Exclusive Interview: Robin Sharma on His Morning Routine, Being a Dad and the Meaning of Success
“The smallest of actions is always better than the noblest of intentions.” – Robin Sharma
Today I am thrilled to be able to share with you this interview with one of my heroes, Robin Sharma.
Robin Sharma is one of the world’s top experts on leadership and personal success. He is the author of 10 major international bestsellers, including The Greatness Guide
If you enjoy the interview, be sure to visit Robin at his website robinsharma.com.
Pick The Brain: My first question relates to the life you were living prior to writing The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
Robin Sharma: like Julian Mantle in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
It wasn’t until I began to work on my inner life and know myself that my life changed. Success really does begin within. The size and quality of your outer life is only limited by the size and quality of your inner life. And life is a mirror – giving us not what we want but who we are. It took me years to get that.
PTB: Perhaps the single most important lesson I have learned from you is the value in waking early and, in particular, the idea of having a “Holy Hour”. May I ask you what you how you spend your Holy Hour each morning and the importance of this ritual in your life?
Robin: The Holy Hour, as you know, is simply 60 minutes at the beginning of your day that you devote to self-mastery and personal development. If your outer life is really a reflection of the quality of your inner life, then it’s a brilliant move to spend at least an hour a day working on yourself. This simple idea alone has helped so many of our clients from around the world get to world-class in business and in life.
During my Holy Hour, I journal, I read inspirational books, I review my goals and plans and I simply make the time to think. Because clarity precedes mastery and the more clear you can get on what you want to create in life, the more focused you will be in your daily behaviors. Every day can be a platform to get you closer to your mountaintop. And yet, too many people live life by accident.
PTB: I know the most important thing in the world to you is your two kids, Colby and Bianca. I am a father myself, and I am interested to hear any suggestions you having for maintaining an optimal work-life balance.
Robin: My two kids are my heroes. As I wrote in The Greatness Guide
With my kids, I know I only have a small window of opportunity before they get older – so I carve out time for them now. I’ve worked with too many CEOs who arrived at the mountaintop of success but got there alone. Family matters.
PTB: One of my favourite quotes which you introduced me to is: “the price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret”. I have used this quote a number of times in my articles, and it always gets a response. Do you have any specific advice for people who struggle with discipline?
Robin: To be more disciplined:
- Get up early for 30 days
- Surround yourself with excellent people
- Finish what your start
- Keep your promises
- Be punctual
- Set and realize small goals
- Get brilliant at visualization
I know you love to read whenever you get the chance. What was the last good book you read and why would you recommend it?
I re-read The Message of a Master
PTB: Robin, through my blog I come across a lot of people who want to change but don’t know where to start. What do you suggest people in this situation do? In particular, is there anything they can do today that can help put them on a new course?
The smallest of actions is always better than the noblest of intentions. High performers have a bias towards action. There’s great power in just starting. Taking a single step towards a goal/dream/result sets forces in play that create consequences. In my leadership programs I share an idea that has helped our clients like Microsoft, FedEx and Nike: “small daily improvements over time lead to stunning results.” Also remember that most of the things we fear never happen. So why let these hallucinations called fears keep us small in our lives.
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You can learn more about Robin Sharma by visiting robinsharma.com, one of the most popular leadership and personal success destinations on the Internet. You may also like to download Robin’s free audio program, “Extraordinary Leadership: 5 Best Practices to Lead the Field“.
The Other Side of Productivity: Coincidences, Synchronicity, and Serendipity
“We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many books, articles and blog posts have been written on the subject of productivity. Many of these contain great advice, including things such as: check your e-mail in bulk, and only twice a day; touch each paper that comes across your desk just once; set a strict limit on the amount of time you spend on social networking sites; have clearly defined goals; break your goals down into milestones and then into small, achievable steps; schedule those steps into your day; and so on. These are all logical, linear, and progressive steps that you can, and should, take to become more productive.
However, by putting so much emphasis on the linear aspects of productivity – that is, on things such as organization and time management – the non-linear, quantum leap aspects of productivity are being neglected. The other side of productivity involves synchronicity instead of decluttering, serendipity instead of creating processes, and coincidences instead of daily planners.
Coincidences
“Coincidence” is defined in Wikipedia as “the noteworthy alignment of two or more events or circumstances without obvious causal connection.” Swiss psychologist Carl Jung devoted a large part of his work to the study of “meaningful coincidences”, or synchronicity, and how seemingly chance occurrences can move our lives forward significantly. Sitting at a sidewalk café you overhear a conversation at the next table which you incorporate as a brilliant plot twist in the novel you’ve been struggling to finish for the past year; a book you pick up from the discount table at your neighborhood bookstore opens to a significant passage; a missed train starts a chain of events that changes the direction of your life; and so on.
