Do you often procrastinate? Are you doing it now by reading this article? If yes – awesome, continue reading.

Most of us consider procrastination the biggest troublemaker and productivity killer. You see it as a vice, consequently, you try to overcome its effects, kill the procrastination beast and cheat with all the possible means.

But what if it’s not quite so? What if procrastination can virtually lead to productivity? Have you ever thought about this aspect? Many outstanding productive people, in fact, were chronic procrastinators. How did they manage to achieve success? What tips did successful people use to beat procrastination?

Here are five unusual tips from hard-core procrastinators that will help you boost your productivity level:

1. Victor Hugo: Lock away your clothes

The author of Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and many more tremendously famous novels was beating procrastination with the most extraordinary and radical means. One episode from his life is the most illustrative here.

Hugo started writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame quite close to the deadline – in the fall of 1830. While the deadline was in February 1831. His preparation was thorough, but he did not feel like writing. Thus, he did something that didn’t leave a choice – he got naked and locked away his clothes.

The aim of all that was to avoid temptations of going outside. Hugo had nothing to wear but a shawl. And for many months, this rag (as his wife claimed) was his daily uniform. Did it work? Absolutely. He finished the book weeks before the actual deadline.

2. Gerhard Richter: Create a crisis

Gerhard Richter, world known German artist and procrastinator, got millions with his paintings. For example, Abstrakis Bild was sold for $20,802,500 at Sotheby’s.  How did he manage to procrastinate and, at the same time, complete paintings of photos, abstracts, “blur” photo paintings, and many more works of art?

It’s striking that he actually wastes time on garden and not on his paintings. In one of the interviews, Richter described his daily routines:  “I could spend my life arranging things. Weeks go by, and I don’t paint until finally I can’t stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don’t want to talk about it, because I don’t want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself.

It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.” Thus, his secret strategy to become more productive is a simple crisis.

“Chance determines our lives in important ways.” – Gerhard Richter

3. Bill Clinton: Take criticism seriously, not personally

The 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton, was described as a “chronic procrastinator” by Time magazine. Could you believe that a two-time Grammy winner may be addicted to postponing? Clinton had weeks or sometimes months to make comments on the drafts of his speeches, but, eventfully, it all ended with cut-and-paste in the end.

Even his Vice President Al Gore called Clinton “punctually challenged”. However, despite all the criticism, he managed to never give up. The key secret to productivity is the way you perceive criticism, according to Bill Clinton. If you take it too personally, you won’t be able to resist the feeling of deficiency that finally leads to the inferiority complex. Therefore, keep your cool when you are criticized. Then, you have more chances to stay productive.

4. Franz Kafka: Try to wake up the night productivity

The Czech writer worked as an insurance clerk and it was the time to existential thinking. The novelist though didn’t put his ideas into action. After Kafka had been promoted, he had more time and procrastination infected him for good.

His routine day after work, as he mentioned it on one of his letters, looked like this: “Lunch till 3:30 … sleep until 7:30 … ten minutes of exercises, naked at the open window … an hour’s walk … then dinner with my family.” There is nothing about writing though. When did he actually write? Beginning from approximately 11 p.m. and continuing up to 6 a.m. Not the perfect system, for sure, but that’s was the most productive time for Kafka. It appears that he spent most of the daytime napping.

“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ’em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

5. Leonardo Da Vinci: Start several things at a time and make notes

An artist, mathematician, sculptor, writer, inventor, military engineer, Leonardo Da Vinci, is an outstanding figure in history. But despite the success he achieved, he was never focused on one thing at a time.

During his lifetime, he managed to complete only 20 paintings. The Virgin of the Rocks took him 13 years to put the final changes.  While his most illustrious work The Mona Lisa – as many as 16 years. The reason for that was his multi-tasking capacity. He was an incredibly broad-minded and all-round personality with so many genius plans. To improve a willpower, he had a rule book where he had more than 7,000 pages of notes.

His procrastination wasn’t already a secret for his benefactors. And some of them threatened him with bankruptcy in order to have his work done at last.

What if procrastination can be a way to extreme productivity and perfectionism? And still, you have structured procrastination as an option and a solution.

Would you use any of these tips to boost productivity flows? Comment below!

I started writing unprofessionally three years ago. Some would say my whole career is unprofessional and I’d agree. Imperfection is damn sexy though.

