I Can’t Get Enough Time in My Day

So how do other people get all their stuff done?

They prioritise differently, that’s how, and so they use their time better than you use your time.  And they get a better result.  And they get to go fishing, or golfing or whatever.

Priorities only make sense in relation to a goal – and a plan to achieve that goal.

Anything that is relevant to achieving your goal is a High Priority – and everything else is not!

So, the first of three key steps to getting more done in less time so that you can go fishing, is:

1. Set your goals effectively

For a goal to be digestible by your brain it needs to be:

• Precise (in business, that usually means it has numbers attached to it);
• Date (so that means a calendar deadline for completion or achievement);
• Positive (there is no point in setting negative goals such as “I don’t want to go broke” because your unconscious brain – the bit of you that runs your body and gets your goals – cannot process a negative expression, so that example above provides it with the focus of “going broke” which is the opposite to what you want.  Instead, this goal needs to be stated as “Before 31 December 2012 we will have sales of more than $1,200,000.”)
• Personal (no point in setting goals for other people, but it’s good practice setting them with other people).  This leads to a sense of responsibility and personal focus on achievement, which then starts to qualify some of your possible activities as “high priority” (ie, likely to move you towards your goal) or “low priority” (everything else).

2. Create a plan of action

• Lay out the steps you need to take to go from here to there (your goal) in the order you think you will need to carry them out.
• Break big pieces down into little pieces and put the little pieces in the order in which they must be tackled.
• Assign timeframes and deadlines for each piece of your plan.
• Leave space in your plan (around 40% of your available time) for the stuff that will turn up that could derail your plan if you had not left time for it.

3. Commit to achieving your goal

This might seem like a trivial point, but it’s actually the point at which most of us fail.

Remember commitment is a “pig thing” in the sense that in a bacon and egg breakfast, the chicken has an interest, but the pig is definitely committed!

A couple of tips for making yourself more effective at keeping commitments are:

1. Tell other people about your commitment to achieving your goal (now you’re going to look silly if you don’t do the things that would lead you to achieve it).
2. Put rewards in place for yourself at different milestones in your plan, starting with small rewards early on and graduating to bigger rewards as you get closer to achieving your goal.
3. Write your goals out and look at them and repeat them often to continue reprogramming your brain.

Do these simple basics and pretty soon you’ll find yourself doing more of the stuff that counts and less of the stuff that doesn’t, and magically you will find you’re achieving more in less time with less stress and more energy.

Then you can go fishing!