Learn the best strategies to tweak your way to big wins in life. Tell me, what do you do after a win of any kind?
You probably celebrate. That’s great. But if you want to rack up even more wins in the future, you also need to take a moment to analyze your successes.
Of course, this goes for your failures too.
You can’t just shrug off your disappointments and say, “Well, that was some bad luck.” Instead, you need to reflect on them.
And grow more robust and better as a result of them.
How?
Learn how to T.W.E.A.K. your way to big wins by following these five steps:
T – TAKE Inventory
W – WEIGH Options
E – ELIMINATE Waste
A – A.S.K. for help
K – KEEP Moving
Let’s look at each of these components in more detail.
1. TAKE Inventory
This is something you need to do regularly. You might take an Inventory of your past week, a project you just wrapped up, or even what’s happened in the last month.
Basically, you ask yourself two questions:
- What went right?
- What went wrong?
Both of those questions are important.
If you’re only focusing on what went right, you’re just setting yourself up to make the same mistakes next time. And if you only focus on what went wrong, you’ll totally overlook the steps
that made this particular project or period so successful.
2. WEIGH Options
Your next step is to look at the mistakes you identified in Step 1.
You now need to figure out what you can do better and how to avoid making this mistake again. To that end, ask yourself these questions:
- What can you do to correct the problem?
- What can you do to prevent the situation in the future?
- What can you do to get better results?
Of course, you must also look at the wins you identified in the previous step. Ask yourself:
- What can you do to duplicate and multiply your successes?
- What can you do to get even better results?
Go ahead and brainstorm. Think outside the box. Don’t censor yourself; let your creative mind devise innovative solutions and ideas.
Tip: For best results, turn this into a good brainstorming session. First, block off a chunk of uninterrupted time (at least 60 minutes). Then eliminate all other distractions, such as turning off your cell phone and shutting down your email client.
Finally, just start brainstorming without judging or censoring your ideas. You may be surprised at its power when it unleashes your mind on something!
3. ELIMINATE Waste
You’re looking for victories. So if you see that you have an ongoing problem (one that’s not easily corrected) or something that creates a lot of Waste, consider cutting it.
Example: Maybe you’ve created a book that’s not selling. You’ve tried tweaking the sales letter and attempted to alternate traffic sources, and the darn thing just won’t sell.
So maybe you just take it off the market so that you don’t have to spend any more money advertising or hosting a product that doesn’t convert.
You can even repurpose or recycle the content to get some benefit (such as by chopping the book up into articles and posting them on your blog).
4. Apply for help
The idea here is to focus on your strengths. You like to do certain things, and you likely also do those things well. On the other hand, there are some tasks that you need help to do right.
They frustrate you, take a long time, and maybe you’re not very good at them.
You know what? Stop struggling.
Instead, hand those tasks over to an expert. That frees up your time to focus on what you do well, which in turn helps you rack up more wins.
Take me as an example…
Example: I love sharing ideas through the written word. I’m good at it. And so that’s why I focus on writing articles, blog posts, reports, and more.
However, tech stuff makes my eyes roll back in my head. I’d rather not sit around trying to figure out what line of code I need to tweak to make a blog theme look better.
Instead, I hand this stuff over to a coding and design expert, which frees up more of my time to focus on writing. (And it also puts me in a better headspace because having someone else handle the tech end of my business relieves me of a lot of hair-pulling stress.)
I used a business example above. However, this certainly extends to your personal life, too.
Example: If cleaning isn’t your thing, if you do it poorly, or if it just seems to take a lot of time, leave it for another family member or hire a professional.
Either way, you’ll free up your valuable time to focus on more important things.
5. KEEP Moving
So at this point, you’ve evaluated what went wrong with a project, what went well, and how you can do everything better next time.
However, now isn’t the time to nod and agree that your evaluation was proper. Instead, it’s time to take action based on what you learned. And that means you need to plan your next steps.
Example: Suppose you wrote a book and put it in the Kindle marketplace, but it didn’t do well. And let’s assume it didn’t do well because you tried to make your own book cover, which wasn’t very good.
As such, one of your next steps is to have a professional create a new cover. And you’ll also make a note to have a professional designer create all future book covers.
Conclusion
You just discovered how to T.W.E.A.K. your success using this formula:
T – TAKE Inventory
W – WEIGH Options
E – ELIMINATE Waste
A – A.S.K. for help
K – KEEP Moving
The idea is to analyze your successes and failures. Determine what you can do better next time, eliminate things that aren’t working, outsource or delegate complex tasks, and keep moving forward.
Simple. Right?
And it’s mighty. Because once you start tracking your success, you, too, will start racking up more wins!
