7 Basic Elements of Personal effectiveness
I am very curious about making myself more effective.There are tons of nice posts on the matter in the Internet. I have decided to pool back the basics into one post for me (and for you) and to go from there.
1. Understanding what is important
The shortest path to personal effectiveness has to lie through understanding what is important for you. People try to do stuff they believe is important. Believing and knowing your priorities may not be enough to succeed, but that is definetely a starting point.
2. Setting goals
We are bombarded with impulses: there are tons of unimportant things we fall for doing. Watching TV is the one biggest time consumer for many people. Currently, I am crazy about HOUSE M.D. series 
However, if you know what is important for you, you can prioritize and you can set goals. The best goals are SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.
Imagine that you are running a marathon. You couch wants to cheer you up. She comes up to you and shouts: ‘Come on! Do you your best. You can do it!’. Will such words actually help you do your best? And what if she says: ‘There’s only 200 meters to go. You can do it!’ Being specific and measurable is such a slave driver.
3. Managing time
There is one resource that we cannot save. It is time. Managing time is probably not the best way to put it. We cannot manage time as it simply happens to us. What we can do, however, is manage our activities. To be effective, we need to give time to achieving our goals and less time to routine. Managing time is connected with the first two points: get the priorities and the goals right, and allocate time to pursue them.
4. Managing money
The best thing about money is that you can save it. You can accumulate it. You can use it to help you achieve your goals. Not having enough money is bad. Impulse spending is the real evil. If you watch and plan your expenses, you will be a happier person in the end. Saving for the contingencies & important things is the way to go.
5. Managing emotions & stress
If you strive for personal effectiveness, you have to learn to deal with stress. It is important to learn to relax. To do sports. A cool thing is to create positive experiences for yourself: rewarding yourself for a job well done or a goal achieved.
Our happiness in many cases depends on our relations with other people. Relationships are easier to build if you are open, sincere and helpful. Leading a social life has been shown to give fairly positive results. Give it a try
6. Managing Health
Good life has to be long. To make sure we have enough time to reach our goals, we have to stay healthy. It means good dieting, regular medical examinations and physical activities.
7. Hard work.
Personall effectiveness means nothing if it is not used. To achieve results, we have to work and work a lot. The hard work should be also smart work: it makes sense to focus on the most important goals and priorities and achieve success there. Spreading thin is stupid & ineffective. Going too narrow will make us overspecialized and less prepaired to change. Hence, the balance has to be found somewhere.
There thousands of books about each of those elements. Probably, you could add something else to the list, or formulate something differently. However, keeping those 7 in mind seems to be working for me. At least to a certain extent.
