The Year I Discovered the Secret to Success
Many years ago, I took a step up the career ladder that brought with it a host of unexpected challenges.
I hadn’t been working for long as a Software Engineer for Red Hat, before my productivity and skills caught the eye of the management team. In fact, I was quickly promoted from my original role to become the manager of a team of engineers.
I remember being excited at the promotion. It was something I had planned to achieve within a few years, but had happened in just a few months.
However, the promotion didn’t start too smoothly…
I was used to managing my own time and setting my own goals, etc. But now that I was managing a team, I had to reinvent this skillset to cover each of my team members. I also had to learn the difficult art of delegation, as well as learning how to inspire and motivate my team.
Looking back, I can see that I really struggled for the first few weeks. I remember thinking at times that management just wasn’t for me. In time, however, I learned to think positively about the situation, and to put in a plan of action to make my management of the team streamlined and efficient.
From a difficult start, I eventually became a very confident and proficient manager. Someone who was well liked by my team. I’m also proud to say that we became one of the most productive and creative engineering teams in our department.
That was the year that I discovered the secret to success. A secret that I have used throughout my life ever since. A secret that has helped me grow my own business (Lifehack) into a multi-million dollar organization.
So how about you? Are you struggling to achieve the things you’d like to do in life? Are you ready to have a fresh start?
If yes, then read on as I reveal the secret to succeeding in every area of life.
They don’t teach you this at school
Following my success at overcoming the challenges of being a new manager, I found that my self-confidence grew. I also realized that I had come across a simple formula for conquering obstacles and achieving goals. I’ll share this formula with you in a moment, but let me first tell you another personal story that helped me to be sure that I had discovered the secret to success.
I learned a ton from working as a software engineer and then stepping up to be a manager of a team of engineers. To enable me to succeed in both of these roles, I spent hours of my spare time every week researching and testing out productivity and time management techniques.
Some techniques worked — others failed miserably.
Those that helped me work better and more efficiently, I adopted. Those that had negative or no impact on my efficiency, I ditched.
Over the course of 12 months, I increased my productivity by more than 250%. This sharp rise in productivity, meant that I had more time to be creative and more time to support my team.
It also triggered an idea that was later to become my life purpose.
The birth of Lifehack
Having seen the impressive productive gains from adopting specific time management techniques, I was convinced that the world should know about them.
This is when I had the idea of starting my own website: Lifehack
I designed Lifehack to be a site where I could share the success tools and techniques that I had tried and tested. A place that could help and inspire readers to boost their own productivity. A place where they could learn the secret to success.
From humble beginnings in 2005 — where I was the writer, publisher and marketer — Lifehack quickly grew into one of the most popular self-improvement sites in the world. To date, millions of readers have benefitted from our treasure trove of more than 30,000 original articles.
How did I manage to grow a hobby site into a multi-million dollar organization? I used the success formula I referred to earlier.
Here it is:
Positive thinking combined with practical action = success.
Please read the formula a couple of times and pause to think about it for a few minutes.
What are your thoughts? Does it feel too simplistic? Or does it represent times in your life when you’ve accomplished big things?
If you feel the formula is too simplistic to be effective, then let me show you how this formula worked for me at Lifehack.
As the website continued to grow in its first few months, I hit a brick wall: I had run out of ideas for new articles.
At first, I thought this might be the end of Lifehack. But after spending some time thinking deeply about the situation I came up with two solutions:
- I sent an email to subscribers asking them what they would like help with in their life.
- I hired a couple of content writers.
These two ideas had remarkable results. The feedback from subscribers gave me tons of ideas for new content, and my new colleagues also had stacks of ideas and suggestions for fresh material.
As you can see from the above story, the formula worked like magic. I encountered a major problem, but by keeping my mind open and positive, I was able to come up with practical solutions. Of course, if I did nothing with the solutions, then nothing would have changed. This is where the taking action part seals the deal!
Let me give you another example:
In the first few years of Lifehack, lots of subscribers contacted me to say how much they were enjoying and benefiting from our self-improvement content. However, some of them expressed a slight dissatisfaction that Lifehack didn’t give them any way to delve deeper into some of the topics that mattered to them, such as productivity, time management, habit building, etc.
I had assumed that our detailed articles were enough, but as the feedback mounted up, I realized that we needed to expand our content range.
What was the best way forward? I must admit, initially, I wasn’t 100% sure.
However, I spent time researching how people liked to learn, I consulted with my team, and I also replied directly to some of the subscribers who had provided feedback.
It took a little while, but in the end, I decided that we would start to create online courses that would be based on our core material — but would delve much deeper into it.
The idea was there, but then we had to take action!
Now, as I discovered, creating a comprehensive online course is certainly no walk in the park. The content has to be researched, written and edited. And on top of this, graphics need to be created and a professional voiceover needs to be recorded.
A course that was designed for the student to complete in one-month, actually took us several months to complete.
But…
It was definitely worth the effort.
Our first course proved to be incredibly popular. We had tapped into exactly what people were looking for — a deep dive into specific subjects that they wanted help and detailed information on.
We now have 10 online courses, covering topics such as: self-empowerment, boosting brain power and defeating procrastination. (I recommend you check them out.)
I hope the examples I’ve shared above help you to see that: ideas without action are just ideas!
To accomplish great things, you need to keep your mind in a positive state to come up with ideas and solutions. You must then put those ideas and solutions into practical action.
Your life will never be the same
The simple success formula of positive thinking combined with practical action has helped me succeed in all areas of my life, and I know it can do the same for you too.
How can I be so sure of this?
Well, it’s because I’ve taught this success formula to colleagues, friends and family. And in all cases where they’ve applied the formula, they have succeeded in what they were trying to achieve.
For example, listed to what my colleague Logan had to say:
“A few weeks after starting at Lifehack as one of their project managers, Leon asked me to have a one-to-one meeting with him. I was a little concerned that he was going to criticize my performance to date, but I was relieved (and somewhat surprised) when he told me that he wanted to share some of his tried-and-tested techniques for getting things done.
“Specifically, he talked to me about his success formula, and how this was at the core of everything that he had achieved in the last 15 years. He explained to me how the formula worked, and how to immediately begin using it in both my work and home life.
“I must admit that at first, I was skeptical. The formula seemed too easy and too obvious. However, Leon urged me to give it a go for the next three months and then to see if it had helped me or not.
“I won’t go into all the changes I made as I applied the formula, but I will tell you this… It transformed the way I thought and the way I worked. Whereas before I struggled to get things done, now I was super productive. And whereas before I would be easily defeated by obstacles, now I found that I was always the victor.
“In summary, Leon’s success formula has definitely worked for me, and I always recommend it to other people.”
Today is the day when you can take a step into a bright new future. A future where you control your destiny. A future where you are happy, healthy and successful.
You just need to keep your thoughts positive and creative, and then follow Pablo Picasso’s words of wisdom: “Action is the foundational key to all success.”
Need some extra motivation to start taking charge of your life right now? Then check out Lifehack’s 3-Step Guide to Break Free and Design the Life You Want. This free downloadable guidebook will show you how to turn your obstacles into opportunities and how to take control of your destiny.
