Five Random Things You Should Be Doing More Of

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To compliment yesterday’s post involving five things you shouldn’t do, here’s five things you’re not doing enough of, and you should be doing more.

5) Read different things. If the only places you get your news and information are the same places you’ve been going for the past year, it’s time to find some new spots. Check out Newsmap as a start, and go from there. Also find some new blogs that you’ve never checked out before. Essentially, find the opposite of what you’re used to reading, and go from there.

4) Start getting down and dirty with some stats. Fact is, we get tons and tons of stats from our social networks, and 99.9% of them we ignore. Start looking! Right now, go look at the number of followers you have. Then look again on Friday, and see if you notice a difference. Less? More? If you lost them, what did you do to bring that on? If you were retweeted, why? Something interesting? Funny? Learn your audience and you’ll know how to better talk with them. TweetStats is a great place to start, as is FriendorFollow.com.

3) Countless studies have shown that we focus better if we’re utilizing the tools that work the best for us. For me, that’s texting and email. For you, it might be a phone call. Start molding the people to whom you talk into your way of communicating – My outgoing voice mail message tells people NOT TO LEAVE ME A MESSAGE, but rather to text me or call me – They’ll have a much better chance of getting in touch with me that way. And it works – I get maybe one voice mail a month. I turn questions into answers much better if I’m typing – and as more people realize that about me, the more they realize that if they provide me the question in the right way, I’ll return the answer that much quicker. Everyone wins. Are you using the right tools for your job? If not, fix it.

2) Get a pro-bono client. I’m not taking anything away from the Benjamins we all must make – but seriously – take 5% of your time and give it to a pro-bono client. It’ll balance your chi, and besides, you never know who you’re going to meet who’s also doing the same thing – who can wind up being a new paying client. It’s happened to me more than once.

1) Get the hell out of your office. I get a lot of crap whenever I suggest this – “Oh, we all don’t work from home, we all can’t just leave our offices whenever we want.” I’m not suggesting you leave whenever you want. I have meetings almost every day that prevent me from working from Phuket, Thailand this week. But – There are times when I don’t. And there are times when YOU don’t. And your job is to show your boss, or the powers that be, that you’re trustable, you can work without someone watching over you, and you’ll be just as productive whether you’re on a beach, at a park, on a plane, or at your desk. Once you get them to let you, work even HARDER, and prove their fears unfounded. Then you’ll have the ability to do whatever you want. And that’s where the fun starts.

Did I miss any? Leave them below.

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