Do you allow yourself to get bogged down in petty things? If you find yourself wasting time on office politics or personal gossip; or if you are always dashing from one task or person to another, you won’t have the energy to play at the top level.

Let’s discuss some basic ideas to refine your performance and create sound results – both in your personal and professional life:

1. Be transparent.

Organize your life around transparency. It will allow you to stop playing the guessing game with yourself and others around you, which can take up a lot of unnecessary energy. If you are not being transparent, you encourage others to not be transparent, resulting in “corridor” talk and even back-biting. This is not an environment you want to be part of because it is counterproductive. Transparency, on the other hand, encourages others to be transparent too. If there is a sensitive challenge you are grappling with, share that challenge appropriately. You will find that others will be feeling the same tension. By sharing it, you will have eased the tension for you and others around you. It is not easy to be transparent, especially if you believe that transparency does not work. However, once you experience the value of transparency, you will not want to go back to your old ways. Transparency takes your discussions to the next level.

2. Simplify.

Life can be complex as you try to juggle family, work, profession, personalities, priorities, and schedules. How do you simplify your life?

• Build healthy relationships with important people in your life—children, spouse, partner, internal and external customers.
• Do important things first—make sure you have time for exercise, quiet time, family time, reading, and relationship building. Focus on top priority things
• Celebrate small successes.
• Count your blessings.

By taking these few steps, you bring simplicity to complexity and give yourself a head start to balancing the multifaceted demands in your life.

3. Be non-judgmental.

A lot of energy gets unnecessarily expended in envy, jealousy, and judgment of others. When you take an approach of “malice toward none,” you free yourself from negative energy. These liberating feelings can be invested in creative and innovative work. The judgment of others is really the judgment of self. What you see in others is a reflection of what you see in yourself.