Top 3 habits that helps succeeding at fast-paced environment

Success has a completely different meaning for all of us, but there is a single way of succeeding- which is pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone and developing a self-discipline that helps you achieving your goals. Here are top 3 Habits that helps to become and remain successful in fast-paced environments:

Habit 1: Be a continuous learner

Let’s start with asking,

"how many hours each week do I spend on learning new skills, studying case studies or recent updates in my own expertise"?

It might be difficult to spare some time for learning in the middle of dynamic workday, but if you want to gain continuous perspective, knowledge and competitive edge, you need to improve yourself everyday- this is a "must-have" step.

Here are a few tips to help with your professional development:

1.Shift your overall mindset to a Learner mode when listening or talking to others

Ask yourself “What’s new I may learn from that person?”

Become comfortable hanging out in the silence. If you talk more than you listen, you miss the chance to learn another point of view or new information.

2. Build L&D (Learning & Development) to do list and do regular check ins on your progress.

One thing that helped me was building an L&D to do list in Trello. Whenever I come across useful posts or webinars, or I find courses I add to my list even I can’t consume it right away. That helps to have a structured and continuous tracker for my own development.

Try those, and let me know by dropping me a comment below how it went for you ;)

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Habit 2: Always remain in control, even when you fail

Let’s imagine that, your new product launch failed or you were caught between dozens of deadlines and you failed to deliver projects. Should be very overwhelming, right?

The good news is, it's totally ok to fail, but it is important how you manage failure.

If you lose control, feeling exhausted, demotivated or upset, you can possibly take immediate actions that don't align with your strategy or make even bigger mistakes.

One way of preventing this happening is to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why did I fail?

2. What’s my plan in addressing the failure?/How can I fix it now or in the next go?

3. What did I learn out of this failure?

4. How quickly did I share it with stakeholders?

Your stakeholders rely on you making smart decisions and always keep them in a loop, especially, when things go wrong. Therefore, inform them asap, if they hear it from someone else, it may hurt your relationship. You can visit my post- "How to make sure all of your Stakeholders are happy?" - to read more about stakeholder management.

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By trying and failing, you learn. Another great idea for an L&D list is noting down all the learnings you had from failures as a reminder or checklist for your future self.

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Habit 3: Observe and adapt

Your manager, teammates, job location, focus area, the way how you’re expected to do your job, company’s strategy - none of these are constant, they might always be a subject to change.

No matter what the change is you’re already one step ahead if you’re able to observe & adapt quickly.

However, being an early adopter doesn’t come naturally to everyone, nor can it be achieved overnight. Creating a culture of early adoption requires a change in the mindset.

Here are 2 tips that could help you when dealing with the change:

1. Try to predict what's the next with having early signals

Most of the time, changes don’t happen overnight. They are either announced earlier to let employees to transition or its core elements have already been mentioned a few times before.

If you pay closer attention to what your leaders say, what's their vision, what’s new on their agenda, then you may have an idea what’s coming next.

Therefore, it’s always important to attend high-level meetings such as company All Hands. Always, listen, take notes & analyze.

2. Make your peace with the change even if you don’t like it

The best way of adapting the change is to understand why the change is required. Let your employer explain their challenges, needs and the solutions. Try to empathise to see the value in the change they’re bringing and make your peace with it. The sooner you understand the reason behind the change, the faster you're able to adapt.