• Eliminate ALL distractions – Remove anything that can distract you.  They can be your family’s photo.  Another document that is pending your review.  Your mobile phone or Blackberry device.  Your To-do list.  Anything that can shift your attention!
• Get away from ALL distractions – If you can’t eliminate ALL distractions, then you remove yourself from the distractions.  That is, go to a place that does not have distractions.  Say a quiet room or whatever place that you can focus your 100% attention to the material.
• Find out the purpose of reading the material – This helps you align what is expected of the document.  You want to also know the things you are getting out of the document.  By finding the purpose of reading the material, it makes the reading more purposeful and for you to be more ready to digest the content.
• Scan the content page and entire material first – Often we nose-dive into the material straight away.  This is counter productive.  Scanning the content page allows you to know the things that are being discussed in the material.  While scanning the entire material does almost the same thing, it also helps you get in-tune faster when you are really into reading it.

Now, we’ve got everything ready for speed reading.  How can speed read with maximum efficiency?

• Scan the paragraphs (again) – Scan the paragraphs to catch the key points.  Usually it’s in the first two sentences of the paragraphs.  You can skip the examples in the material if you understand it fully too.
• Read with a finger – Point at the statement that you are currently reading.  It puts your eye and attention focus on that statement.
• Read key words – About 40 to 60 percent of the text are useless English.  Get the important messages out from the material unless your focus is about understanding the type of language and cliché used in the material.  Else it’s just a waste of time.

• Quit talking to yourself – Yes.  Some of us do that (if not most of us).  We talk to ourselves repeating internally our mind of what we read.  You are not processing the content but just repeating it verbally internally.  This is slow as talking is much slower than absorbing.  Therefore, quit the talking and spend the attention on acquiring more information from the material.
• Take a break – Yes, take a break when you are tired.  Do not strain the eye.  You won’t absorb anything when you, the eye or mind is tired.  You are just reading for the sake of reading.
• Re-write your understanding – Use something like a Mind Map or maybe just listing down whatever you have absorbed in the content.  This will allow you to re-ask what you have absorbed.

There are other ways that used by various people for maximizing speed reading and it works differently with different individuals.  However, we hope the tips for speed reading is useful to you.  What are the other methods that you use to increase the speed of reading?

Do not Bow to Challenges!

The first and foremost, do not bow to the difficulties of the challenge.   Think, a challenge would not be called a problem/challenge if there isn’t any difficulty with it.  If we withdraw ourselves from facing a challenge, and admit that we will never overcome the challenge, then we will never be able to achieve any success in our life.

Challenges can be seen like a wall. This wall separates the people that want to achieve success and those that do not want to achieve success.  If you allow yourself to stop in front of the problem/challenge, then most likely you are not those that have the desire to succeed in life.  In fact, you should consistently tell yourself, by taking up challenges, you are actually keen to succeed in your life.  The challenge is merely a door that you have to walk through.  Those that fear walking through it will never be able to find success.

Get Back Your Life Goals

In our modern age, we tend to seek a lifestyle that is far necessary of what a normal human being should.  The pursuit of such life style makes the world we live in more demanding and complex. Behind the pursue, when we achieve the type of lifestyle, we become complacent with what we have.  Our desire to excel slowly fades away in time when we always want to go the easy way out.

Sometimes, we need to look back at where we started off.  There are people who left their high-paying job in exchange for a simple business.  Or even join volunteering groups.  By looking back at ourselves, we find things that are close and true to ourselves.  We find new challenges in us and the motivation to push ourselves to excel.

Transform Risk into Motivation!

When the tough gets going, the rewards are higher.  No pain no gain.  These are unarguable truth.   We frequently get disappointed after a failure.  More than often, we are afraid to bear the consequences of failure.

Everything there is an associated risk.  And we know, risk and rewards come together in a package.  If you choose to take low-risk approach, your rewards will be not as fantastic.  You might as well continue with whatever you feel comfortable with.  However, when you take a high-risk approach, your rewards can be of limitless.  View risks as forces of motivation instead of fearing them.  We are sure that by doing sufficient preparation and homework, you will gain confidence in taking up the challenges!

