I’ve known this all along; super-exec­u­tives are super­stars!  I joined the c‑suite as an exec­u­tive assis­tant very ear­ly on in my career.  I spent entire days for years and years next to start-up founders, CEOs and ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists.  And though I learned every­thing I know about suc­cess from watch­ing them close­ly, I made a huge, huge mis­take by not tak­ing full advan­tage of my influ­ences in my ear­ly, ear­ly twen­ties.

Had I paid more atten­tion, I would have zero school debt, trans­ferred to an Ivy League, instead of a CSU (which by the way is get­ting worse) and with the IPO mon­ey I made in the ear­ly 2000’s (which totaled a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars) I could have pur­chased and paid off (by now) a home in the heart of it all.

Instead, I spent the mon­ey with­in a year (it was a good year), accu­mu­lat­ed some school debt and though I feel I am where I am today, and I think the way I think today because of what I was exposed to ear­ly on in my career, I know I missed some­thing.

The 5% know what they’re doing, yet they have no more time dur­ing the day than you or I do. Now this post is about pro­pelling your career to the top.  It is refer­ring to how valu­able we are to the mar­ket­place, not to how valu­able we are to our fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties and friends; that’s a sep­a­rate mat­ter.  This is a con­ver­sa­tion about your career and your suc­cess.

“The future influ­ences the present just as much as the past.” Friedrich Niet­zsche

How many of you have these types of regrets in life?  It’s not too late to change.

Lis­ten loud­ly: if you’re going to work for the best, you bet­ter be pick­ing up on their good habits because one thing is for sure:  Super-exec­u­tives (you know, those cool, calm and col­lect­ed indi­vid­u­als who are high­ly suc­cess­ful, make tremen­dous con­tri­bu­tions to our econ­o­my, and have ample time to live and enjoy the ‘good’ life) know and do things you aren’t pick­ing up on.  And it’s right in front, smack­ing you in the face.

Pay atten­tion, this is all going to change.  I don’t care what you do for them.  I don’t care if you’re the recep­tion­ist, nan­ny, house­keep­er, gar­den­er, project man­ag­er, tutor, direc­tor of oper­a­tions or per­son­al assis­tant.  It does not mat­ter what you do for them or their com­pa­ny, all I care about is that you pay atten­tion to their lifestyle.

As you’re clean­ing their homes, don’t just day dream about hav­ing a home like that one day, pay atten­tion to what they do, and how they do it.  Pay real­ly close atten­tion to their val­ues and how they spend their mon­ey. They are no bet­ter than you and I, they just make bet­ter choic­es.  They make sim­ple, tac­ti­cal choic­es that you and I can apply to our man­age­ment style as well.  The clos­er you work with them, the more insight you have into their lives.  It baf­fles me to see peo­ple work­ing for so many years along­side these high­ly effec­tive homo sapi­ens and yet, they nev­er pick up on their habits.  You are doing a huge dis­ser­vice to you and your fam­i­ly.

So your assign­ment for today, beau­ti­ful peo­ple, involves a lit­tle research in the form of direct obser­va­tion.  I want you to pay proac­tive atten­tion to what your exec­u­tive does. I want you to log how she spends her day.  I can bet you all the mon­ey in my bank account (which could have com­pound­ed in record time had I paid clos­er atten­tion) that this lumi­nary work­sout 4–5 days per week, eats a light lunch–probably a sal­ad and drinks water…but find out for your­self.  I’ve spent over a decade with them, and am doing all I can to con­tin­ue to sur­round myself with these high­ly suc­cess­ful indi­vid­u­als in hopes that one day some­one will use me as a case study and ask, “I won­der how she does it?”

This sto­ry is for the indi­vid­ual who wants to pro­pel her career to the top, who is inter­est­ed in learn­ing how suc­cess­ful peo­ple use orga­ni­za­tion and time man­age­ment to help launch them­selves to high­er lev­els of suc­cess.  Is your study-group laser focused? Are these indi­vid­u­als deci­sive?  Inher­ent in their style is their sure abil­i­ty to pri­or­i­tize and focus on their top 3 goals for the day until they are com­plet­ed.  What’s the on-going theme?  As you write in your notes, think of ways you can begin to imme­di­ate­ly apply some of their (study as many suc­cess­ful peo­ple as you can) tac­tics to ben­e­fit your own life.  Begin now, now is as good a time as any.