A High-Flyers Guide to Self-Development. Four ways to lift your performance. Self-development isn’t just for end-of-year appraisals. By continually building your knowledge and skills, you can face new challenges and embrace opportunities as they come up. Here are four tips to get started. One. Reflect. What do you want to do more of. Where can you improve. To find out, try self-reflection. A little goes a long way. In a study of call-Center workers, those who reflected for fifteen minutes a day about what they learned performed twenty three percent better after just 10 days. [1] Keep a journal to capture thoughts and feelings while they’re fresh in your mind. Don’t like scribbling. Try a journal app such as Day One, Journey or Dabble.me. Two. Keep sight of your goals. Long-term goals are great for pushing yourself. But they can be daunting. So, Break down big goals into more manageable, short-term ones.	Tick off a to-do list for a burst of dopamine, the happy hormone. [2] Three. Stay on track. A poll of one thousand people on personal development courses found that ninety six percent of efforts fail. [3] To improve your chances of success. Set a deadline. To boost on-the-job learning, impose a deadline to help you focus. Better yet, get a colleague to do it for you. Studies show externally set deadlines motivate us more than self-imposed ones. [4] Find a mentor. A coach, mentor or goal buddy can hold you accountable to meet your goals. Leaders who give weekly updates on their progress are seventy percent more successful. [5] Try high-stakes networking. A networking events, most of us mingle with people we know. Sociologist Brian Uzzi recommends highstakes activities that connect you with diverse others. Think team sports or volunteering. [6] Track your learning. It’s easy to lose sight of your progress. So, record those webinars with apps such as Screencast, use your toolkit’s Bookmark feature and store news stories as a magazine in Flipboard. Four. Take stock.It’s key to regularly review your progress. Ask yourself. Did you achieve what you set out to. What new skills are you using on the job. Why did that goal slip away from you. Now jump back to step one to get the answer and keep on learning.

[1] Jennifer Porter, ‘Why You Should Make Time for Self-Reflection (Even If You Hate Doing It). (2017). Available at: https://hbr.org/2017/03/why-you-should-make-time-for-self-reflection-even-if-you-hate-doing-it (accessed 30 July 2019).
[2] Dustin Wax, ‘The Science of Setting Goals (And How It Affects Your Brain)’. (2019). Available at: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/the-science-of-setting-goals.html (accessed 30 July 2019).
[3] Srinivas Rao, ‘Why 96 Percent of Personal Development Efforts Fail’ (2017). Available at: https://medium.com/@skooloflife/why-96-percent-of-personal-development-efforts-fail-63a0990b7c1d (accessed 30 July 2019).
[4] Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch, ‘Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Precommitment’ (2002). Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9280.00441 (accessed 1 August 2019).
[5] Ellie Kaplan, ‘How to Stay Insanely Self-Motivated, According to Science’ (2017). Available at: https://medium.com/the-mission/how-to-create-insane-change-in-your-life-according-to-science-bb3cddd1022 (accessed 30 July 2019).
[6] David Burkus, ‘Go Ahead, Skip That Networking Event’ (2018). Available at: https://hbr.org/2018/05/go-ahead-skip-that-networking-event (accessed 30 July 2019).

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