There’s a lot of information out there about who we should surround ourselves with and how we should develop our social circle; that the key to being successful is to surround ourselves with other successful people. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it makes perfect sense. If you consistently hang out with people that have no goals or ambition in life, then their ways are eventually going to rub off on you too.

Expand that circle

How can you expect to better develop yourself if you don’t have the proper resources at your disposal? It’s like trying to learn a new language without having anybody to speak it with; you can still do quite a bit on your own, but you’ll never really be proficient until you can immerse yourself in whatever it is you’re trying to do.

A strong social circle of friends, family, and associates will help keep your ideas fresh, creative, and ensure that you never get too sidetracked from where you want to go. Most importantly however, they’ll act as a support beacon for whatever destination you have in mind, continually pushing you until you reach such a goal.
This means having the right social circle is important for anyone trying to achieve something in life, but is it always that easy?
For example: I see a lot of people complaining about their weight and eating habits, wanting to change, but feeling like they’re stuck in this continuous rut. They’ll say something like “I don’t know how to change”, or “I don’t know what to do to get in shape.” It’s actually a rather stupid thing to say, because if anything, there’s TOO MUCH information out there rather than not enough. You don’t have to be a dietician to know the basics of eating well or that integrating regular exercise into your life will help you feel more confident and energized. It’s not that these people DON’T KNOW HOW to lose weight, but they don’t have a very supportive group of people behind them. They don’t have anyone to help motivate them or push them in the right direction. Sure, they may have a social circle, but it’s not one that’s very adaptive to their current needs.

Are you friends and family supposed to drop everything they’re doing and help you with every little goal you want to achieve or hobby you want to take up? If I decide I want to take a cooking class at the local University, does that mean all my friends have to sign up as well? Or if I decide to purchase a motorcycle, does that mean all the guys have to drop their Sunday plans so we can go riding every week? The mentality that most people seem to have is that a social circle is a static thing. Something that doesn’t really change and stays the same regardless of what you’re doing. Maybe you have seven really good friends which you consider to be your “social circle,” and anytime those seven friends don’t want to do something, you drop it. “I really want to play golf this weekend, but nobody will go with me!”
A strong social circle should be something that’s dynamic and ever changing. It doesn’t have to be “these are my friends, and we do everything together.” There’s nothing wrong with have a strong core group of friends, but each person is an individual and will have a wide variety of interests that the others don’t have. If you really want to take a cooking class but none of your friends really want to pay the money and go, that shouldn’t stop you from pursuing it anyways. If it’s a class you really want to take with friends, then your first priority should be to MAKE friends once you’re in class. The class doesn’t have to be a dead-end just because none of your existing friends want to get involved; instead it should be an avenue for you to make NEW friends that have a similar interest. If there are thirty other people taking this class, that’s thirty other people with an interest in cooking. Sure, you may not get along with each person in there, but if you push yourself outside of your comfort zone just a little bit, you may be surprised at who you can meet.

You’re probably familiar with how scarcity and abundance mindsets work, even if you’ve never heard it called that before. In other words, do you view the glass as half empty, or half full? People with a scarcity mindset look at what they don’t have, not what they can achieve. On the other side, people with an abundance mindset focus on what they DO have, not what they can’t get. Applying it to our example on the cooking class, someone with a scarcity mindset would look at the class negatively because none of their existing friends wanted to join them. They still know there’s a large opportunity to meet new people and create new friends, but that’s not what they focus their energy on and so it’s not something they consciously pursue. To them, if it happens it happens, but they’re not really putting much hope into it. On the other hand, someone with an abundance mindset doesn’t look at the class with dismay because none of their friends wanted to join them, but instead focuses on who they can potentially meet. Just because none of their friends had an interest in taking this class, that’s certainly not going to hold them back; instead it’s an opportunity for them to interact with other like-minded people.
In creating a dynamic social circle, having an abundance mindset is a must. You can’t view your social circle as a limiting factor, but rather one that you can continually build upon to help you achieve whatever you’re going after. Doing so not only provides all the regular benefits of networking, but it also gives you a much larger group of people to draw upon when it comes to moving forward with your life. Imagine trying to get in shape when you only have seven friends, all of whom are unsupportive of your goals? It’s certainly not going to be easy! That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, but you have to draw all your energy from within yourself and you won’t have the helping hand of others. Now imagine if you had seven friends who were all VERY supportive of your decision to lose weight; not only encouraging you, but also accompanying you to the gym and constantly bouncing ideas around for eating healthier. Achieving your goal would not only be far easier, but probably a lot more enjoyable too.
Of course, I realize (as I’m sure you do too) that not everything happens overnight. You can’t build a strong, dynamic social circle in a day, but you can certainly work at it. In fact, if you’re already thinking “man, this is going to be tough! How am I going to find people with such similar interests as me?” Then you’re already thinking with a scarcity mindset.
You have to understand WHY you want a strong social circle in the first place. For most people, myself included, this is because surrounding yourself with like-minded people helps push you in the right direction. Don’t think of people as just acquaintances, but as resources. If you desire to do something new or better with your life, you need people that can help pull you up the ladder, not people that will be clinging onto you and pulling you back down.
The final mistake that a lot of people make is passing over good opportunities because they don’t see the benefits those opportunities can bring them. In having a dynamic social circle, not everybody is going to think and act in the same manner. You may have a number of friends who help keep you motivated to stay and shape, but may know squat about running a business. At the same time, you may have plenty of friends who are very efficient at running a business, but aren’t the most up to date on diet and exercise. The problem is, a lot of times you’ll mistakenly blow someone off when in reality they could have helped you in a number of ways.
Maybe you meet someone who knows very little about diet and exercise and knows absolutely nothing about starting up a new business. At the time, maybe those are your two big focuses in life and so you think such a person has very little they could offer you. The truth is; maybe this person’s just a lot of fun to be around or is extremely outgoing and energetic. That in itself is a skill, and maybe just interacting with him or her could help you better your social abilities. The point of a dynamic social circle isn’t to be surrounded by a bunch of carbon copies of yourself, but to surround yourself with people that can help you grow and develop into the individual you want to become. It would be like walking into a library where they only carried five different books; what help would that be to you? Instead, you want to walk in and have thousands of different books at your disposal, giving you an abundance of resources to draw upon.
At the very least, have fun with it. Just because you may run into a few bad eggs here and there, don’t shut yourself out from the rest of the world. You don’t have to turn into Mr. or Miss socialite, but creating a dynamic social circle should be enjoyable. You’ll be surprised at just how many people are out there who can help you grow and develop yourself; not to mention providing a lot of memories and a good deal of enjoyment along the way.

