Although it’s true that most successful people spend more time working to achieve their goals than others, there are many people who work hard, but don’t accomplish the success they want. How come? What’s the big difference? Why would one hard worker succeed and another hard worker fail to accomplish their goal?

An even better question is how can someone who doesn’t work hard succeed? Is that possible? Can you work smarter, not harder and still enjoy the rewards of success?

I say “yes.” And here’s how.

People who succeed generally like, or even love, their work. Often they put more hours into accomplishing results and it doesn’t even feel like work. It feels like they’re doing what they really want to be doing. It feels like play.

So you begin being smarter by choosing “work” you enjoy. Choose something that gives you lots of satisfaction in return for your actions. Being happy doing what you're doing makes you more productive.

The next smart move is to base your time management on priorities. The better you get at choosing your priorities on a yearly, weekly, daily basis, the smarter you will be and the faster you can produce results.

We all know people who constantly spin their wheels. They work hard and they’re very very busy, but they never seem to get anywhere. Sometimes these people even like their work, but they somehow just don’t seem to get much pay-off for all the effort they put into it. This problem is caused by poor time management and the lack of setting valid priorities.

How do you improve your ability to set good priorities? It takes practice. And, first of all, you must have clear goals and your goals must be prioritized. You do this by listing your goals in order of what’s most important to you. This is a constant process, because your priorities can change.

Once you have prioritized your goals, you must choose the actions you’re going to take to reach those goals. So the second step is to make a list of things to do. You’ll need to do this every week, every day and whenever you’re feeling confused about what to do next.

Step number three is to prioritize your actions. When you do this, keep the 80/20 rule in mind. The 80/20 rule shows you how, out of a list of ten actions, only approximately 20% (two out of ten) will be of major importance to accomplishing your goal. 80%, or eight of the ten things on your list, will only give you 20% of the value, whereas just 20%, or two things out of the list of ten, will provide a whopping 80% of the value.

Choosing priorities is essential to working smarter. Often your top priority actions will be the most confronting. So, if you neglect to prioritize your list, your tendency will be to avoid the most important actions you need to take in order to reach your goal. You naturally avoid these because they’re the most difficult. But that’s not smart. Avoiding your priority activities causes you to have to work harder and longer to achieve the results.

Like I said, choosing good priorities takes practice. So you’ll want to follow these three steps on a daily basis. Each time you do it, you’ll get better and better at the art of setting priorities. And setting good, clear priorities is the best way for you to become more successful faster. It’s the way to work smarter, not harder.

Katie Byrd
http://abundanceandwealth.bellaonline.com