The most important thing you do to increase your value, improve your results, and make yourself more important to your business is to become better and better at the most important things you do.
Self-development must be an ongoing and continuous part of your time usage every day. It is a key time management function that can put you on the path to the executive suite and beyond.
Find the time within your schedule to continue growing and developing. The basic rule with regard to personal development is that you can go no further than you have gone today with your current knowledge and skill. To go further and advance your career, you have to gain more knowledge. You have to learn more to earn more.
Work on developing and improving yourself every day. If you were to read something for one hour a day that improved your ability to do your work, that would put you in the top one percent in our society within five years.
Listen to educational audio programs when you are traveling in your car. Today, virtually all of the finest information and ideas that have ever been assembled in English, or in any language, are available as audio recordings on CDs or downloads to a smartphone or tablet.
The average commuter spends 500 to 1,000 hours per year in the car. That’s twelve or twenty forty-hour weeks, which is equivalent to one or two university semesters. This means that you can get the benefit of almost full-time university attendance by simply turning traveling time into learning time. If you are not listening to audio programs in your car or when traveling, you are missing out on one of the great learning opportunities that exist today.
Attend seminars and workshops given by experts in your field at least four times a year. Be aggressive about seeking out these seminars. Be prepared to travel large distances to learn from the very best people in your business.
The key is for you to attend seminars taught by people with practical experience who have already achieved success in their field. Try to avoid lectures and seminars from university professors who write from their ivory towers. They have seldom been in the trenches, and what they teach tends to be academically correct but practically useless. There is almost no way that you can apply their ideas to get better results in your work.