I began writing only because my mentor Joel Brown said I should and I stupidly said yes without knowing why. Now, of course, I’m crystal clear about why I write: it’s to inspire. I remember uploading articles to Addicted2Success.com and seeing no one like them. I remember thinking I was a failure.

In the early days, I was writing articles about entrepreneurs I had interviewed and I wasn’t that passionate about it. Every article felt like really hard work and it required an incredible amount of willpower. Everyone at the time was doing entrepreneur interviews and there was nothing special.

Then one day, I wrote an article for the fun of it that had nothing to do with anything. It was essentially a brain fart that I concocted after dinner, late one night. It took less than one hour to write and it was written with passion. The words came out of me without even trying.

Since that day, the words have continued to pour out of me in the same way. I get into a state of flow and then it happens. Words appear, people get inspired and we all have one big party that has been named “life.” From the day I wrote that article, thousands of people shared it and they still do today.

I didn’t stop

After my big moment on the internet going viral, everything stopped. The tumbleweed that drifted through the desert with an eerie silence continued. Everything calmed down and people stopped caring again.

I didn’t stop though because I found my writing therapeutical.

“My blog posts became like my own personal journey and it was a way for me to escape from the Alcatraz that was my head. This prison that lived inside my head kept telling me that no one cared and I’d never be successful.”

I decided to keep finding ways to break out of Alcatraz and check in to the Ritz Hotel that was me becoming a conscious, passionate, crazy online leader.

I stopped giving a damn

Over the next eighteen months, I kept writing every moment I got. No one paid attention but I did. I started paying attention to the shift that was happening inside of me. The leader that had always been stuck inside of me started to unleash.

The things that used to hold me back disappeared. I didn’t give two hoots about what anyone thought and I only cared about inspiring those who wanted to be inspired. I worked my butt off and started waking up at 4 am to post new blog articles. People couldn’t understand how I had the time to write working a full-time job.

The part they didn’t get was that because the words flowed out of me so easily, it didn’t take that long at all to write something of value. People watched me posting articles and thought I was crazy. They thought what I was doing was career suicide in the big bad world of corporate politics.

I never liked politics anyway, so I stuck my middle finger up at the way things were traditionally done. I decided to be a rebel writer and live my dream. I continued to make no money and people kept on questioning what I was doing.

I believed

A few people believed, but most didn’t. What stuck out like tomato sauce on a freshly dry cleaned white shirt was that I believed and that’s all that mattered. I saw something that no one else could see: my real potential versus my current success.

I had the motivation to continue on when no one cared because I believed I could change the world. I saw myself as someone who had the potential to serve millions of people online. I kept telling myself never to give up and I also spread the same message throughout everything I wrote.

“I thought my writing was going to save everybody else, but what it really did is save myself”

My writing saved me from living a life without meaning and it helped me discover who I really was. I saw the pattern between every goal I’d ever had: to inspire and evoke emotion from strangers.

This clarity fuelled me and I became relentless. I reached out to every blogger, leader and person that had done cool stuff that inspired me. Originally I thought they’d all ignore me: none of them did. See when you have energy and passion oozing out of you, people can’t say no. An unwavering belief in what you’re doing is all that matters.

The tipping point happened

I began to see a change when each day I started to get a message from a reader/fan. It started as one message per day, then two, then three. Now I get more messages of support every day than I have time to read. Success often doesn’t become a reality in a single moment.

Success is something that is hard to measure in the early days until one giant moment happens that everyone sees. The part no one sees is the many smaller moments that happened beforehand. The small successes that may not have looked like a textbook example of “success.”

That big day finally came

So the big day happened when an article I wrote went viral. This was the third time it had happened, although this time the success became permanent. All those years, when I thought no one was reading, people were. What had occurred was that they were too scared to show they were reading because my success was still largely unproven.

It was only after the big success moment that people felt it was okay to come out of the metaphorical closet and say they were inspired by what I was doing. All those nights spent locked away in my office being anti-social was worth it. All those cups of green tea, takeaway meals, indoor plants, and weird emails to myself with possible headlines for articles had meant something.

More publications reached out to me and pretty soon I wasn’t just writing for Addicted2Success; I was writing for the biggest sites on the entire internet. The ones where the editors get pitched one hundred times a day by people who want to do nothing more than self-promote and build a BS “personal brand.”

Before I knew it, I was getting offered book deals, business opportunities, podcast interviews and public speaking gigs. I took some but ignored most. I remembered what was important and the fact that unwavering focus had got me to where I was.

I knew I was ready for some opportunities and not for others like public speaking. The journey had begun, but I was far from the summit of the mountain of my dreams.

