The Never Ending Improvement Process

As you know, one of the fundamental things in life is improvement. It goes by many names such as updating, renovation, actualization, enhancement, etc. and according to this Wikipedia article, What is Improvement? it simply means to "get better".

Everyone needs improvement; we improve by learning, exercising, creating, praying and/or a really wide array of activities; unfortunately, we can also choose to not improve. What happens when we decide to avoid improving?

Stagnation

This means staying passive and avoid action, become passive and wait for life to pass you by. Absolutely not the way of living any person should want. I strongly suggest you avoid stagnation because it makes your life miserable, sad and highly unbearable since you stick to the same routine over and over again.

But how can I avoid falling into Stagnation? It's fairly simple; I noticed that by following the rules above you were able to keep improving and actively avoid stagnation.

The Never Ending Improvement Rules

These are the 4 rules I put on practice to keep on going and be a better person, employee, entrepreneur, leader, son, etc in my life and to avoid stagnation at all costs. They are the following:

1. Never stop learning!
2. Practice what you learned as soon as you can.
3. Find creative ways to do the same things.
4. Share your knowledge.

These rules are self explanatory and I believe that if you apply them every time you learn then you are going to leave with a very valuable lesson each time, not only with the theory.

What I did to improve

As I said on previous posts, I don't know much about the blogging world but I made a vow to keep improving no matter what so I just want to tell you that to honor this post, I will be updating and improving not only my writing but also my blog (overall style, links, etc).

You may see a lot of changes around but don't worry, they are all proof that this blog was caught up in the "Never Ending Improvement" process and will be a better blog each time you see it.

Also, to share my knowledge and to practice what I learned about Blogging, I created a simplified version of this blog on Tumblr. Here is the link: Entrepreneur Transition on Tumblr so I can go closer to you via Facebook and Twitter. Also, I created a Google+ Page of the blog and you can subscribe to it by clicking "follow" on the button below my profile.

It's amazing to see all the things I did after learning, practicing and find creative ways to contact you. Thanks for making me improve and I hope I can help you do the same too!

Out of the Limbo step 2, Learning your way

The importance of learning

Learning is one of the most important aspects of life as a whole; it helps you overcome great obstacles, make good decisions and surprisingly live stress free. Usually we aren't too eager to learn, in fact most people only do so to get a title, the diploma or get some kind of social standing.

Unfortunately this kind of behavior extends to all the aspects of our life and suddenly, we don't want to learn anything...

Even when learning is something simple and effortless, we usually take the long and hard way, suffering disappointments, anger, sadness, desperation and depression instead of going the easy way and learn what we must (even if we don't want to at first)

You can learn a lot from small things

I want to share a simple example of something that happened to me just moments ago:

I was checking my traffic sources 3 days ago when I noticed that I had two suspicious traffic sources on my blog. I didn't know what they were but instead of trying to learn more about them (since they were from Russia and from places I never visited) I decided to go the long hard way...I waited 3 days not knowing what to do and then I clicked on them instead of searching what they were first.

As you can imagine those were spam sites. I worried a lot because my blog would be cataloged as spam, because I should have never clicked on those pages, I panicked because I couldn't find an option to block or delete them...in short, I gained a lot of stress and desperation because I didn't take the time to learn.

Afterwards I searched in Google what happened and I found this simple but lifesaving blog: "How to Stop/Block Unwanted Referral URLs Entering Your Blogger Blog". Simple and sweet; if I had taken the time to search for it and learn what happened with my traffic sources I would have saved a lot of stress and 3 days of uncertainty and doubts.

Now, at 11:40 PM that I'm writing this instead of going to sleep, I learned about the great impact little things have in one's life and how having a will to learn can change a situation from horribly bad to good. If I had taken 10 minutes to search, I would have saved 3 days of suffering.

The 5 Entrepreneur Learning rules

This same situation happens very often in an Entrepreneur life. Since everything around us change constantly we have to keep up to date, learn every day or die trying.

There are 5 Learning rules that I noticed that if I follow them I get great rewards, more so if I'm in doing something entrepreneur related. I want to share them with you:

1. Focus your learning: Know exactly what you need and learn it.
2. Go step by step: Don't try to learn everything at once, it's bad to mental health. Learn by setting yourself small but attainable goals.
3. Go beyond: If something is interesting for you, look for more info, discover more.
4. Search beyond your first reference: Usually we don't go beyond the first search results (sometimes we don't even go beyond Wikipedia). We are losing a lot of important information by not searching more.
5. Find a practical use: Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is useless. Find a way to practice what you learned!

Remember that knowledge can even save your life if you learn what you need and how to apply it. Never stop learning (regardless if you choose to be an Entrepreneur or not) and remember:

"There is more than one way to learn, choose the one that suits you best but please, choose one before you are left behind"

Don't stop walking!

As you can see I'm beginning with this blog...it's somewhat difficult to write since this is my first formal attempt at one but I hope that everything goes well.

I wanted to write today because I was reflecting about what I posted before about the commitment (Something to start and the 3 Entrepreneur Pillars). I noticed that when we do something new we usually don't want or don't know how to do it again.

