Many of the time management principles that are “out there” simply tell you how to do more things in less time, or more things in the same amount of time. This approach can pose a HUGE problem if the “things” you work on are not the right things to begin with! You need a TIME MASTERY APPROACH, where the tasks you spend your effort and energy on or even complete are totally in line with your values and especially your most meaningful business and personal goals.
In a nutshell, you need to:
Establishing meaningful business (and personal) goals
Prioritizing these goals
Creating a list of tasks to accomplish each goal
Prioritizing these tasks based on which are the MOST IMPORTANT
Concentrate the majority of your daily efforts on those important tasks
Begin with a Goal Planning Session
Mastering your time begins with finding the right direction for your business and for your life in general. You have to know where you are going but more important than that, you have to choose where you want to go! This will require an initial small amount of planning on your part. Let’s call this your “”goals planning session” (this can be a “business goals planning session” or a “life goals planning session” or both wrapped up into one). Either way, you should do one of these goals planning sessions about every 6 months since business goals and life priorities do change, and short term goals get accomplished quickly.
Your time mastery session will involve establishing and prioritizing meaningful business and personal goals, and prioritizing projects and specifically tasks in terms of how they fit into your long-term goals, your mid-term goals, and your short-term goals.
Once your goals are set, each day you will take a few minutes out to plan and you will decide DAILY which activities and tasks are most valuable for you to work on to help get you closer to accomplishing your targeted goals and dreams.
“Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” ~John F. Kennedy
“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.” ~Will Durant
“Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.” ~Alan Alda
Once in a while I find myself deep in thought about life and business and such. It’s a good practice. Thinking purposefully can open the door to so many new ideas and possibilities. If you can think about thinking as a way of just reflecting, looking, observing, or even brainstorming in an objective manner, you can leave your usual thoughts and habits to discover greater success.
Here are some thoughts I looked at today. As you read them, don’t judge the words. Instead, simply be open. Maybe there is space here for you to explore something in a new way in your own life and business.
1. Create and develop amazingly USEFUL and BENEFICIAL products and services. Leave the so-so stuff for the armatures.
2. Don’t expect overnight success. Keep pluggin’ away at being exceptional in your business offerings, and give people time enough to catch on.
3. Be passionate about what you do (I cannot say this enough, have you noticed?). If you are not passionate with what you are doing, find something else you can be passionate about, since success takes time and you’ll need your passion to keep you going until you reach your financial goals.
4. Don’t follow the pack in your products and services, or in the way that you market them. See what everyone else is NOT doing and make it a point to do that.
5. Just because a product or has a great margin for profit, and just because YOU like it, doesn’t mean people will want to buy it.
6. Hire GREAT people and don’t be afraid of their talent. Treat them very well and let them help you win.
7. Don’t fight change. Open your arms to it. See it as the new way of life. If you are coasting, you are not growing, so make it a choice to ENJOY change and the effort it takes to go with it—the way you enjoy any sport. Let change help you to see the needs and desires of your customers, prospects, employees, business associates, and yourself. Let change bring you terrific opportunities to learn, grow and profit.
8. Make certain today’s to-do-list focuses on the priorities that matter most TODAY, NOT yesterday.
9. Your customer’s and prospect’s attention is so divided that they can barely hear their spouses, kids, and significant others anymore! On top of that, droves of marketers are shouting for their attention on every corner of the street and Internet. When you say something to your prospects, make it great, not just good or O.K. Say something that makes them want to give you a shout out, instead of something that makes them want to run from your shouting.
10. Don’t be fooled into thinking you have to create controversy (like they do on most talk radio, and on all of the news and interview shows on t.v.) The world is changing, and so is the way people want to talk. Forget controversy; instead, seek to always ADVANCE the CONVERSATION—with your employees, your prospects, your customers, your vendors, your business associates, and your joint venture partners. Drop the gimmicks and the need to impress. BE WHO YOU ARE and bring your incredible self to the conversation knowing that YOU are enough. STIMULATE and ADVANCE conversations that make you a vital and valuable part of someone else’s world.