There was once a time when the earliest I’d ever make it to bed was 1:00am, and if I wasn’t so lucky, it might be somewhere between 2:00 – 3:00am. The morning hours weren’t a time for waking up, but a time for getting into bed. I’d usually wake up the next same day feeling tired, groggy, and sluggish; accomplishing very little and pretty much wasting away my entire day. I missed the early morning hours, which are by far my most productive, and so it felt like the entire day I was playing catch up with the rest of the world. Everyone else had already been up and going, but here I was just getting out of bed.

Look Familiar?

Consciously, I knew that the early morning hours were my most productive, but actually taking advantage of them was what I found difficult. 10:00pm would roll around and instead of winding down for bed, I’d have this urge to stay up late doing absolutely nothing at all. I’d flip through channels on the television, browse the internet and check pointless emails, listen to music, or if all else failed, I’d make a midnight meal and throw in a movie. Although there’s nothing wrong with doing that here and there, by doing that almost every night I was robbing myself of my ability to wake up early; thus losing the morning hours that gave me my biggest boost in productivity.
Of course, there are only so many hours in a day, so it’s easy to counter this argument by saying “well instead of doing that stuff in the morning, why not do it at night?” and that makes sense. Instead of my busiest work getting accomplished in the morning hours, why not do it at night since I seem to be staying up so late? The problem is, when you wake up in the morning your mind and body are refreshed and ready to start the day (assuming you got enough sleep.) However, at night, even after a day of just lazing around the house, your mind and body aren’t nearly as sharp as they are in the morning. I say mind AND body because it doesn’t matter if the work you have to do is physical or mental, it’s still going to be more difficult to accomplish.

Yes, I know plenty of people who work out at night and I’ve done it plenty of times myself; but I can’t say I know too many people who go jogging at 2:00am or start pumping iron at midnight. Your body is just too tired to give it 100% after being used the entire day. Instead of doing those things late at night, it’s much easier to get in the habit of going to bed at that time and doing it first thing when you wake up. Although physical work at night can be tiring, mental work is even more exhausting. Try writing or doing anything that requires a large degree of mental exertion and it can become extremely difficult.

Because of this, I developed what I like to call the 2 Hour Rule. It’s a system that allows you to make the most of your morning hours, getting more accomplished by lunchtime than most people do in an entire day. You can wake up, get your most important tasks wrapped up, get your workout completed, and STILL have time to kill before it’s even noon. It allows you to take advantage of the more productive morning hours and then gives you the rest of the day to enjoy. There are few things better than eating lunch and realizing that you have the rest of the day to do WHATEVER YOU WANT. You don’t have to feel guilty about it either because you’ve already taken care of your work for the day, so it’s not that feeling you get from procrastinating where it looms over everything you do. It’s like going out for the day to play golf, but then realizing that as soon as you’re finished, you have to race home and take care of a project for class or work. What fun is that? Sure, playing golf may take your mind off it temporarily, but it’s hard to fully enjoy things when you know what’s waiting for you at the end of the light. Wouldn’t it be much more enjoyable to instead play golf and then go out with your buddies for dinner afterwards? You can just enjoy the day at a leisurely pace and not have to worry about anything when you get back.
The 2 Hour Rule makes that a reality and it doesn’t follow some complex algorithm or set of rules. It simply states that when you wake up, AFTER eating breakfast, work on your most important piece of work for the next 2 hours straight. I know quite a few people that like to wake up at 5:00am, but for me I find 6:30am to be the most balanced. After I wake up, I go make a nice breakfast and usually by 7:00am I’m ready to get started on whatever it is that I need to do. Using this website as an example, maybe I’ve decided that I want to work on a particular article or brainstorm a list of topics. From 7:00am – 9:00am I would do nothing but write and brainstorm, taking no breaks and not letting any distractions get in front of me. No internet, no television, no cell phone, no radio, no CD’s, nothing. During these morning hours my mind is refreshed, so writing comes much quicker to me than if it were late at night. Once 9:00am rolls around, I take a 30 minute break to go grab a bite to eat or maybe listen to music, and as soon as 9:30am hits I repeat the process until 11:30am.
Let’s assume that I finished writing my article in that first 2 hour block, and so now I’m going to go workout. I start my workout at 9:30am, but it only takes me an hour, meaning I’m finished at 10:30am….now what? If I don’t have anything else to do, then I can call it a day and begin enjoying myself. I’d probably go get a shower and be all ready by 11:00am, meaning that it’s not even lunchtime and I’ve not only worked out, but I’ve also gotten my most important work finished for the day. If I decide to catch a movie with a friend afterwards, I don’t have to think “man, when am I going to find time to get that article written? And will I even be able to get a workout in today?” They’re both already out of the way, and I can spend the rest of the day doing what *I* want to do, not having my schedule dictated by a pile of work waiting for me.