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How to Overcome Apathy (If You Can Be Bothered…)
I write a lot about productivity. But productivity only matters if you have a reason to be productive. If you don’t have the motivation, then waking up early, setting up to-do lists and changing habits seems silly. When you feel apathetic, you might have a lot of extra time, and still end up procrastinating.
Recently, a reader asked me what to do about this problem. He wasn’t depressed, he was just bored. There was no motivation to do anything more than the bare minimum.
Apathy is a common problem. I’ve had certainly had motivational dry spells. While I don’t think there is an instant cure to this problem, I’ve noticed that apathy is usually caused by one of two problems:
- You don’t have any goals.
- You’re working on the wrong goals
Setting Goals to Combat Apathy
Apathy sets in when you forget what you want. Finding motivation needs to start by focusing on your desires. Not the goals other people have pushed on you. Not the goals you think are reasonable or practical. Not the goals you feel you should have. But the goals that fill you with enthusiasm.
If I find myself starting to slip into apathy, I try to reconnect with what I want. I get out a piece of paper and write out all the things I’d like to do, be or accomplish. These can be little goals or huge, unrealistic dreams that might never be finished. The point of this exercise isn’t to be reasonable. It’s to focus you back on the things that drive you.
If you write down ideas on a piece of paper, but you don’t feel inspired, you’re doing it wrong. Sometimes it takes a few minutes of writing out mild interests before you break into your true desires.
When you’re finished the brainstorm, you might not have a lot of usable ideas. Many of your dreams might seem completely out of reach or highly improbable. That’s okay. But at least you have a starting point. You now have a roadmap of the things that fill you with motivation.
Usually, at this point, it’s a good idea to pick one or two of the idea you’ve written down and set a goal around it. The next step is to write it down, make a plan and set a deadline. Those last steps are helpful, but they aren’t as important as having a goal that motivates you. The motivation and working on a goal are far more valuable than actually reaching it. Read the Rest of This Article »
The Email Habits That Make People Hate You
Email is a great tool if used properly. Unfortunately, that’s a big “if”. I’ve written this list to compile what I feel are the worst misuses of email. Hopefully you aren’t an offender, but if you are, consider yourself warned. I won’t be coming after you, but some of your friends might.
Violation #1 – Not Responding to Emails that Need Replies
If I ask for a response, give me a response! If I don’t get a reply back to my email, even if you are just writing to say you can’t help me, I’ll think my message wasn’t read at all. With overzealous spam filters and email gremlins, it isn’t uncommon for mail to hit the trash before it is read.
I could never understand people who commit this crime, but some plausible reasons (but not excuses) for not replying to obvious requests include:
- Don’t have the time.
- Can’t help/don’t know the answer.
- Don’t know the answer or have the information yet.
The first is a case of laziness. It takes 15 seconds to write a reply to an email, even if it just states that you got their message but can’t reply. Letting the person know you don’t have time to reply is better than ignoring them entirely.
With the second case and third cases you should still send an email, even if you can’t give a meaningful response. Just a short note to let them know that you read their message. If you can’t answer, tell them. It will save the wait and let that person ask someone else. If you can’t answer now, give an estimated time when you might be able to reply.
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10 Excellent Self Improvement Podcasts
Recently I discovered some excellent new self improvement podcasts, and in doing so I was reminded just how beneficial podcasts have been my development. Apart from the interesting and insightful content they can contain, podcasts are a perfect way to work in multiple positives. That is, they give me the opportunity to feed my brain with self improvement material while commuting to work, going for a walk, working out or a number of other activities.
The following is a list of my 10 favorite self improvement podcasts (in alphabetical order). It includes some old favorites (Steve Pavlina and Robin Sharma), as well as the new discoveries that prompted this article (Genius Types and We The Change). Enjoy… Read the Rest of This Article »
The Secret to Fantastic Leadership (note: It’s got nothing to do with you)
After a 10-year study of over 24,000 employees across multinational corporations, our team came to a startling conclusion about leadership: the more you develop yourself as a leader, the less of a leader you are.
How could this be? We ourselves were dumbfounded when we asked the leaders of Fortune 500 companies for the key to their success. They each had the same answer: “Don’t ask me. I didn’t do anything!”
Finally, however, the answer became very clear: the leader does not shape the organization. It’s the culture.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast, any day of the week. So the successful leaders were the ones who stopped focusing on themselves, and created a world class culture. This made their leadership appear “effortless” to both them and everyone around them because they leveraged the strength of the entire group, or as we say, “tribe.”
This leads to a very important finding: if you are empowering yourself instead of your tribe, you are hurting your company.
