This post is part of an ongoing Workflow Series.
- Introduction to my Workflow Series
- Fundamentals of Effective Time Management
- Open Loops and the 2 Minute Rule
- Remember the Milk
- Increase retention and speed up learning
- How to get shit done you don't want to do
If you want to check them out, go ahead, I'll wait.
Everyone has goals they want to accomplish in the near or distant future. This is a very healthy and how life works. Some of these goals may feel out of reach while others you are just too lazy to try.
While pracrastination is likely the biggest barrier to accomplishing your goals, there is a very effective technique to minimize procrastination.
Do something, anything, every day to get yourself closer to your goals.
There it is, that's it. You don't have to read anything else in this post and you are well on your way to accomplishing anything you want in life.
Still here? Ok, I'll give you some more to think about.
One of the biggest reasons people procrastinate is because they don't even know what their goals are or they are too abstract to actually know what what you really want.
For example, a lot of people making money or being rich is one of their main goals. How are you suppose to do this? If I asked you "What's the next thing on your list to do to become rich?" Would you have an answer? Most likely you wouldn't. In fact, you likely have no idea how to even start.
I'm going to go a little off track on my primary purpose of this post. It's really a simple technique and it really doesn't need much explaination anyway.
Before you can actually make progress on any goal, you need to know what the goal really is. You need to know what you need to do to get there.
Take a moment and think about three things you want to accompolish in the next 6-12 months. Write them down, I'm not going anywhere.
Got it?
Look at these goals, do you know exactly what you are trying to accompolish or is it just a general idea? If you cannot see a clear path to accomplishing your three goals, give them more thought and try to narrow them down to a distinct accomplishment.
Once you have done that, take each of these three goals and try to think of something you can do in the next 24 hours that will get you closer to these goals. It doesn't have to be big, just something that will move you closer. Start small and in time you will be making much bigger steps.
One of the things people do is try to catch up on months and years of procrastination, unless your goal is ultra time sensitive, start out small. Just do something, that's the most critical thing here. If you always carve out time every day to make some progress, you will start tackling the low hanging fruit and discover the real obstacles.
It is said it typically takes about 30 days to break or form a new habbit. Once you start making these baby steps, you will find it easier each day.
One of the biggest hurdles you will find is you don't know what these baby steps are. Spend a few minutes thinking about it, tackle one at a time. The more you shape your goals into specifically what you are trying to accomplish, the easier you will find making steps to it.
It's not always easy, some days will be easy to find what you want to do or even doing the thing, some days will be hard to figure out what you want to do but easy to do the thing, and some days it is easy to figure out what you want to do but hard to do it.
Once you make some progress on this, start to look at goals further out like 5 or 10 years. Some of these long term goals you are going to want to look at weekly steps rather than daily. You may even want to zoom out a month for more complicated goals. Then take that month and break it down further to daily or weekly steps.
Now I know I exagerated a bit on the title, I won't expect everyone who wants to be an astronaut to become one following this guide. For most people, it will help a lot.
If procastination is your biggest hurdle, look into the Pomodoro Technique.
If focus is your biggest hurdle, I would still recommend the Pomodoro Technique but also consider some brain storming techniques to identify what you should be focusing on.
If you took nothing from this, just do something tomorrow that will help you accomplish what you want to achieve, then keep doing that each day.
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