Action leads to traction!

“If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything” – George McFly – (Back to the Future)

In 2008, my wife came to me was full of emotion to say, I am going to get my PhD.  Although I laughed, I fully supported her. After all,  I expected nothing less from my professional student!  As of this week, 7 years later, she completed her goal.  During the process, she discovered exactly what I am about to tell you.  Simply setting your goals and staying focused will not do it alone.  It takes work.  It takes action!  It takes movement every day.  Make the movement that will get you closer to achieving your goals.

Robert Kiyosaki spoke about this concept in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad.  He calls it, minding your own business.  This entails doing the work necessary to completing your goals including setting goals, staying focused and taking action!

How do you know what actions to take?  This is where your baby steps come in to play.    Breaking your big picture goal into smaller chunks will allow you to set your weekly actions to move you to success.  So here is what I want you to do:

  1. Take a look at your goal.
  2. Break your goal into baby steps. ( What actions can you take today to get going)
  3. Take action!

The key here is to take action!  Repeat this process every day. And you will be well on your way. Remember your actions leads to traction.

Resources

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Staying focused

Yes, We all do have the same 24-hours in a day.  But regardless of what we do we spend most of our time putting out fires.  And the things that we want to do end up on the back burner, and many times forgotten about.

I had an instructor tell me that If you don’t fill your day with tasks to accomplish your goals, someone else will fill your day for you to accomplish their goals.  And no matter how hard you try, It is difficult to get your life back once someone else has control of it. That is why setting and accomplishing your goals needs to be a priority in our lives. Setting goals gives your life purpose. You are much more likely to achieve a well-defined goal than you are without one. As Earl Nightingale says in The Strangest Secret “… the man who has not goal, who doesn’t know where he is going and whose thought must therefore be thoughts of confusion and anxiety and fear and worry, becomes what he thinks about.” In other words If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. With your goals at the forefront of your mind, you will have a driving force that will help you to succeed at any task.

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It is not however, just a matter of setting goals. You have to take action as well. You have to move toward the accomplishment of your goals with such an intense focus, that you have now choice but to succeed. How do you get that focused? I’ll tell you. But first, I am assuming you know how to set “SMART” goals, If I am mistaken, and you need a quick lesson on goal setting, feel free to read my blog post, where I give you instructions on how to set Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals.

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Now that you have your goals, Let’s work on helping you achieve intense focus, to see it through to completion. Here are three tips that I use every day to maintain focus on whatever it is that I am trying to achieve.

  1. Have an image of what it is you want to do! Mental pictures are good. But If at all possible turn your mental picture into a physical representation of what it is you want to accomplish. When I first imagined this blog, It was a part of a bigger picture for me becoming an entrepreneur. Since I did not have a physical image of the business I wanted, I drew a flowchart detailing exactly how I wanted the company to look. I keep that flowchart readily available so I can see it for inspiration. This image keeps me motivated to move every day towards making this picture a reality. You can do the same or something similar. If you don’t have a picture of your goal, create one. Either way, the point here is to have an image so that you can look at it for inspiration and motivation to achieve it.
  2. Break your goal into baby steps! One of the best tools that I have ever learned with regards to goal accomplishment is the use of baby steps. Although I cannot claim responsibility for creating this concept, there have been multiple renditions of the baby steps used over the years, their implementation will prove invaluable. The movie Analyze This with Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro, was probably not the first movie to use the baby steps, But I must admit, I didn’t notice them there. I originally noticed the use of the baby steps from Dave Ramsey’s book the Total Money Makeover. The baby steps simply break your larger goals into smaller, manageable tasks. By doing this, it makes your goal seem more attainable. Every step that you complete brings you closer to achieving your goals.
  3. Schedule time to work on your goal. I don’t mean this figuratively. literally take out your calendar, look at the blank time slots and write down ( or type) WORK ON MY BABY STEPS!. I don’t know about you, but when there is an empty space on my calendar, I usually fill it with things that may hinder my productivity. Usually Facebook, Twitter or email. I tend to look at those free slots as times to take a break. If you have to schedule your breaks as well. This way you are more likely to stay focused until then.  Don’t be surprised or get frustrated if you have to move this around to “put out fires”. This slot on your calendars is not to be so firm that you put everything off to get it done. It also cannot be so rigid, that you blow it off when it comes up. It is there to serve as a reminder to you that you have something to do where ever it is on your calendar.

The longer you stay focused on things other than achieving your goal the more difficult it will be to achieve it. Here is what I want you to do.  Turn that mental picture that you have into a physical image, keep it where you can see it everyday.  Use it to motivate you.  Break your large tasks into smaller tasks to make them more manageable, and schedule the time to complete each task. No matter what you are attempting to do, use these tips to help you to stay the course until you achieve success.

We all have the same 24 hours in a day!

Lately, I’ve been a bit preoccupied with ensuring all of my daily goals are met. Each morning I get up, I write down what it is that I want to get accomplished for the day. Then I set out to do just that. As you may have guessed, during the day,  things do pop up that have greater priority than tasks that I have scheduled. Therefore, I am constantly reorganizing my schedule. I once heard someone call days like this their “Fire Fighter” days. But regardless of what fires I put out. In order for my day to feel like I have accomplished something. My list of priorities needed to be met.

Last night was such a night. With all other priorities completed the only thing left for me to do was exercise. My run for the day was a 5-mile run (2 warm up, 2 fast pace, and 1 cool down). But, when I got home from a long day of work, My children requested a full evening of my attention, the weather seemed to have taken a turn for the worst, and my energy level was rapidly depleting.

After I got my children ready for bed I took a look outside. The roads were pitch black and the rain was coming down harder. I was just about to turn in for the night when I heard a little voice in my head saying “You have failed.”  With that, I put on my running shoes and a raincoat, and I hit the streets.

running_in_the_rain1 hour 1 minutes and a few seconds later, although everything in me said go home and go to bed,  my run was complete. And everything I had set out to do for the day was done.  I was not a failure! I didn’t mind that the time was four minutes to midnight when I returned home.  Nor did it matter that all everyone, I came in contact with during the run was looking at me like I was crazy,  I had succeeded in accomplishing all my goals.

Here is my point. Many people go through their day without an idea of what they want to accomplish. They usually end their days feeling like they have not done anything worth their time. They usually ignore or silence that little voice in their head with various forms of distractions, and wake up the next morning still not wanting to face another day with nothing to show for it.  I often hear Dan Miller (48 Days to the work you love) say “we all have the same 24 hours in a day”, If we don’t fill that time with tasks that make us productive then someone else will fill it for us.  Don’t spend your day making someone else’s dream come true.  Set daily goals for yourself. And no matter how long it takes, complete those goals before the end of the day.  How you use your 24 hours, will determine how accomplished you feel at the end of the day.