Nothing changed

Strangely, though, it was all one ginormous anti-climax moment. Nothing had changed. Even today nothing has changed. I still want to inspire people and I still like sharing stories. I still want to live with passion and I still want to create a meaning for my life that outlives me.

What has changed is that people have seen my success as something that’s happened recently – what total BS that is. It’s taken my entire existence to discover the meaning of my life, find a medium to share it on and go after it with relentless optimism.

What you didn’t see with my success

You didn’t see the person that existed before all of this. You didn’t see the selfish, rude, arrogant, brat who lived for material possessions and felt like he was entitled to success because he grew up in Australia, the land of the free. I can say those horrible things because I’m talking about myself. Thankfully that’s the opposite of who I am now.

You didn’t see the transformation that occurred after that one big rock bottom moment. When everything made no sense and I had to look inside of myself to crawl out of that black hole that had become my existence. You didn’t see me step out of the darkness and into the light.

All you saw was me in the light and assumed I had always been there shining away brightly, and living the good life that is passion and purpose. How wrong that lie is. How wrong the whole concept of overnight success is.

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net

Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist in residence at New York’s Hayden Planetarium is an unlikely role model for marketing excellence. Clearly, he knows how to get your attention. Even on the most complex or boring subjects, as evidenced by over 7.3 million twitter followers, sold out events, and multiple books that have been on the NY Times Bestseller list.

Here are 6 Marketing Tips You Can Learn from Neil deGrasse Tyson:

1. Understand your audience

It doesn’t matter if you are talking about sales, accounting or planets, what matters is that you understand your audience and what they care about. Think about it, if you make your topic relatable to them and what is important to them, you will succeed.

Create specific examples of what you are speaking about by relating it to what matters to your audience. If you are speaking to accountants about social media, make an analogy to their industry to make it more relatable.

Tell them social media was designed for accountants as it features lots of measurable data…likes, follower counts, reports, metrics, gross and net, so that you are speaking their language and it will sound familiar enough to keep their attention.  

Neil’s new book demonstrates his understanding of people and what makes them tick as evidenced by its title – “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry”. It’s really a statement on society today – we now want the key information in the shortest version possible.

2. Be passionate about your work, down to the smallest particle

People are attracted to those who are clearly passionate about their work. By sharing your excitement for your subject matter, you engage and inspire people, and they lean in to find out more. Excitement is contagious. Be passionate about your work and your topic, even when speaking about small details.

A graphic designer who can wax poetic about the loop of an ‘S’ in a specific font, comparing it to the Coney Island Cyclone will capture the attention of their audience, even if they can’t tell Comic Sans from Times New Roman.

“A passionate belief in your business and personal objectives can make all the difference between success and failure. If you aren’t proud of what you’re doing, why should anybody else be?” – Richard Branson

3. Express a sense of wonder about even the most minuscule and boring things

Along with being passionate about your subject matter, express a sense of wonder about any and every aspect of your work. Share your continued gratitude that you get to work in your incredible field, and get to share your knowledge with amazing people [the audience]. Being humble and appreciative is endearing.

As a digital marketer, I am still in awe that by having your email address, I can type a message on my computer and hit send knowing that it will land in your inbox within seconds, no matter where around the globe you are located, even without understanding how it works.

4. Use humor in everything

You may not may not remember much from marketing materials or a presentation, but I bet you will be able to recall a good joke or anecdote.

Humor is a great equalizer. It can break down barriers, get your attention, and turn even the most mundane subjects into more fun, interesting ones. Humor can also be memorable, so infuse your marketing with it where possible.

Insurance is a pretty dry subject; one that it is hard to get excited about. Both Geico and  Farmers Insurance recognize this and have created series of humorous ads to both entertain us, as well as display the need for, and range of their services. Take Farmer’s Swing Set Standoff, featuring a moose attacking swings, then crashing through their client’s windshield, all of which turns out to be covered by their insurance plan.

“Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.” – Langston Hughes

5. Break complex topics down into easily understood nuggets

I don’t know about you, but I can understand most topics if they are broken down into smaller chunks. With shorter attention spans, you can easily absorb smaller bits of information. It also helps with more complex or new topics, to chunk them down into multiple smaller components as well as comparing them to popular concepts or products, so they can be more easily understood. This helps you scan the information quickly, and process it better.

