the right notes are played in the right order and carried out successfully that you have a song.
It’s the same with your business. It’s not just the steps or tasks completed that will lead you to great accomplishments; when these items are completed in harmony, you will encounter success. With practice this is possible for anyone, and this book will be one of the sources to guide you through that process.
“The key is not to prioritize your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” ~Stephen Covey
“Paying attention to short-term thinking (and thinkers) is only going to keep you relevant for a short time.” ~Steve Jobs
Key Points from Chapter 2
Set ambitious goals
Don’t let the fear of failure limit the magnitude of your goals
Set small daily goals in order to reach bigger, long-term ones
Suggestions for Further Reading
Goals: How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible, Brian Tracy
Make Success Measurable: A Mindbook-Workbook for Setting Goals and Taking Action, Douglas K. Smith
Planning for Your future – Organizing Your Life
Statistics show that people who write their goals down are eleven times more likely to achieve their goals than those who don’t.
Writing your goals down is simple, but many people neglect to do it. You can set yourself apart from the masses by taking this one simple step. If you do this one thing, you ignite the catalyst that will fuel your path to success. If most people knew what a significant and powerful experience it was to just write down their goals, they’d be sprinting to get a pen; but whether it’s laziness, indifference, or ignorance, very few people take that initiative.
Once you have a big “Possible” goal set up, it’s time to break that up into small tasks. Tasks such as, “develop an advertising campaign,” “’roll out a new product,” or “make a brand for myself.”
The problem most people have is that they think this is the place to start from, but that’s far from the truth. Each “task” must be divided into steps or the exact actions that you have to take in order to complete that task. If you can’t complete the step in an hour, you’re still working on something too general. Break it up as many times as you have to. The smaller the step, the greater the chance is that you’ll do it and complete it.
Now line up all of the steps needed to complete one task and make a checklist. As you accomplish each item, check it off on the list. There is something about physically crossing something off that increases productivity and delivers a specific sense of satisfaction. The mind recognizes that you’re making progress, and in turn makes more progress.
Remember you’re not prioritizing your schedule. Doing this takes you out of the driver’s seat so that your tasks are demanding to be prioritized. When you schedule your priorities, you are putting yourself back in control. Figure out what needs to be done and do it.
After a period of checking items off consistently, it will get tiresome. The tasks on your lists might seem menial and inconsequential. When these moments of resistance crop up, it’s time to take out your initial long-term goal. Focus on this for a few minutes. After all, this is why you’re doing all of these small things in the first place. Get yourself recharged and inspired again. Once you get your mind focused back on your vision, the mundane stuff will get easier and seem purposeful. Anytime you notice yourself becoming resistant to the daily minutia, pull out the overall goal that you’ve set and reflect on the reasons you want it and how it will feel to attain it. This is sure to get you excited and pumped up again and give you that little added boost to take the next step.
Distractions will come from all directions, but your job as a businessperson is to maintain focus. Schedule an hour to make all of your calls, and when you’re done, put the phone out of the way. If it rings outside of that hour don’t answer. Let it go to voicemail.
Email is perhaps the biggest time drainer. If you can save your email answering until after your day gets going, you’ll get more of what YOU need to get done before replying or reacting to what OTHERS need done. Once you’ve completed a few items on your checklist, then start thinking about your inbox. There are so many emails and links ready to set you off into an entirely different direction. One thing leads to the next and before you know it, it’s lunch and you’ve yet to do anything productive. If it’s essential that you touch base with your email, PRIORITIZE. Deal with the emails that need immediate attention and then get out of there. You can’t expect to be successful because you answered a bunch of emails. Remember your goal, your tasks and your steps…you’ve got work to do!
Another big time drainer is food and coffee. It can be hard to get back into the groove after lunch. I’ve found that the best way to make sure you get off the ground running again is to plan something simple to do just before you leave for lunch, something so simple, it will take you ten minutes. Then do it, and notice how easily your mindset switches back into business mode.
When you can collect the minutes that others usually waste, your productivity will increase drastically; and when your productivity increases, your goal gets closer and closer.
As you’re working through your lists, circumstances are going to change. Problems will come up that will force you to alter your priorities, add new ones, and scratch others. But as long as you keep your eyes on the prize, you’re certain to blaze a trail of success toward your ultimate goal.
It’s one thing to make your to-do lists and start checking items off, but it’s equally as important to schedule some breaks. That’s right. Schedule them! If you don’t schedule them, your breaks are bound to be the first thing you’ll skip. Contrary to what you might think, breaks are like the gas stations on the side of the highway. Eventually you’re going to run out of fuel. Without that recharge, you won’t make it to your goal. So take the breaks. You’ll be more productive with it than without it.
You can decide what and when these breaks are based on your work style. If you’re not the kind of person who can work for long stretches of time without getting restless, schedule smaller breaks more often. If you find yourself more productive if you’re not interrupted, work straight through a long block of time and follow it with a longer break.
It does no good to work yourself to death. Successful people know that being successful doesn’t just mean being successful in business. Would you really want to even be successful if this was the case? Successful people are well-rounded. There are four sections of your life in which you need to be fulfilled: Financial, Personal, Mental, and Spiritual.
Financial – We all need money to survive. That’s a given. But we need greater amounts of money to do greater work. There is so much in this world to inspire, challenge, and excite our minds, but a lot of it becomes closed off to us when we don’t have the money to open these doors. In order to travel, educate ourselves, help the less fortunate, nurture our health, and experience greatness, we need money. Money doesn’t bring happiness, but it provides the resources for us to find greater depths of happiness. Money is a door opener, a tool that can open us up to all of life’s possibilities. It’s entirely possible to be happy with little money, but in order to experience the full bounty of what