1. Get in tune with things such as reading or listening that motivates you every single day. Don’t allow a single day to pass without injecting external motivation in your daily life.
2. Keep track of your daily progress in a journal and carry it wherever you go.  Record the changes.  Observe if you are abiding to your daily schedule.  It may seem like a chore but the main objective is to monitor your daily progress and if it eventually leads to your life/career goal.
3. Set goals and make changes to the goals accordingly.  Goals will change overtime.  Don’t worry about making goals that right now feel unattainable or baseless. The hardest part of making big goals is starting.  Break goals into smaller achievable ones.  In this way, you won’t feel overwhelmed and you gain a sense of achievement whenever you reach the smaller ones.
4. Keep track of every person you meet.  Record the name and the details of the conversation you had with them.  In this way, you never miss out any new friends and opportunities.  It will come in handy in future as your network grows.
5. Start investments.   Let your money grow for you at the same time where you progress in your career.  However, do let one of them reduce the productivity of the other.
6. Begin looking for opportunities to build passive income (money that you don’t have to work for once you’ve done the initial work).  Note down all the ideas you have for passive income.  The most important thing you can do is be aware of the ideas you already have.   You want to retire early right?
7. Sleep at your optimal level.  Do not waste your time sleeping your life.  Just imagine how much you can achieve with all the time wasted when you are over sleeping. However, do not get yourself burnout by depriving yourself from your necessary rest hours.  It will be counter-productive if you push yourself over the limits.
8. Look for opportunities to serve. Others will be wiling to help you when you are willing to help others too.  You will find more happiness and peace when you help people.  Which at times more valuable than real cash.
9. Stop being a victim. Focus on what YOU can DO, and DO IT. Stop assigning blame and don’t look for excuses. Take responsibility of your decision.  No point going on in a downward spiral of self-blame.  Divert the negative energy towards positive growth!

Yes, it’s true.  With the Me factor alone, we are comfortable with any situation by being aware of ourselves.  We know what we can control and what we can’t.  With the You factor, we are able to understand someone else’s need and thoughts.  We stand a higher chance of negotiation and influence with the other party.  With the final factor, Situation factor, we complete the equation of personal productivity with the awareness of situational demands and boundaries.  Awareness of the Situation factor allows seeing what is really needed at that point of time and context.  Thus guiding us to take the correct action and gain confidence.  Remember, awareness is always the fundamental block of confidence!

We can consider Me factor as the first layer, You factor as the second layer and Situation factor as the third layer.  Each additional layer allows us to achieve a higher personal productivity, which inherently ties to individual confidence.  We must agree that each situation is different with different objectives and history.  Furthermore, there are different demands and boundaries in different situations.  We won’t be able to use the same techniques to boost confidence and personal productivity.

How do we boost confidence and personal productivity? We want to know as much as possible of the situation.  Let’s take the presentation as an example.  What are we presenting?  Why are we presenting? What’s the objective of this presentation?  What’s the key message you want to drive the point across?  Who are we presenting to? Where will the presentation be?  What do you want to be in the slides?  Are you sufficiently prepared for FAQ?  Do you need additional experts to be in the presentation to take questions?

Having asked the questions, you have built an awareness of the situation (Situation factor).  You know what to expect in the situation.  Now you address each question on the situation.  Which are the ones that you can control (Me factor)? – Key message, content of slides, FAQ and additional experts.  What are the things that you can influence (You factor)?  — Key message, management and additional experts.  Which areas are still not addressed? – You identified the missing gaps and fill them accordingly.  Your confidence eventually builds up in handling the situation.

What’s next?  You want to be well-prepared for the presentation. A “well-prepared” presentation is the position you want to be in before the situation arises.  Essentially, you want to enter into a position that is advantageous to you and does not jeopardize you in anyway.  By doing necessary preparation of the presentation, you are entering a valid position for the situation.  With everything addressed (at your best knowledge), you will feel comfortable and confident for the situation.

In summary, lack of confidence in a situation is attributed to the lack of awareness of the Situation factor.  By understanding the Situational factor, with the assistance of awareness of the Me and You factor, you are able to boost a higher level of confidence in handling them.  Re-look our presentation example.  An understanding of the presentation needs, demands, scope and context allows the presenter to be more prepared for it – essentially the confidence level for presentation.  Keep in mind that confidence is about awareness.  We hope you will develop a higher sense of awareness, thus boosting the confidence in handling situations.