“The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.” ~Vince Lombardi
This week I want you to take a little bit of time to think about the activities you spend your time on throughout the days and weeks in your business.
What are you good at? Probably a lot of things for sure, but if some of the things you are good at are things that lots of other people can be good at too, then you should likely delegate these tasks, and focus your business efforts instead on things that are not easy for others to do or not easy for you to delegate. The things YOU personally use YOUR time on should primarily be activities focused at growing your business.
I have a short video (about 4 ½ minutes) for you to listen to sometime this week about the ORGANIZATIONAL CHART. This is a tool that you can use in a VERY SIMPLE WAY in your business.
An organizational chart will give you a good visual and a good basis for knowing what YOU should be doing to make more profits, and what OTHERS should be doing to totally support that.
With a simple and powerful organizational chart in place, YOU feel amazingly focused and empowered, and others on your team do too, because they know they are supporting you in your efforts to have a phenomenal business.
By the way, as a natural compliment to talking about YOUR own simple but powerful organizational chart, I have included some tips on DELEGATION— on when, how, what, and to whom to delegate tasks. The tips are listed after the link to the short video on Your Organizational Chart (about 4 ½ minutes).
Learning to release certain tasks and even projects to others can free up much of your time for more important tasks. As a business owner, it is imperative that you spend your time (work time) on the activities that will bring in more revenue, grow your business, and increase your profits. The other activities should be delegated out.
Many people think they cannot delegate for several reasons:
• They feel they are too unorganized to show another person what to do
• They feel they do not have the funds to be able to delegate jobs
• They feel they are just too busy to stop and take the time to delegate
Each of these reasons reinforces the need to delegate. As long as we hold onto doing the jobs that keep us from growing our businesses, we will fell frustrated, overwhelmed, unproductive, and behind on our goals.
Delegation will free you up. It will allow you to focus your personal efforts on those things that will make you more productive. Delegation is a skill like any other. It must be learned.
Which Types of Tasks to Delegate
The types of tasks and projects to delegate are the ones others can do without negatively affecting your business, or the ones where delegating them will positively affect your business. Delegate the tasks that free you up to grow your business.
These include:
• Tasks that require low skills (such as filing, cleaning, running errands).
• Tasks that someone else is especially proficient at (this would include companies that offer services in a specific area like book-keeping, tax-preparation, newsletter service, etc.
• Tasks that tie you up and keep you from working on your personal and professional goals.
• Tasks you dislike and are not those that MUST be done by the business owner-those which will not negatively affect your business if you delegate them.
Begin to delegate by choosing low skill tasks that most people can do. As you get used to the idea of delegation, you can begin to release other jobs that require more skill.
To be successful at delegation, you must find, and sometimes train, someone who is responsible and competent. You must make clear to that person what your objectives are. Be specific about the results you expect. Write down these goals and the results you are looking for. Make certain that the person is sure of what is expected of him/her.
Give a time frame or date for completion. Check in occasionally to monitor the process, but do not spent too much time here. The point is to find someone who is capable of the task so it will free up your time. Refrain from trying to control the situation, which is actually a type of procrastination and will waste time. Allow the person you delegated to the freedom to do the task—even if they do it a bit differently than you would. If the results are what you want, it will not matter how you got there.
Set up a basic organizational chart for yourself and your business, and learn to delegate, and you will begin to see changes in your business that you once only dreamed of. It is not difficult to have a successful business, but it does take time, effort, and commitment. Follow the road that other successful people have traveled before you. The results will amaze you!
Have a Wildly Organized, Focused, and Profitable Week,
If you had a magic tool that could help you to be more productive, help you to be a better saver, help you connect more meaningfully with clients, help you to overcome specific fears, help you to focus on activities that bring in money, and help you to “slow your roll” when you get a little crazy, would you use it? You might say “yes” pretty quickly, but droves of people overlook or dismiss the power of this incredible tool each and every day. That tool is COLOR !
Color is not just something pretty to look at. If that’s all we think about when we think color, we are really selling our opportunities short.
Color is a powerful motivator. Different colors work to trigger different parts of our brain and stimulate various types of thinking and behavior. Color also has a role in how our bodies respond on a physiological level.