The technology sector is great at doing this. For example:  Getaround, The Airbnb for Cars, is a lot more elegant, instantly understood concept than describing a car rental market place where people rent you their car by the day, hour or week through a smartphone app.

6. Talk or write in clear and appealing sound bites

Want to get your message heard and shared with more people? Communicate in clear, short, and compelling sentences and phrases; this is beneficial in several ways. As mentioned, if you are like most people, you have a short attention span, so concise sentences are easily scanned when reading, or heard when spoken by a presenter.

The added benefit to this method is that you are creating tweet-worthy statements, that will most likely get shared, helping to increase your marketing reach and visibility.

“Houston we have a problem” and  “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” are great examples of concise and effective communication. Both soundbites convey information, context and place.  They are also very quotable, and tweetable.  So much is said, in so few [yet memorable] words.

Follow these six simple lessons, and you too, can be seen as having marketing superpowers.

How do you sell yourself? Let us know by commenting below!

There’s hardly a person in history that hasn’t seen failure in life. People fail in life and it hurts. It can cut them deep, leaving you with no one but your sorrows to wipe your wounds off. Usually, when we fail at something we can’t seem to see through the pain to find out why it happened.

However, failure is evolutionary – it helps us to grow, mature, and reach a deeper understanding of life as to what we want and why we want it. It is basically the real secret towards success.

Quite frankly, if you were to succeed in every endeavor, you’d become arrogant and a narcissist. Failure helps you to become a better person, expanding your mind while deepening our hearts. As much as it can hurt at times, without failure, it would be difficult to appreciate our successes.

If you have faced failure recently, it is okay. You need to believe in yourself and in the fact that failure isn’t the end of it all, it might be the right beginning. Of course, there are several ways to turn each failure into a success.

Here are 5 ways to turn your failure into success:

1. List the reasons you failed

Everyone has dreams and ambitions they want to see fulfilled when they’re striving for success. So when you fail, you need to see those reasons again. Have a look at them and think, “Do I still want this dream to be a reality”’, and if the answer is yes, do not give up. If you don’t have a strong enough reason why you need to succeed, failure will be likened to an atomic bomb, leveling your hopes and your dreams in its wake. However, when you have a strong reason, nothing will stand in your way.

2. Acknowledge your mistakes

A responsible individual will always own up to their mistakes, as it is important to acknowledge where you faltered. If you don’t own them, you can’t possibly redeem them in order to achieve success.

There’s no reason to hide the fact that you failed. Puffing your chest out and blaming others or your circumstances is a sad little charade that doesn’t last long. You don’t really have to apologize for the choices you’ve made, but you do need to recognize them as they are to avoid such choices in the future. We are product of the past but we don’t have to let our mistakes define us.

“Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.” – Dale Turner

3. Learn from your mistakes

When a person fails and tries to get over it, he may tend to ignore all the things he did that led to the failure. After reviewing your failure, acknowledge your mistakes and only then can you learn from them. As they say, “The only way to fail at failing is to learn nothing from the experience.”

This is good practice, as long as you don’t blame yourself pointlessly.  Don’t dismiss your failed experiments but learn from them. Write down and remember everything you know you could have done better because it will motivate you to improve the next time.

4. Consistency is key

Consistent action creates consistent results. You can try as hard as you want but strength doesn’t come from what you can do; rather doing the things you once thought you never could.

Whenever you let yourself fall down, you have to learn to dust yourself off, get up, and move forward. Repeat this process until you’re at the point where you wanted to see yourself. Consistency is highly undervalued yet what you do every day matters more than what you do every once in awhile. Always remember to “Try, try until you succeed.”

“Consistency for me is everything.” – Alexei Navalny

5. Don’t lose your confidence

Failure can shake anybody’s confidence. That’s completely human. But remember, confidence is your biggest asset in your daily routine which can lead you to improved mental well-being as well. Remind yourself that you have the strength to rely on and weaknesses to improve. Everybody falls down from time to time as long as they’re human. That doesn’t mean you can’t pick yourself up and run a marathon. Regaining your confidence after facing a devastating failure can be the strongest thing a person can do. If you can do that, you can do anything.

Sometimes failure keeps you stuck in your old ways and you need support to help get past your bad habits. For that matter, you need to find someone you can rely on for support. It could be a friend or a mentor or anyone who has experienced what you’re going through presently so they can point you in the right direction. Failure is the only way you can grow and evolve, because ultimately, failure is an opportunity to do better.

How do you get yourself back up after a failure? Let us know by commenting below!