So it doesn’t matter how many books you read, it doesn’t matter how much training you’ve had, it doesn’t even matter if you are strong at execution. You could be checking off to-do’s left and right with efficiency that would make David Allen cry, and yet still you would not create a thriving organization.
Tribal Culture
We now know the key to having a world class organization is to develop a world class culture. But what is culture exactly? And where can it be seen?
A better question is actually where can culture be heard, because culture lives in language. If you think about it, most of our work is made up of communication…emails, meetings, documents, proposals, instructions… they all live in the domain of language.
After 10 years of study we realized there are 5 stages of language that determine the culture of the tribe:
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How to Remove Productivity Bottlenecks
One of the most effective ways to get more done is to find and eliminate productivity bottlenecks. What do I mean by bottlenecks? These are simply the limiting steps in a process. If it takes you ten minutes to drive to your office, but an hour to find parking, then finding parking is a bottleneck in trying to get to work. Bottlenecks destroy your productivity and they might be hiding in your schedule without you realizing it.
Why is Eliminating Bottlenecks Critical?
Bottlenecks are the perfect example of a small change that can have a huge impact on your productivity. If an activity takes four hours, but three and a half are spent on just one step, speeding up that step could make you 7-8x more productive. If something that normally takes an entire day could be finished in an hour, wouldn’t you want to know how?
What Causes Productivity Bottlenecks?
There are a lot of ways you can get caught in a bottleneck. Here are just a few of the possible causes:
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10 Reasons to Work Out That Have Nothing to Do With a Sexy Bod
The greatest challenge in developing a permanent exercise habit is finding motivation that lasts. It’s easy to get to the gym when you’re preparing for that big beach vacation or want to look great for your high school reunion. But what about the rest of the time?
For much of my life I followed a pretty consistent pattern:
- Get a bit fat.
- Start to hate the way I look.
- Hit the gym with a vengeance for a few weeks.
- Start to look noticeably better.
- Smugly enjoy my new found vanity.
- Lose motivation and stop working out for a few weeks.
- Repeat from beginning.
Vanity, it turns out, isn’t a great longterm motivator for most people. It wasn’t until I associated exercise with rewards beyond physical appearance that I was able to get myself to the gym 5-6 times a week without any lapses.
To help you bring consistency and enthusiasm to your exercise schedule, here are some powerful reasons to work out that have nothing to do with looking good. Read the Rest of This Article »
Don’t Let A Reliance on Email Kill Your Communication
Scott Young, a frequent contributor to PickTheBrain, has a great post up on a his personal blog that deals with an issue I’ve been facing recently.
Email, for many purposes, is a terrible form of communication. Scott’s main reasons:
- Email is One-to-One. Although you can use Reply to All and mailing lists, email works best between two people. This means group conversations are difficult to continue.
- Email is Time Delayed. Conversations work best when there is a rapid flow of feedback. If your messages are hours or days apart, this makes chatting difficult.
- Email is Written. While there are written mediums of communication that work well for chatting, it is never as good as human speech. Text removes the tonality, body language and subtle cues that make a conversation interesting.
- Email is Bloated. People already get too many emails. Adding to that pile lengthy conversations means your messages will get ignored or skimmed.
I couldn’t agree more. We tend to rely on email because it’s convenient and universal, but if you aren’t careful it can ruin your communications. There are just so many opportunities for confusion and, in terms of building relationships, it’s terribly inadequate.
Much of my new job involves forming partnerships with people I’ve never met in person. I’ve found email is a good way to initiate contact, but once a conversation starts it’s a bad medium.
Something as simple as a 5 minute phone call (or even an IM conversation) is vastly more effective for building trust and rapport.
So if you aren’t getting the results you want from your email dialogue, try something else! And go read the full post on Scott’s blog, he recommends some great alternatives.
[Don't Use Email for Conversations]
Productivity in a Hostile Environment
Do your friends, spouse or significant other think interest in productivity is silly, pointless or a waste of time? Then you need help being productive in a hostile environment.
The corner of the internet occupied by personal productivity blogs and resources is quite a little community. But it’s sometimes easy to forget that outside the community there’s a widespread lack of understanding as to what it’s all about. Many are prone to laugh and scoff at the whole concept.
For example, my partner can’t understand how I can possibly want to spend time reading blogs in the niche. Common questions I get are along the lines of “why don’t you spend less time reading about productivity and more time being productive?” and “did you do the washing up or were you too busy being productive?”
Maybe it’s just me, but I sometimes have a hard time getting across that I spend time both reading about and doing, that learning about productivity is both a means to a more productive end and an enjoyable activity in its own right.
I realized I was clearly losing the battle for hearts and minds and I fear others may be too. So I’ve come up with five tactics to make easier the pursuit and practice of productivity in a hostile environment:
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