6 habits that will make you a better person: which habits are worth starting?

If you look in all kinds of dictionaries, you can form the concepts of amateur and professional in any business as:

amateur – a person who is passionate about an activity and engages in it for pleasure or to develop skills;
professional – a person engaged in an activity in which he is competent, effective, experienced and from which he receives income.

Marina Mayorova

Gestalt therapist, consulting psychologist, master of neurolinguistic programming.

How does an amateur differ from a professional?

The world-famous principle of 10 thousand hours described by Malcolm Gladwell states that about three hours of intensive work every day for 10 years turns an amateur into a professional.

If you look at prominent figures in different professional spheres, you will easily find confirmation of this. It is important to understand what fills this time and what habits help to realize this metamorphosis:

Understanding the goal as a point of end result per unit of time. You should clearly understand what result you should have in a month, six months, a year, etc;
a clear, working system of planning your time, not allowing procrastination;
management of your resources – physical, intellectual, communication, time, financial, material;
the ability to recover after intensive work;
reflexion – a very important habit of professionals to analyze what you do and form conclusions that increase your efficiency;
strong motivation – an intrinsic drive that is born from the intersection of your values and the rewards you receive for results.

Learn from the best in the business. Sharing expertise and learning always helps you gain fresh insights and increase your efficiency and productivity. For this, form an environment that will help you grow.

Don’t forget about succession as well. Form a circle of people to whom you can pass on your unique knowledge and for whom you are an expert.

Elizabeth Filonenko

psychologist, 16 years of practice, author of books on the psychology of relationships and child rearing.

Professionalism is first and foremost the hours you have spent studying a subject and developing key skills in your chosen field. Even if you have mediocre abilities in a certain case, spending several years on conscientious study of the subject, you will get the result and become a strong specialist.

But even brilliant abilities will not save if you are going to study the subject on the tops, haphazardly, from time to time, replacing true professionalism with a beautiful facade of artificially inflated image.

Examples of fake professionals are now very many, and people are less and less trusting the beautiful picture, less willing to fall for the spectacular PR, realizing that behind it is more the work of a marketer than the merits of the professional himself. The more widespread becomes the opportunity to learn any skill “in three months from scratch without boring theory”, the more wary of any specialists will be.

Don’t avoid new experiences. Fear that you are an imposter, will fail and embarrass yourself. Experience, including mistakes and the ability to learn from them, is an essential, perhaps the most important, trait of a true professional. Experience is the golden core of professionalism, make daily contributions to it.

Don’t be afraid to work without direct pay. Often we regret efforts because they are not paid enough. But rewards come in more than just material. Through practice, you pump up your skills. Don’t skimp on effort. The more you invest in your profession, the more you get.

Do not refuse fees. Don’t be afraid to ask for adequate payment for your work. Psychological readiness to be rewarded for work is the hallmark of a confident professional. This point seems at first glance to contradict the previous one. But it’s really a matter of balance: find a level of experience work that will encourage your growth but won’t turn you into a volunteer or amateur.