success of the people around you, then the best workers will be interested in your cause. And they will contribute to your personal success. Focusing on common goals will help you formulate assignments competently and attract the best people to work, and then - through cooperation and mutual support - achieve the best possible results.

All interaction between people is largely determined by one fundamental principle - the principle of reciprocity. All your energy and hard work for the benefit of other people will return to you in an increased form, because these people will devote their work to your success.

In other words, true leaders don't go over their heads to get things done. Subordinates themselves carry them to success.

This is not the fastest, but the most reliable way to achieve what you want. And the results multiply exponentially. You build a good reputation for yourself, which ultimately increases the number of opportunities that open up before you.

No one still knows if leadership is an innate quality, or if it can be developed. I believe that you can learn to be a leader. Of course, some people are naturally given charisma, which attracts others to them, even when they are still poking around in the sandbox. But sometimes people who are generously endowed with charismatic traits turn from the right path to the path of self-destruction. At the same time, many less visible personalities become leaders who inspire millions.

There are as many types of leadership as there are types of people. This is the whole point. For example, Mark Zuckerberg is purely introvert, but his name is at the highest positions in the lists of the most successful and popular people in the world. He has a great vision of what a social network should be. He gathered a wonderful team of specialists and was able to inspire them with lofty goals: to make it easier for people from different countries to find each other and communicate, and thereby change this world.

Mark's work has had a huge impact on the IT industry and consumer tastes. He created a successful business model based on information transparency, dedication and continuous self-improvement. This is what real leadership is.

Write letters to your children

In May 1990, my eldest son was born. Before I could blink an eye, he graduated from college in 2012. It was the same with my second son. Everyone around me told me that children grow up very quickly, but I had no idea how much.

I am sure that your parents have heard this phrase more than once. But when they were awake at night, trying to get you to bed or waiting for you to return from a party, all this fleetingness of time seemed far-fetched to them. And now they probably understand what their acquaintances were talking about. Time really flies by very quickly.

When my children were young, it was fashionable among young parents to film literally every step of a child. All the birthday celebrations, football matches and school plays of mom and dad were watched through the lenses of cameras. Of course, from time to time they watched these videos, but gradually they lost interest in them. Technology has changed, and video recordings are no longer of such value to all of us.

I decided to go the other way. When I had children, I started writing letters to them. I did it regularly: every time we celebrated something, and from time to time throughout the year. I didn’t tell my sons about it.

It was pretty easy to write these letters. It was like keeping a diary. I wrote about what my sons did, who they were friends with, what problems they faced, what they managed to achieve. In these letters, I also talked about important events taking place in the world, and shared tips that could be useful to my children in the future.

I decided that I would give the letters to the children when they graduated from college. Four years ago, I showed my eldest son these tapes. He was just shocked. These 330 pages of flashbacks cannot be compared to video recordings, they are priceless.

If you have children, start writing letters to them now. You cannot postpone this matter until later. But if you tackle it, the letters will become one of the most important small changes that will subsequently give an amazing result.

That's all. Use these tips, regularly make some positive changes in your life, and soon you will see how little things help us improve this world.