The Secrets to Achieving Goals
Now that the New Year is behind us, and the gym isn’t so crowded any more, it made me realize that a lot of people have a hard time achieving goals they’ve set for themselves. In order to make continual progress on your significant results, use these three techniques from the Empowered ProductivityTM System.
Photo by Shawn P Thomas
Keep A List
Lists are important! You can’t remember everything so you need to keep important things out of your head. In addition to your to-do list, have a “Project” list, containing your big-picture objectives. A list that would be useful if your boss or your business partner came to you and said, “What are you working on?” This is a supplement to a list for the specific action steps, such as those outlined below.
Be Specific
If your New Year’s resolutions are written in broad terms, such as, “Lose weight,” “Get healthier,” or “Grow the company,” you’ve set yourself up to fail. Because how do you know when you’ve achieved those things? For achieving goals, first you have to turn them into a “Project.” A Project has a specific beginning and end. So “Grow the company” might become “Add two new salespeople by third quarter.” Then you must ask yourself, “What’s the very first thing I need to do to move that project forward?” Specific action steps might be: “Review the budget to allocate the funds,” or “Request meeting with Sales VP to discuss resource allocation.” The idea is that if you had five minutes, and wanted to move that project forward, you’d know exactly what you’d need to do. If you don’t have a specific action identified, that task is less likely to get done, and as a result, that project is less likely to move forward.
Control Your Attention
How much of your day is spent being reactive? If you often feel like the day flew by but you didn’t make any real progress on your plans, you might be allowing too many distractions to steal your attention. If you’re always distracted, you’ll get used to being always distracted, and you’ll find yourself bored in the “quiet times.” And as a result, you’ll unintentionally seek out the distraction! Ensure that you have times in your day when you can support your focus. Put your devices on Do Not Disturb, close your email, and spend time working on the things that are important to you – find your flow!
If you find that your aren’t making as much progress on your significant results as you would like, the Empowered Productivity System can get you back on track achieving goals that are important to you. These three tips should get your started. If there is anything I can do to support you, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Thanks for reading!