Image courtesy of Twenty20.com

Do you often procrastinate? Are you doing it now by reading this article? If yes – awesome, continue reading.

Most of us consider procrastination the biggest troublemaker and productivity killer. You see it as a vice, consequently, you try to overcome its effects, kill the procrastination beast and cheat with all the possible means.

But what if it’s not quite so? What if procrastination can virtually lead to productivity? Have you ever thought about this aspect? Many outstanding productive people, in fact, were chronic procrastinators. How did they manage to achieve success? What tips did successful people use to beat procrastination?

Here are five unusual tips from hard-core procrastinators that will help you boost your productivity level:

1. Victor Hugo: Lock away your clothes

The author of Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and many more tremendously famous novels was beating procrastination with the most extraordinary and radical means. One episode from his life is the most illustrative here.

Hugo started writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame quite close to the deadline – in the fall of 1830. While the deadline was in February 1831. His preparation was thorough, but he did not feel like writing. Thus, he did something that didn’t leave a choice – he got naked and locked away his clothes.

The aim of all that was to avoid temptations of going outside. Hugo had nothing to wear but a shawl. And for many months, this rag (as his wife claimed) was his daily uniform. Did it work? Absolutely. He finished the book weeks before the actual deadline.

2. Gerhard Richter: Create a crisis

Gerhard Richter, world known German artist and procrastinator, got millions with his paintings. For example, Abstrakis Bild was sold for $20,802,500 at Sotheby’s.  How did he manage to procrastinate and, at the same time, complete paintings of photos, abstracts, “blur” photo paintings, and many more works of art?

It’s striking that he actually wastes time on garden and not on his paintings. In one of the interviews, Richter described his daily routines:  “I could spend my life arranging things. Weeks go by, and I don’t paint until finally I can’t stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don’t want to talk about it, because I don’t want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself.

It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.” Thus, his secret strategy to become more productive is a simple crisis.

“Chance determines our lives in important ways.” – Gerhard Richter

3. Bill Clinton: Take criticism seriously, not personally

The 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton, was described as a “chronic procrastinator” by Time magazine. Could you believe that a two-time Grammy winner may be addicted to postponing? Clinton had weeks or sometimes months to make comments on the drafts of his speeches, but, eventfully, it all ended with cut-and-paste in the end.

Even his Vice President Al Gore called Clinton “punctually challenged”. However, despite all the criticism, he managed to never give up. The key secret to productivity is the way you perceive criticism, according to Bill Clinton. If you take it too personally, you won’t be able to resist the feeling of deficiency that finally leads to the inferiority complex. Therefore, keep your cool when you are criticized. Then, you have more chances to stay productive.

4. Franz Kafka: Try to wake up the night productivity

The Czech writer worked as an insurance clerk and it was the time to existential thinking. The novelist though didn’t put his ideas into action. After Kafka had been promoted, he had more time and procrastination infected him for good.

His routine day after work, as he mentioned it on one of his letters, looked like this: “Lunch till 3:30 … sleep until 7:30 … ten minutes of exercises, naked at the open window … an hour’s walk … then dinner with my family.” There is nothing about writing though. When did he actually write? Beginning from approximately 11 p.m. and continuing up to 6 a.m. Not the perfect system, for sure, but that’s was the most productive time for Kafka. It appears that he spent most of the daytime napping.

“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ’em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

5. Leonardo Da Vinci: Start several things at a time and make notes

An artist, mathematician, sculptor, writer, inventor, military engineer, Leonardo Da Vinci, is an outstanding figure in history. But despite the success he achieved, he was never focused on one thing at a time.

During his lifetime, he managed to complete only 20 paintings. The Virgin of the Rocks took him 13 years to put the final changes.  While his most illustrious work The Mona Lisa – as many as 16 years. The reason for that was his multi-tasking capacity. He was an incredibly broad-minded and all-round personality with so many genius plans. To improve a willpower, he had a rule book where he had more than 7,000 pages of notes.

His procrastination wasn’t already a secret for his benefactors. And some of them threatened him with bankruptcy in order to have his work done at last.

What if procrastination can be a way to extreme productivity and perfectionism? And still, you have structured procrastination as an option and a solution.

Would you use any of these tips to boost productivity flows? Comment below!

I started writing unprofessionally three years ago. Some would say my whole career is unprofessional and I’d agree. Imperfection is damn sexy though.

