We know and understand that as a high achiever or a high performer you want to achieve your maximum potential. You constantly want to raise that bar. There are many factors in life where daily habits can shape and push you in becoming more successful than you ever realized you could be.

Here are 9 simple habits or tips which will help you become the high achiever you truly are.

Plan Ahead

Did you know that when you start working from a list, you increase your output by 25%! With a busy lifestyle and so many things ‘on tap’, it’s easy to just go with the flow rather than actually planing what you are doing.

Set yourself clear and meaningful goals that you know are actionable, on a daily basis, to see results and success in real-time. Planning the night before ready for the day ahead is always a good habit to get into which means you’re not wasting time in the morning working out what is important.

Delegate and delete

So you know what you’ve got on your agenda for the day (from your planning the night before) but you open your emails to a pile of non-urgent tasks. Get yourself into the routine of skimming through these and deleting anything that’s not important and delegating tasks that you know could be done by someone else. Even setting up a folder for tasks to be done at a later date which will then give you the time to focus on the jobs that you know need to be done that day. You don’t have to do everything yourself.

Complete the most important tasks first

You could look at this habit from both directions, some would say that to get the smaller tasks done first would leave you set for the bigger jobs. However how often do you find that those smaller tasks aren’t as small as you first thought? By completing the value-building tasks before anything else, means that you release the pressure of having to stay behind, or up late in order to finish them. Knowing they are complete gives you peace of mind, which in turn takes away stress or pressure on you. Less time-consuming tasks can be broken up and split between the rest of your time which is handy if you have a lot of commitments and need to be free at certain parts of the day.

Get some physical activity scheduled in

Exercise is not only good for keeping fit, but it’s great for stimulating your brain power by pumping more oxygen to the brain – a must for high achievers! Most successful people ensure that exercise is part of their daily routine.

Schedule this time into the diary or you may get carried away with other tasks. Try going for a walk or taking a class at the gym. You can fit this in whenever is convenient for your schedule – an early morning session or a evening after work – this habit will boost your self-esteem, your overall well-being and make you feel happier and more successful.

Focus on quality not quantity

Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is better than two doubles

Steve jobs

This goes without saying. Too many people focus on how much they can achieve and how much they can get through but actually the quality of a person’s focus and actions need to be so much more than a number.

When we look at this from a effectiveness perspective, think about reputation and networking, relationships and work quality. All of these require time and effort to make a success and if extra time isn’t put in to ensure the quality is right, the rest will fall down.

Set aside time each day for long-term goals

Setting aside time on a daily basis will ensure that your daily goals are in line with your long-term goals and vision. What you’re doing now will have an impact on the future and what you want to achieve. By paying attention to detail and keeping your focus aligned with what you know your long-term goals are, will help your success rate and keep you heading in the right direction.

If you’re simply trying to juggle everything at the same time, often it is easy to find a solution to something with a quick fix which actually is not beneficial to your goals long-term. Focus and re-align to see success.

Solve a problem, don’t just do the task at hand

An article from Entrepreneur talks about not just providing a service for the sake of it, but building a business on the need for that service – “The happiest and most successful people I know don’t just love what they do, they’re obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them.” We can take that on board and apply it to our daily habits. Instead of just completing a task, stop and think whether you have solved the problem. Is there more that could have been done to improve on what you have provided? Are you able to give a better result to that problem – by providing better quality of work and reputation?

Make daily affirmations

Affirmation is reprogramming the mind for success – crucial for high achievers. It will help you to eliminate the negative and help you to focus on the positive. Change the ‘I can’t’ to ‘I can’ and giving yourself confidence to achieve the dreams that you set out achieve. Writing these affirmations down so that you have something to refer to on a daily basis will give you a point of reference. It will also help you to see the successes that you have achieved when you go through any self-doubt, raising you up and inspiring you to carry on. Positive people are more likely to be successful.

Stay flexible

Being flexible enables you to do deal with change. In your professional as well as personal life, you will come across many things that don’t go quite as planned. Whether we like it or not, change is a fact of life and although there is much we can control, there are certain parts of business that we cannot. If you hold a flexible approach and are open to these obstacles and changes that arise, it will help you to see things clearly and to be able to get through them.

Flexibility also allows you to enjoy all aspects of life, at work and during personal times and when we step out of our comfort zones and try something new, it builds our character and increases our knowledge.

All of our life is but a mass of small habits – practical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual – that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.

William James

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This article was originally published on South Coast Social and has been adapted from there.