Having no confidence to approach your boss can be attributed to the lack of awareness of the You factor.  Remember, personal productivity is the equation of the Me, You and Situation factor.  Personal productivity requires confidence of one self and handling of situations.  You’ve gotten your Me factor right.  Now you’ve got to work on awareness of the You factor.

All of us have needs.  Marslow Hierarchy of Need tends to explain at the fundamental level, what a human being would desire (need) to have.  He proposed that all of us have needs of different level, in particular, physiological, safety, love/belong, esteem and self-actualization at the top.    That may be too abstract for us now.  Let’s bring the context closer to us.  Your boss may be thinking of his target, such as the next promotion or hitting company sales.  Maybe he is concerned with the timely delivery of the piece of work.   Or it could be even out of work concerns, such as if he can leave the office on the dot to catch a dinner with his family on time or he just wants a peaceful holiday without phone calls from the office.  Do you feel more “closer” after understanding him more?

Now think.  You can’t hide from your boss everyday.  You need to consult him for advice.  You need his approval.  You need to meet up with him to discuss your career development.  Career development equals promotion!  (A discussion about your personal career development shows your interest to work for him)  Are you saying you are going to forsake your chance of promotion?  Every little day that you “expose” yourself to the boss, you stand a higher chance of promotion than the others.  So you see, it’s impossible for you not to see your boss.  Not even using the reason of unconfident meeting him.

So, what now?  Bridge the gap between you and your boss.  Remember, he is also a human being.  He has to eat, drink and sleep.  He too has needs to address.  Find out what he REALLY wants.  Is it his promotion or a less problematic holiday?  At the task level, find out what he wants to achieve.  Is it a dateline or a political agenda he is driving through the completion of the task?  Also, find out how he think, what is he’s mental model like?  Is there some form of working style that he is particular with?  Are there things that he doesn’t like to see?    With a little bit self-questioning and observation of your boss, you’ve got the You factor answered.

After you have found out what he really wants, you get down to the managing process.  Your personal awareness of the Me factor will come in handy as it complements the You factor.  With the Me and You factor, you are more accustomed to handling your boss.   You do not feel uneasy approaching him.  Now, confidence is regained when working with him as you now how to manage his expectations.

Confidence can be lost in a variety of ways.  It can be after a series of failures at work, or consistent lectures from an un-motivating and demanding boss.   Setbacks after setbacks definitely will bring the even a strong man down with doubts of your abilities.  You start to loose touch from your personal awareness of your abilities.  You start to question your abilities.  You begin to be unaware of what you can achieve.  You do not know what to deliver.  You begin to drift into “I do not know what I can do”.  If you continue to drift, you eventually end up hopeless and loosing your self-worth, falling into the combination of “I do not know what I can do” and “I do not know what I cannot do”.

On the opposite end, a confident you would have know what to do.  You know what your abilities are.  You know you can achieve.  You do not cast doubts on yourself.  You deliver results.  Essentially, you would have belonged to the “I know what I can do” and “I know what I cannot do”, “I know what I can do” and “I do not know what I cannot do”.  This is where you want to be again.

So now, throw the despair feelings aside.   To regain your confidence back, you’ve got to move yourself back to the correct quadrant, the confident combinations.  You’ve got to move yourself away from “I do not know what I can do” and “I do not know what I cannot do” to “I know what I can do” and “I know what I cannot do” combination.  You’ve got to re-look at the Me factor in yourself.  Re-assess all your abilities.  Ask someone else for their opinion on you.  They may have a different view of your abilities.  Do you have the qualities that are useful in the given situation where you failed?  Was it a direct fit in that given situation?  Think Situation factor.  It may not be always your fault.    In this way, when you work from the inner self of personal awareness, you will realize your self-worth.  Remember, self-worth leads to confidence.

Confidence is all about knowing yourself and what you can do.  Confidence is your level of self-worth and hope.  All these relates closely to personal awareness.  It is essential that it served as a foundation block for you to regain confidence.  Do not despair that you are loosing confidence.  The answer is that you have yet to find yourself, the personal awareness within.  Give ample amount of time for yourself to discover the person within.  Eventually, you will see the light at the end of the tunnel.