I began writing only because my mentor Joel Brown said I should and I stupidly said yes without knowing why. Now, of course, I’m crystal clear about why I write: it’s to inspire. I remember uploading articles to Addicted2Success.com and seeing no one like them. I remember thinking I was a failure.

In the early days, I was writing articles about entrepreneurs I had interviewed and I wasn’t that passionate about it. Every article felt like really hard work and it required an incredible amount of willpower. Everyone at the time was doing entrepreneur interviews and there was nothing special.

Then one day, I wrote an article for the fun of it that had nothing to do with anything. It was essentially a brain fart that I concocted after dinner, late one night. It took less than one hour to write and it was written with passion. The words came out of me without even trying.

Since that day, the words have continued to pour out of me in the same way. I get into a state of flow and then it happens. Words appear, people get inspired and we all have one big party that has been named “life.” From the day I wrote that article, thousands of people shared it and they still do today.

I didn’t stop

After my big moment on the internet going viral, everything stopped. The tumbleweed that drifted through the desert with an eerie silence continued. Everything calmed down and people stopped caring again.

I didn’t stop though because I found my writing therapeutical.

“My blog posts became like my own personal journey and it was a way for me to escape from the Alcatraz that was my head. This prison that lived inside my head kept telling me that no one cared and I’d never be successful.”

I decided to keep finding ways to break out of Alcatraz and check in to the Ritz Hotel that was me becoming a conscious, passionate, crazy online leader.

I stopped giving a damn

Over the next eighteen months, I kept writing every moment I got. No one paid attention but I did. I started paying attention to the shift that was happening inside of me. The leader that had always been stuck inside of me started to unleash.

The things that used to hold me back disappeared. I didn’t give two hoots about what anyone thought and I only cared about inspiring those who wanted to be inspired. I worked my butt off and started waking up at 4 am to post new blog articles. People couldn’t understand how I had the time to write working a full-time job.

The part they didn’t get was that because the words flowed out of me so easily, it didn’t take that long at all to write something of value. People watched me posting articles and thought I was crazy. They thought what I was doing was career suicide in the big bad world of corporate politics.

I never liked politics anyway, so I stuck my middle finger up at the way things were traditionally done. I decided to be a rebel writer and live my dream. I continued to make no money and people kept on questioning what I was doing.

I believed

A few people believed, but most didn’t. What stuck out like tomato sauce on a freshly dry cleaned white shirt was that I believed and that’s all that mattered. I saw something that no one else could see: my real potential versus my current success.

I had the motivation to continue on when no one cared because I believed I could change the world. I saw myself as someone who had the potential to serve millions of people online. I kept telling myself never to give up and I also spread the same message throughout everything I wrote.

“I thought my writing was going to save everybody else, but what it really did is save myself”

My writing saved me from living a life without meaning and it helped me discover who I really was. I saw the pattern between every goal I’d ever had: to inspire and evoke emotion from strangers.

This clarity fuelled me and I became relentless. I reached out to every blogger, leader and person that had done cool stuff that inspired me. Originally I thought they’d all ignore me: none of them did. See when you have energy and passion oozing out of you, people can’t say no. An unwavering belief in what you’re doing is all that matters.

The tipping point happened

I began to see a change when each day I started to get a message from a reader/fan. It started as one message per day, then two, then three. Now I get more messages of support every day than I have time to read. Success often doesn’t become a reality in a single moment.

Success is something that is hard to measure in the early days until one giant moment happens that everyone sees. The part no one sees is the many smaller moments that happened beforehand. The small successes that may not have looked like a textbook example of “success.”

That big day finally came

So the big day happened when an article I wrote went viral. This was the third time it had happened, although this time the success became permanent. All those years, when I thought no one was reading, people were. What had occurred was that they were too scared to show they were reading because my success was still largely unproven.

It was only after the big success moment that people felt it was okay to come out of the metaphorical closet and say they were inspired by what I was doing. All those nights spent locked away in my office being anti-social was worth it. All those cups of green tea, takeaway meals, indoor plants, and weird emails to myself with possible headlines for articles had meant something.

More publications reached out to me and pretty soon I wasn’t just writing for Addicted2Success; I was writing for the biggest sites on the entire internet. The ones where the editors get pitched one hundred times a day by people who want to do nothing more than self-promote and build a BS “personal brand.”

Before I knew it, I was getting offered book deals, business opportunities, podcast interviews and public speaking gigs. I took some but ignored most. I remembered what was important and the fact that unwavering focus had got me to where I was.

I knew I was ready for some opportunities and not for others like public speaking. The journey had begun, but I was far from the summit of the mountain of my dreams.

