self-improvement tip

self-improvement tip : Knowledge Is Power!


There is another great self-improvement tip which some people often neglect and which you can use to advance in any area and not just to learn how to wake up early. Everyone heard the phrase ‘Knowledge is power’ but not all people actually get the meaning. And the tip is simple - more you know about the area of your interest the higher are your chances to succeed in this area. So get the knowledge, read and learn every day! Want to wake up early? Learn it!

Some time ago I wrote on how understanding sleep mechanics can help you wake up earlier. But it’s just one small step that doesn’t guarantee your success. How you can do more of those steps? How do you get to know more about specific area? The answer is simple. You start spending some time every day on things that feed your mind with the knowledge. You plunge into it. You make it your hobby. You become passionate about it. You become what I call a junior expert – not a professional who can write a book on the subject, but more educated than 90% of people around you. Here are just some obvious ideas everyone can follow to become junior expert in the specific field:

* First thing is to decide you want to become knowledgeable about specific topic, and commit to spending time (and sometimes money) on it
* Pick 1-2 bestselling books on the selected topic and start reading them
* Subscribe to online news related to selected topic (Google Alert is a very simple tool to do it) and read them often
* Research the sites covering your selected topic, subscribe to news and RSS feeds from them
* Find blogs featuring the topic and read them through, get in contact with blog authors
* Go visit some seminars on the subject, join the clubs or online communities of people discussing the topic, you can usually find some free ones
* Get to know people who are professionals in the area you need, try to build relationship with them and eventually build a network of people whom you can ask advice from
* Ask those people how they became experts – what books they liked, what training courses they attended, what people helped them
* By this time you should have read the books you started with, so go and pick the next few books
* Subscribe to magazine or newspapers (most are available online these days)
* There are lots of tutorials and trainings available online – consider taking those
* Pass online tests to measure the level of your knowledge, succeeding in the tests will give you more confidence

In addition to healthy sleeping and early rising topics, in which I believe I can consider myself to be a junior expert now, there are other areas of interest for me right now. One is time management and productivity, and I think I’m close to marking it complete on my list. One more I just started recently is investing. As I now have some money saved and need to take care of them, I’ve decided I want to become a junior expert in investing. Not an expert who would advice others on how to invest, but knowledgeable enough to invest my own money wisely. And guess what… After just two months I feel myself 100 times more financially educated than I were before. Is it worth it? You bet...

How do you find time to acquire all that knowledge you may ask? Well, that’s why I started with time management first . In fact, getting more organized is one thing. Pushing it daily is another important thing and that’s why I carry my mp3 player full of audio books with me everywhere, and that’s why I’m looking forward to own this Amazon gadget.

Finally, remember, knowledge is not just educational, it’s inspiring. At some point if you get really excited about it, you may even consider making a living out of your new expertise. But it’s a different story worth another post.
Sweet dreams and happy early wake ups to you all! BTW, does Amazon Kindle have a built-in alarm clock, anyone knows?!