Some people complain about this schedule because they have too much work to be completed in a 4 hour block. They have projects so large that it may take days of straight working to get it accomplished on time, and getting done before noon just isn’t a realistic expectation. I completely understand this, but to make the most of the 2 Hour Rule, you have to integrate it on a daily basis or else you get a huge back-log of work waiting for you. If someone tells me something like that, my first question is “well why are you waiting until now to finally get started on it? If you had starting working on this weeks ago when you got it, putting in 4 hours every morning, it would have been done a long time ago.” You can’t go into this system with a huge pile of work and expect it to miraculously take care of itself. Most of the people I hear complaining about how much work they have to do have waited until the 11’th hour before getting started, meaning their running around franticly trying to finish things up.
The other major point is that you don’t HAVE to stop working after those 2 hour blocks are up. Maybe you procrastinated on a project or maybe you just have a ton of errands to run; but you can still work as long as you’d like. Even if you have finished up all your work, that doesn’t mean you have to lie on the couch and watch television all day. A lot of days I’ll still brainstorm and outline topics for this website, or if I have a huge list of errands to run, I’ll start taking care of those. Just because you CAN be lazy afterwards doesn’t mean you should; and who wants to live a boring life in front of the television all day anyways? The purpose of following the 2 Hour Rule is to give you time to do the things that matter to YOU during the bulk of your day, and not be tied down due to other obligations. Take that class you’ve wanted to take but have never had time to do so, or meet up with an old friend over coffee. The world is at your fingertips, and you can do all of these things without the guilt of having other projects waiting for you when you get home.
I also realize that for most people with full time jobs, this isn’t a system you can implement on a daily basis. Your morning hours are either spent sitting in traffic or working in the office, and that’s perfectly understandable. Even if it’s not something you do on a daily basis, get in the habit of implementing it on the weekends if possible, allowing you to spend most of the day doing what interests you and not being held up by other work.
To summarize what’s been said:
• 6:30am – Wake up, eat breakfast
• 7:00 – 9:00am – Work for 2 hours
• 9:00 – 9:30am – 30 minute break
• 9:30 – 11:30am – Work for 2 more hours
Keep in mind that you don’t always have to finish up your work during these 2 hour blocks. You’ll probably notice you work much more efficiently during these morning hours, and so that’s why the most effort is concentrated at that time. If I’m writing an article for this site and it’s particularly long, I may very well not finish it during the morning, in which case I just wait until the next day to pick things up again. I make sure to take care of any immediate work and to get started on projects early, that way I’m never in a rush to get things done. Why is it so effective for me? Because I practice it EVERY DAY. 7 days a week I wake up early and get started on what needs to be done, so I’m always ahead of the game and never forced to play catch up. Keep in mind too that different time frames may work better for different people. The morning hours are almost always the most productive, but some people may wish to start at 5:00am, while others may wish to start at 8:00am. The choice is up to you, but I’d recommend playing around with it for a little while before settling into one specific time. Even though there are probably a few days here and there where you’ll be out and about late at night, you can still easily follow this system. If you’re out until 2:00am and don’t get to bed until 3:00am, you may not wake up until 10:00am that morning; but it doesn’t mean you can’t be productive. Since your morning hours are mostly spent sleeping instead of working, you may notice it’s not as easy to get things done as it was on other days where you woke up earlier, but you can still get things moving.
So put your morning hours to use so you can enjoy yourself once in a while; stop complaining about having so much work to do and be proactive in how you manage your time. While nothing is ever foolproof, getting into this kind of work habit if you aren’t already will tremendously boost your productivity levels AND leave you with more free time. You’ll notice your days feel much richer and more fulfilling (because they are) and that you’re able to spend a lot more time doing what you want instead of dreading what you don’t want.