Nothing changed

Strangely, though, it was all one ginormous anti-climax moment. Nothing had changed. Even today nothing has changed. I still want to inspire people and I still like sharing stories. I still want to live with passion and I still want to create a meaning for my life that outlives me.

What has changed is that people have seen my success as something that’s happened recently – what total BS that is. It’s taken my entire existence to discover the meaning of my life, find a medium to share it on and go after it with relentless optimism.

What you didn’t see with my success

You didn’t see the person that existed before all of this. You didn’t see the selfish, rude, arrogant, brat who lived for material possessions and felt like he was entitled to success because he grew up in Australia, the land of the free. I can say those horrible things because I’m talking about myself. Thankfully that’s the opposite of who I am now.

You didn’t see the transformation that occurred after that one big rock bottom moment. When everything made no sense and I had to look inside of myself to crawl out of that black hole that had become my existence. You didn’t see me step out of the darkness and into the light.

All you saw was me in the light and assumed I had always been there shining away brightly, and living the good life that is passion and purpose. How wrong that lie is. How wrong the whole concept of overnight success is.

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net

Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist in residence at New York’s Hayden Planetarium is an unlikely role model for marketing excellence. Clearly, he knows how to get your attention. Even on the most complex or boring subjects, as evidenced by over 7.3 million twitter followers, sold out events, and multiple books that have been on the NY Times Bestseller list.

Here are 6 Marketing Tips You Can Learn from Neil deGrasse Tyson:

1. Understand your audience

It doesn’t matter if you are talking about sales, accounting or planets, what matters is that you understand your audience and what they care about. Think about it, if you make your topic relatable to them and what is important to them, you will succeed.

Create specific examples of what you are speaking about by relating it to what matters to your audience. If you are speaking to accountants about social media, make an analogy to their industry to make it more relatable.

Tell them social media was designed for accountants as it features lots of measurable data…likes, follower counts, reports, metrics, gross and net, so that you are speaking their language and it will sound familiar enough to keep their attention.  

Neil’s new book demonstrates his understanding of people and what makes them tick as evidenced by its title – “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry”. It’s really a statement on society today – we now want the key information in the shortest version possible.

2. Be passionate about your work, down to the smallest particle

People are attracted to those who are clearly passionate about their work. By sharing your excitement for your subject matter, you engage and inspire people, and they lean in to find out more. Excitement is contagious. Be passionate about your work and your topic, even when speaking about small details.

A graphic designer who can wax poetic about the loop of an ‘S’ in a specific font, comparing it to the Coney Island Cyclone will capture the attention of their audience, even if they can’t tell Comic Sans from Times New Roman.

“A passionate belief in your business and personal objectives can make all the difference between success and failure. If you aren’t proud of what you’re doing, why should anybody else be?” – Richard Branson

3. Express a sense of wonder about even the most minuscule and boring things

Along with being passionate about your subject matter, express a sense of wonder about any and every aspect of your work. Share your continued gratitude that you get to work in your incredible field, and get to share your knowledge with amazing people [the audience]. Being humble and appreciative is endearing.

As a digital marketer, I am still in awe that by having your email address, I can type a message on my computer and hit send knowing that it will land in your inbox within seconds, no matter where around the globe you are located, even without understanding how it works.

4. Use humor in everything

You may not may not remember much from marketing materials or a presentation, but I bet you will be able to recall a good joke or anecdote.

Humor is a great equalizer. It can break down barriers, get your attention, and turn even the most mundane subjects into more fun, interesting ones. Humor can also be memorable, so infuse your marketing with it where possible.

Insurance is a pretty dry subject; one that it is hard to get excited about. Both Geico and  Farmers Insurance recognize this and have created series of humorous ads to both entertain us, as well as display the need for, and range of their services. Take Farmer’s Swing Set Standoff, featuring a moose attacking swings, then crashing through their client’s windshield, all of which turns out to be covered by their insurance plan.

“Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.” – Langston Hughes

5. Break complex topics down into easily understood nuggets

I don’t know about you, but I can understand most topics if they are broken down into smaller chunks. With shorter attention spans, you can easily absorb smaller bits of information. It also helps with more complex or new topics, to chunk them down into multiple smaller components as well as comparing them to popular concepts or products, so they can be more easily understood. This helps you scan the information quickly, and process it better.

