You can have the greatest attitude, a strong telephone presence, and the best recruiting and client-development skills. But if you lack strong work habits, you are destined to failure.

Work habits are comprised of the following seven components:

First, the Plan
The plan is how you are budgeting your time. Your time is fixed, limited, and deserves to be allocated in blocks of time. Think of your day starting at 4 pm. You spend the time late in the afternoon divvying up the hours of the next day into segments where each hourly focus is fixated, with laser-beam intensity, on one type of activity. If you spend the block of time on one type of activity (such as only recruiting calls from 9 to 11, or only qualifying calls from 11 to 12) then you synergize your efforts and increase your effectiveness.

Second, the Goals
Start each day by finding the answer to this question: What are the two or three things that I need to accomplish today in order to consider it a successful day? Write them down. Congratulations, champ. Statistically, you have just tripled the odds of your achieving those goals because you invested seven seconds in scribbling them on a sheet of paper. Personally, I write these daily targets on a dry erase board next to my desk, where I also have my ultimate career goal, my annual billing goal, my monthly goals, and weekly targets.