Self-discipline, Goals and Being Busy in 2013
The Illusion of Being Busy…
William James:
“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task!”
We love to be busy! We feel good when we are busy, but that is not the same as being productive. People use being busy as an excuse for never finishing things so then they can’t “fail”… they can say, ‘Well I would have made my website a success but I’ve been so busy I just haven’t had time to work on it’.
People have now taken that phrase and realized how true it is. If you have a long time to complete a web or SEO project then it will take you that long to complete it, yet if something comes up and you find your time is cut short by an emergency etc. then you will get it done in the new shorter deadline.
The shorter deadline forces you to focus more, to cut out any superfluous activities and get the job done.
In order to STOP “BEING BUSY” and start working, you must set up your goals!
Setting up Your Goals!
Goals are what separate the huge successes from the huge failures. Here is one diagram (The success indicator) about the losers and the productive people and their difference:
- If you don’t have a way to measure your productivity and don’t have goals you have to reach, then how do you know how well you are doing from day to day?
- If you don’t have goals for the day, week or month then what will push you to give just that bit more effort each week?
It is imperative that you start to set goals in your business so you can see where you are going, think of it like a race without a finish line. We’ll be using the “Success Planner” and “Project Planner” to get you going with this.
Download these two .PDF files and print them right away!
- The ‘Success Planner’ helps you prioritize your day and set small achievable goals for each day which lead to bigger goals for the week.
- The ‘Project Planner’ helps you create an achievable plan to follow to get the result you want from the project.
Project Planner
Harvey Mackay:
“Failures don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.”
First you need to use the project planners, have one for each project you are working on. Now think of one and choose a goal and a time line. Let’s assume you have an affiliate review website up and running that doesn’t really make you any money, then maybe the task is in 3 months to have it up to $1400 a month. Now I want you to break down that goal into a series of smaller goals which you write in your “Project Planner”.
It might be ‘write 50 pages of content’, ‘install opt-in form to collect names’, ‘drive traffic by writing 20 articles and submitting to directories’.
Make them specific and measurable, so not ‘write more content’ as that is not measurable. Actually give something you can check.
Don’t worry if you don’t know everything you need to put in there yet, just put some steps down and you can add more later. Once you have done that for all of them then you are ready for the next worksheet – the Success Planner!
Success Planner
Eva Young:
“To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.”
‘Success Planner’ is a sheet for every day usage. You put down three tasks to be completed for the day, and then you put them into order of difficulty – why?
Because you are supposed to do the hardest first! If you do the easiest first then it will sap your time and your energy and you might not find time to do the most difficult, if you do that first you’ll often find the other tasks are a breeze in comparison and you get everything done as long as you successfully complete that first one.
2 ways to get yourself to do the most difficult task are:
- Promise yourself a reward for after! Whatever it takes to get you to do that first task!
- Don’t think about it, just do it, seriously if you think about how hard it will be and how you need to do loads of things then you will be “frozen in the headlights” and you won’t begin. Yet if you jump straight in and start to take action and think things through as you get to them, then once you have started it is much easier to cope with.
Once you have done a task you tick it off which is very satisfying, then you move straight onto the next. If you don’t complete a task then it goes onto the next day without fail, until it gets done!
Here is one motivational video for your success!
The idea of this article is to make sure you have good energy levels, make sure you have daily and longer-term goals and ways of measuring both when they are finished and how much progress you are making!
You need to make sure you are squeezing as much out of every work day as possible by:
- Giving yourself tight deadlines
- Batching your work
- Cutting out interruptions
- Stamping out procrastination
- Make sure you don’t burn yourself out!
Success is… (from the funny perspective):
Now, serious!
Start off slow, first print out all the worksheets and start to get your goals ready, then begin to work on increasing your productivity and don’t beat yourself up too much if you struggle, it takes time to change your habits like this – but in the end it is well worth it!
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