Even in the most simple things it's hard to make commitment

Here is an example of some things that I wanted to commit myself to make habits but I utterly failed:

• I made a gym schedule because honestly I'm a little overweight. I found that I could always start but I usually never give my schedule any follow up. It's true that you make a habit out of something if you do it regularly in at least a month, but damn it's so hard to make it through the first week!
• On another time I tried to learn cooking and my girlfriend told me that we should try to bake some muffins to start. We collected the materials, the cookbook and went to her house to begin...as you can imagine it was a mess. We did it a couple of times more but for some reason that I don't truly remember, we stop doing it.
• I wanted to make hidroponic crops in my house and I invested a lot of time in research, I even made a prototype! But after it, I didn't give it follow up and the few plants that I had withered.

What I needed wasn't knowledge, experience or materials, I needed commitment and after those things happened to me, I seriously took commitment to heart.

Remind yourself

Reminding yourself about a commitment it's very useful and important. You are making yourself aware of your promises and feel obliged to finish them. I personally recommend some kind of physical reminder such as calendars, notes, post its, whatever you use to write your commitments and remind yourself.

Usually when we make a reminder in the real world and someone look at it, they can even remind you of them! It's very useful if you tend to forget something easily. I tell my girlfriend some of my commitments and she always remind me of them, even if I don't want to hear them.

Usually when we don't want to hear a reminder is when we are aware of what we must do but don't want to do it. Avoid this feeling entirely and try to always work and finish what you promise, after all, if you told yourself to do it you have a really good reason to give your commitment the proper follow up.

My personal habit

I want to do an habit of writing regularly, at least once a week or 2 so I will be fighting to at least post something within this time frame. I believe that my words may help someone begin to change his or her life for the better so with that in mind, I can rest assure that my continuous work will do a great good.

Also, since I'm new to programming and I don't know a lot about blog customization, it may take some time to make this blog decent looking but I hope that you find the contents helpful while I work on the customization...another habit creation is on the way :).

Taking my own advise, I took the liberty to write this post to make a physical reminder to work hard to complete my promise. After all, if I don't remind myself to do it I have you to remind me of my commitment.

Thanks for helping me!

Enable Comments

Just as a little side note, I decided to enable the post comment so you can write your thoughts and suggestions about the blog. Your input is greatly appreciated and it will help me to make great content for you :). Also, feel free to email me if you want your messages to be private.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Something to start

When we are thinking how to be an entrepreneur we usually think in a high profile company with a big building and a lot of employees; usually a company isn't that way, specially now that the new technologies let us be big without a lot of people (take a look at Instagram. All that money with only 20 guys working!)

This exaggerated vision of entrepreneurship make us doubt in taking the most important steps of all:

The first step.

Usually the most mentally difficult but physically easier of the steps. Starting doesn't required a lot of knowledge, techniques or preparation; it usually has to do with things like Willpower, Commitment and Creativity (which I believe we all have at least a little bit).

The 3 Pillars of the Aspiring Entrepreneur

Willpower

This is a must when taking the first step. If you don't have the necessary willpower to maintain yourself on track and tackle head on the challenges (not only mental but also physical and social) that will arrive on your front door then I strongly suggest you think again if beginning the way of the Entrepreneur is for you. 

How to know if I have the proper Willpower? If you caught yourself doing some of these things then it means you are on the right track:

• Searching for hours on the Internet about our business idea and how to make it happen.
• Fervently defending your business idea when other people talk bad about it or try to discourage you from starting.
• Wanting to prove your close people that you can make your business idea come true even if you don't have their support.
• Accumulating all the knowledge you can about your business idea without saying "Wow, I don't think I can learn this much".

These are some of the ways your Willpower can show itself but there are many ways particular to each person. Once you identify that you have the willpower you can be sure that you are on the right track.

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Commitment

This is a very easy thing to recognize and it usually have to do on how long and hard you are willing to go for your dream. When we are in the first steps we always say that we will stick to our business idea forever; unfortunately many abandon their dream in less than a month if adverse circumstances knock on their front door. Examples of adverse circumstances are the following:

• Few or no money at all..
• Lack of time.
• Lack of tools (either physical space, tools or raw materials)
• Social rejection (people telling you that your idea isn't good enough and that you will fail).

The last one is the most difficult one since it will follow you to the end of your life but don't worry, steel yourself and follow your ideas and dreams as hardly as you can and you will have the necessary commitment to be not only an Entrepreneur but also a successful one.

Creativity

By far the most subjective skill but one of the most useful. Basically it means to think freely and imagine infinite different ways to do something common. Be careful, being creative isn't equal to being innovative; being innovative is to search for new and better ways to do something. To be an entrepreneur it doesn't necessarily means that you have to do something new; just do something a little bit different and stand out from the rest. 

Think out of the box for everything (and I really mean everything) and you will get a great idea from where you least expect it.

Keep it simple to start

If you combine these skills you will surely create something amazing, just believe in yourself and you will be on your way to be an Entrepreneur (remember that only you can determine if you are successful or not). You don't have to start big or even think in big things like having a skyscraper, thousands of employees and dozens of buildings; just think in the beginning, main idea and remember that less is more.