The Lifelong Learner         by Stanley Kubasek | About Me |

Do you want to be successful? Or maybe you already are, in that case, do you follow a pattern?

I have to say that I have been successful in most of the things that I have tried to achieve. But I don't necessarily have a process. After reading the article, more below, I think that I might have a process: I think of an idea -- a goal -- and then I stay determined and try to achieve it, over time I look back and see if it was successful. But I don't really have a structure and the process is mostly common sense, I guess. Scott H Young, in the Patterns for Success article, explains his process. He claims he follows it all the time and it has worked for him. It consists of three steps: Ideas, Implementation, and Review.

This is an excellent article, so I'll take the most important points from it (read it all, though).

Patterns for Success

(1) Ideas
In order to improve, you need to know how you want to improve. You need to have ideas of where you want to be in a month, in a year. How do you get these ideas? By reading books, listening to audio tapes, he suggests. You can also do it, I think, by going to conferences, and even talking to friends: anything new that you would like to accomplish might be considered an idea. Scott suggests spending "no more than twenty percent" in this phase (interesting).

(2) Implementation
It's the most important step in improvement, he suggests "at least sixty percent" in this phase.

Generating ideas is easy, implementing them is the hard part. But without implementation "you can never experience any growth," says Scott. "Growth occurs only after you have taken your ideas and set them into reality."

(3) Review
"Review is critical to long-term success." Allocate around twenty percent for this activity.Review helps you "to ensure that you are improving in the direction you want." It's a test to see whether you are growing. "Ignoring this step would be like trying to drive a car with opaque windows," says Scott.

Reference
Introduction - Patterns for Success (Series), Scott Young