The difference between successful people and highly successful people

What does it mean to be successful?

Most people strive for success in their working life, and are constantly in pursuit of the next promotion, the next client, or the next pay raise.

People often take pride in saying "I'm so, so busy at work!" as if busy is automatically equivalent to successful.

We often mistake intensity for productivity and satisfaction.

But if we examine the very successful people of the business world (think Shark Tank), there are often surprising differences between the successful and the highly successful powerhouses we all admire.

The Myth of ON

There is a myth in our working culture telling us that successful people are constantly on. They wake early, rarely vacation, and spend every hour blazing a trail to their goal. Whenever someone asks for something, they deliver above and beyond expectation. How do they do it?

The truth is, one can only last so long at a breakneck pace. Burn out is increasingly common among people who dedicate their entire lives to their career.

If I Can Do It, I Should

Highly successful people never shove something into their schedule just because they think they can make it work. They are actually incredibly selective about the commitments they take on.

Take it from Warren Buffet:

"The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything."

Very successful people are aware of their limitations. They realize that if they say yes to something, it will inevitably take away from something else.

Who can think well and solve problems creatively with a mile-long to do list? Saving brainpower for the more important priorities is important to the very successful, and is what allows them to attain such high levels of achievement in their fields.

Sleep Deprivation Is Not A Trophy

"I only sleep four hours a night!" is often upheld as an impressive achievement. Anyone who is so busy must be a high-achiever, right?

Wrong. Anyone who is so busy that they only get half a night's sleep is not good at managing their time. A full night's sleep refreshes the mind, for better performance in the morning. Elite violinists, for example, practice smarter, not harder, than their lesser achieving counterparts.

The business of hard-to-do work is much different than hard work. If you're constantly running on fumes from sleep deprivation, how can you expect to accomplish difficult, complex tasks? You'll end up in zombie mode, and zombies are not known for their high level of achievement.

Focus On The Essentials

Highly successful people easily delineate what is most important, and focus on those items exclusively. They ask, "What is essential?" "What can I eliminate?"

Popular thought would suggest they are lazy, but by working smarter, more can be achieved.

Essentialism eliminates the mindless, repetitive tasks that distract us from our real goals.  In "The 4-Hour Workweek," Tim Ferriss outlines how he outsourced his life and automated his income to create a life of freedom for himself.

Ferriss' goal was to eliminate the need for a 40-hour grind, and create mobility that would allow him to travel as he pleased and spend time pursuing his astonishing array of interests.

Trim The Fat

You may not want to streamline your job to 4 hours a week … but what can you do to eliminate some of the radio static that interferes with your working life? What extraneous factors have interfered with achieving your goals?

Maybe it's a boss who constantly interrupts you for personal assistance, or an unkempt home that is constantly distracting you from your freelance work. Delegate, streamline, and eliminate so you can concentrate on what's most important to you.

This article originally appeared at Knote. Copyright 2015. Follow Knote on Twitter.

Read more: http://knote.com/2015/01/26/the-difference-between-successful-and-very-successful-people/#ixzz3Vuz7plIX

How to talk to anyone at a networking event

You get to an event filled with impressive people you normally don't have the chance to speak with. You'd like to pick their brains and maybe even arrange a coffee meeting to discuss ideas.

The only problem is you've never met any of these people before, and you're terrified of making an awkward first impression.

First of all, lighten up, says master networker Jon Levy, and take comfort in knowing there are tactics you can use to make your next networking event not only worth your time but enjoyable.

Levy is an independent marketing consultant who has built the Influencers, a network of more than 400 notable people who have attended one of his private dinner parties or TED-conference-like "Salons" in his sprawling New York apartment.

Levy started building his network without having a powerful or high-profile position at a prominent company. He has developed strategies to meet people like celebrities, executives, and Nobel laureates and begin professional relationships with them.

He breaks down how to start, hold, and end a conversation in a room full of strangers without, hopefully, making a fool of yourself:

Have a topic of conversation ready.

Levy has a topic ready to fill in moments of uncomfortable silence that arise between people who don't know much about one another. "I always have a story of something I've been doing recently or a book that I've been reading," he says.

"Otherwise I hate the 'interview' setting, which is what happens when it's like, 'So what do you do? I do this. What do you do?' That's sharing facts, not insights. It's not connecting," he says.

Tell compelling stories and make yourself interesting.

You should strive to be memorable when you're meeting new people, and the best way to do so is through good storytelling. When you tell a story, make sure it has a clear point and a punch line, whether a takeaway or a joke.

Most people just aren't interesting in the way they communicate, Levy says. He thinks Americans in particular apply their efficient approach at work to how they meet people, talking in boring, direct ways about themselves.

A good way to avoid the so-called "interview" approach is to stop using talking about your job as a crutch. Levy has his dinner guests spend most of the evening refraining from discussing any aspect of their occupation, and he encourages Salon guests to do the same so that they can get to know one another personally.

End conversations gracefully.

"I used to be absolutely awful, really awkward, at ending conversations," Levy says, laughing. "The last moments of a conversation will define how people remember you, so you want to get really good at a solid ending," instead of being rudely (or strangely) abrupt.

Levy says he always takes an extra beat to make eye contact with the person with whom he has finished speaking so it doesn't seem as if he's running away.

Be open.

If you'd like to build relationships with people you admire, you can't let your ego get in the way, Levy says. It's a simple fact of life that your personality won't vibe with everyone else's, and that may mean you discover that a childhood hero doesn't particularly like you.

Move on, Levy says. Don't waste your time trying to convince a restrained person that you're actually great when you could instead be meeting plenty of other interesting people.

"One of the fundamental issues that we face as people is we are acutely aware of the things we tell ourselves to be aware of and then are aware of virtually nothing else," Levy says. "So we tend to overvalue specific people or experiences. And when you realize the diversity of exceptional human beings out there and opportunities and business deals and everything, you're going to realize there are a lot more options than you're giving credit to."