The technology sector is great at doing this. For example:  Getaround, The Airbnb for Cars, is a lot more elegant, instantly understood concept than describing a car rental market place where people rent you their car by the day, hour or week through a smartphone app.

6. Talk or write in clear and appealing sound bites

Want to get your message heard and shared with more people? Communicate in clear, short, and compelling sentences and phrases; this is beneficial in several ways. As mentioned, if you are like most people, you have a short attention span, so concise sentences are easily scanned when reading, or heard when spoken by a presenter.

The added benefit to this method is that you are creating tweet-worthy statements, that will most likely get shared, helping to increase your marketing reach and visibility.

“Houston we have a problem” and  “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” are great examples of concise and effective communication. Both soundbites convey information, context and place.  They are also very quotable, and tweetable.  So much is said, in so few [yet memorable] words.

Follow these six simple lessons, and you too, can be seen as having marketing superpowers.

How do you sell yourself? Let us know by commenting below!

There’s hardly a person in history that hasn’t seen failure in life. People fail in life and it hurts. It can cut them deep, leaving you with no one but your sorrows to wipe your wounds off. Usually, when we fail at something we can’t seem to see through the pain to find out why it happened.

However, failure is evolutionary – it helps us to grow, mature, and reach a deeper understanding of life as to what we want and why we want it. It is basically the real secret towards success.

Quite frankly, if you were to succeed in every endeavor, you’d become arrogant and a narcissist. Failure helps you to become a better person, expanding your mind while deepening our hearts. As much as it can hurt at times, without failure, it would be difficult to appreciate our successes.

If you have faced failure recently, it is okay. You need to believe in yourself and in the fact that failure isn’t the end of it all, it might be the right beginning. Of course, there are several ways to turn each failure into a success.

Here are 5 ways to turn your failure into success:

1. List the reasons you failed

Everyone has dreams and ambitions they want to see fulfilled when they’re striving for success. So when you fail, you need to see those reasons again. Have a look at them and think, “Do I still want this dream to be a reality”’, and if the answer is yes, do not give up. If you don’t have a strong enough reason why you need to succeed, failure will be likened to an atomic bomb, leveling your hopes and your dreams in its wake. However, when you have a strong reason, nothing will stand in your way.

2. Acknowledge your mistakes

A responsible individual will always own up to their mistakes, as it is important to acknowledge where you faltered. If you don’t own them, you can’t possibly redeem them in order to achieve success.

There’s no reason to hide the fact that you failed. Puffing your chest out and blaming others or your circumstances is a sad little charade that doesn’t last long. You don’t really have to apologize for the choices you’ve made, but you do need to recognize them as they are to avoid such choices in the future. We are product of the past but we don’t have to let our mistakes define us.

“Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.” – Dale Turner

3. Learn from your mistakes

When a person fails and tries to get over it, he may tend to ignore all the things he did that led to the failure. After reviewing your failure, acknowledge your mistakes and only then can you learn from them. As they say, “The only way to fail at failing is to learn nothing from the experience.”

This is good practice, as long as you don’t blame yourself pointlessly.  Don’t dismiss your failed experiments but learn from them. Write down and remember everything you know you could have done better because it will motivate you to improve the next time.

4. Consistency is key

Consistent action creates consistent results. You can try as hard as you want but strength doesn’t come from what you can do; rather doing the things you once thought you never could.

Whenever you let yourself fall down, you have to learn to dust yourself off, get up, and move forward. Repeat this process until you’re at the point where you wanted to see yourself. Consistency is highly undervalued yet what you do every day matters more than what you do every once in awhile. Always remember to “Try, try until you succeed.”

“Consistency for me is everything.” – Alexei Navalny

5. Don’t lose your confidence

Failure can shake anybody’s confidence. That’s completely human. But remember, confidence is your biggest asset in your daily routine which can lead you to improved mental well-being as well. Remind yourself that you have the strength to rely on and weaknesses to improve. Everybody falls down from time to time as long as they’re human. That doesn’t mean you can’t pick yourself up and run a marathon. Regaining your confidence after facing a devastating failure can be the strongest thing a person can do. If you can do that, you can do anything.

Sometimes failure keeps you stuck in your old ways and you need support to help get past your bad habits. For that matter, you need to find someone you can rely on for support. It could be a friend or a mentor or anyone who has experienced what you’re going through presently so they can point you in the right direction. Failure is the only way you can grow and evolve, because ultimately, failure is an opportunity to do better.

How do you get yourself back up after a failure? Let us know by commenting below!

Image courtesy of Twenty20.com