I often catch myself saying “I’d love to do X or Y” or day-dreaming about a given project. It often happens that we start to put excuses or telling ourselves “I don’t have time” or “It’s not so important”.
So, before anything else, I’m sorry but I have to tell you this: No one is going to do the work for you. No one. There is no magic pill to getting amazing abs or get a degree. You need to do the work, stay consistent and hold yourself accountable. Also, the excuse “I don’t have time” does not exist anymore. Forget it, substitute it for “it’s not my priority”. Exactly. You decide what is more important and that is where you’ll invest time.
So… once you kind of know your goals, how do you get there? Here are the 5 steps that get me there. This can work for all type of objetives: personal, professional or wellness related.
- Write a list. Describe what is that you’d like to achieve explicitly. Once you have it all written down, rate each goal for both “how urgent is it?”, “how important is it?”
- Take the first three goals that you’ve prioritize thanks to the urgency and importance classification and write down 3 steps that you can start to do right at this instant to get you there.
- Next to each step, describe the amount of time you will invest, what you need to make it happen, and write down a deadline for it Stay committed to your plan of action. Do allow flexibility in your deadlines so you do not stress, but still make it something challenging that motivates you.
- Check-in with yourself with how you manage your time during the day. Perhaps you find that you can squeeze time for that workout or finally read the book you wanted.
- When you are working towards your goals, eliminate distractions as much as possible. Forget about Facebook, texting or anything else that can get you off track.
Celebrate your achievements (even if they are baby steps) and don’t be scared to re-evaluate the priority of your tasks if you need to. This is how I usually organize myself, I hope it can help you too.
xx
Irene