The Secret Formula To Think Ahead Of Time
By: Farwin Zackeriya
Tags: Lifestyle, Thinking Outside The Box, Positive Thinking, Good Habits, Goodreads

The Secret Formula To Think Ahead Of Time

Five Ways of Thinking In Advance Can Increase Your Productivity

Photo by Nicole De Khors from Burst

Who doesn’t want to pursue their dream career, dream house, dream holiday destinations in extraordinary cruises and what not? Everyone has their own goals, targets, desires according to their current status or based upon their immediate influences. Let’s say you have a neighbour who is a senior manager in a reputable company earning six figures each month. His house, his brand of car, his family lifestyle and even the way he treats his neighbours are much different from an average person. Even if we set aside personality characteristics, money and status can significantly influence a person’s behaviour ultimately.

Mind your mind. Think of distinctive footprints. Insofar as all things move forward and not backward, avoid retrogressive thinking, imprison negative thoughts, build a strong wall against negativity , be optimistic enough to deduce the optimisms in pessimism and think ahead of time. Understand the time you have and know what to do with the time, for time can loose it essence with time. If you ignore the real reasons why you wake up each day, you ignore the real reason why you continue to live each day. Life is just once so take the chance and mind your mind – Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

These days everyone aware of social media and influencers. They are ordinary people like us, and they share and influence thousands of people across the world. Following the footsteps of a famous international actor and purchasing branded stuff they advertise is not practical for the majority of the population. Meanwhile, a mother who is passionate about sharing her experience or a local girl who transformed from a few bulks to a slim figure has a different way of influencing the majority of people. These forms of influencers convert retail sales to skyrockets, but how is this possible? The answer is “Think Different”.

Let me tell you another example if an average income person visits a branded product shop would hesitate to spend an extra hundred dollars for a product which may really be heavier in quality but if the same person goes to the usual retails, he may end up buying products including non-essential products costing extra hundred dollars without any hesitations. This is very ironic. Why do you think this happens? The answer is that the retailers know an average person’s mindset better. It’s all about understanding how an ordinary person would think.

There are a few secret ingredients to create the best formula for you to think differently, think ahead of time.

1. The First Step Towards Change is Awareness

Always try to understand your immediate circumstances. Such as, try to understand what’s happening in your life, people around you, current politics, latest inventions, updates in technological and financial fields. We always focus on what is appealing to us and looking forward to hearing the latest updates. It could be the news of iPhone releasing or new PS5 updates people utterly go craze over new arrivals. Apart from that, we also need to pay attention to overall things happening around the world. Newspapers, Magazines, social media, news channels and subscription of certain websites are also some good sources to feed your knowledge. Awareness can ultimately make you think out of the box.

2. Pay Attention To What You Need To Change In Yourself And Track The Action Taken

List down the skills that you need the most related to your studies or career. Such as people skills, public speaking skills, technical skills, building networking skills or analytical skills that are related to you to polish. Then rate yourself out of ten and start evaluating which skills you need to pay more attention to improve. Afterwards, take note or write down the actions you have taken each day. Precisely, no need to spend hours to learn many new skills, but continuous practice over a determined period helps to master in any skills.

For example, if you want to improve your public speaking skills, you can start practising every day for five minutes in front of your mirror. Continuous practising will gradually improve your self-confidence and posture. The same theory applies to improve any skills in your life. Thus, never underestimate the time you spend, although that it may take less than five minutes from your day.

3. Understand The Power Of Consistency

Regular events in your life become habits, continuous habits over time becomes lifestyle or culture. Therefore, pay careful attention to your daily activities. Try to eliminate undesired practices in your day by replacing unique values. For example, If you are a less active person, start walking just 15–30 minutes a day. If you are a person couldn’t leave home for a morning walk, then try to walk indoors or try alternative yoga practices instead. However, maintaining continuous work is necessary for the next couple of weeks. Once you cross four to six weeks of regular activities, it will gradually become your habit. After twelve weeks, you would feel less active if you miss one day of your few minutes walking or exercise. Therefore, list down what activities can add to your daily activities which consume at least ten or more minutes and make your action speak louder than your words.

4. Add Value To Yourself

What is the connection between adding values to our life and thinking ahead of time? Yes, it is a good question. The right mind can grasp the idea of think out of the box and also can think ahead of time. Thinking ahead of time is not as simple as we state because our mind usually occupies with current affairs and problems in our life. Sometimes even we struggle to think of a solution for a common problem that we face abruptly. Therefore, constant cleaning and replacing with positive thoughts to the brain is utmost important.

There are plenty of ways to replenish your mind with good vibes. Such as making a habit of reading two pages of good books including motivational books and biographies, practising yoga, thirty minutes-walk, listening to motivational audios, gardening (herbs, flowers, plants which can bear fruits, vegetables) and many as per choice. These actions can sound a bit old school but in the fast-paced and technological world, providing relaxation to eye and soul is crucial. Adding value-driven activities to your daily habits can eventually eliminate negative thinking from your brain and nourish your soul with all positive vibes.

5. Develop Active listening

Majority of the people love to chat even the quiet people become comfortable to communicate when they find a familiar friend. But how much do we actually listen to what other party speaks? Yes, we used to grasp what we want to know, or sometimes our thoughts wander around without any listening. Developing your listening skills are crucial to establish a secure relationship with either career-related, family or friendship. There are a number of benefits in developing your active listening skills. Such as expressing attention, building trust, functioning rapport and learning from others experiences. By developing active-listening skills, we can expand our knowledge and improve emotional intelligence. Furthermore, these earned experiences eventually lead us to think ahead of time and think much smarter than the people around us.

The formula for success isn’t always attaining an expert genius or role model that you can receive advice. However, it is a simple practice to upgrade your self every day by a small percentage. Well-nourished mental health and the active physical body are the foundation to achieve anything extraordinary. On the other hand, a brain with all negative perspectives and abrupt active-lifestyle eventually leads to laziness and a weak-mind. Thus, don’t delay to execute small positive changes in your lifestyle by supplementing constructive values. Hence, think differently and think ahead of time to lead a valuable life.