Color can actually become a tool that you strategically use to grow both personally and professionally if you know how to leverage it.
For example, if you tend to be very critical of self and others, which gets in the way of sales and customer connection, you need more exposure to magenta. If you want to be better at saving money to ensure a more solid future, pull some rich blues into your life. If you tend to accept what everyone else says and blindly obey, then lime green will help you ask yourself “why” and take on more personal power? Combining blue, red and yellow will cause you to get serious about accomplishing your goals, and basking a little more in the tandem of gold and indigo will infuse you with innovative thinking that can help you launch new and exciting products and services.
Purple will bring out your creativity, and orange will help you to facilitate change. Whew! I am on a roll, but I’m just getting started. There is so much to know about the world of color and its many delicious benefits that we take for granted every day. It is an amazing asset that has been given to us and we truly under rate and under use it. I hope we will simply stop doing that soon and become better business people by embracing color and its appropriate applications.
If you ever want to have a stimulating dialog about color and how it can totally change your life, give me a call. I’d love to brighten your understanding.
“Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.” ~Benjamin Franklin
“We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everyone wants to get rich quick, and there are a mazillion experts ready to take your money and tell you how. But don’t blame them. There are mazillions more who want to know how to get as much money as they can, so they can finally be happy. With that frame of mind, unfortunately, few will ever experience true wealth.
That’s because being RICH has NOTHING to do with money! It has everything to do with the way you live your life and the happiness you feel every day. To get rich, you have to first stop thinking about money, and start thinking about what drives you with excitement and passion.
For example, I am RICH. I live my life with a mindset that is positive and that also draws me to opportunities where I can help others, enjoy my days, and make great money, too. I had to be RICH before I could ever be financially well-off.
My passion—what drives me every day of my life—is empowering others to find their unique gifts and use them to create amazing lives and businesses. I would do this for free. It is who I am.
For you it may be designing and creating off-the-hook interior spaces, or mentoring others to be their very best, or helping people to get well and strong and energized, or it may be informing and entertaining your tribe through exciting seminars and special events. Your passion may be connecting with clients in the selling situation because you know you are changing their lives in unprecedented ways through the exceptional products that you sell.
To GET RICH QUICK, quit thinking that RICH means money, and get a brand new mindset. You must be RICH well before you will ever see the first shiny dime of your small business fortune.
Getting rich quick starts with your decision to drop a very dangerously deceptive mentality—the one that says you can be successful without a lot of effort or without putting a reasonable amount of time into your business.
If you are involved in the fallacy that one day you will “make it big” and never have to work again, I can bet that you are not tapping into your passion—you are not doing what you truly love. The people who become highly successful are so motivated, so inspired to help others, and so driven to always have a RICH quality of life, that they never even desire a day when they can quit “doing” what they love.
Research proves over and over again that doing what you are passionate about, or at the very minimum what you are peaceful about and extremely motivated to do, is the key to financial rewards. This is because you end up in a zone of productivity, often called “flow”, that continues to drive you through all obstacles, and the energy you emit from doing what is meaningful to you actually draws others your way, and many of these “others” have money to spend.
Do you still want to get rich quick? Maybe so. I think you should. Here’s how–here’s the RICH mindset you need in order to be financially wealthy and incredibly happy, too:
R- Reclaim your personal passion and redirect all of your efforts towards it.
I-Invest in yourself and in your business: education, extreme self care, marketing activities that have proven results and move you forward, and leisure time spent doing the things that make you happy and bring you peace.
C-Createenvironments where you can thrive: Ditch negative energy, spend less time with saboteurs and gossipy people, make your home a place of refuge, expression, and fun, and your office a station of peak productivity, connection, and creativity.
H-Hire Help. Spend time doing what you are good at, and delegate the tasks that are not directly tied to building your profits or caring for self. If you don’t, you will burn out because you are not doing activities that are profitable or that you are passionate about. Let someone else do your monthly newsletters or your daily books. If you are a designer, put together a small team of design assistants for the less complicated work. Hire a housekeeper because the money you pay for that is LESS than the money you lose on the sales you are not bringing in while you’re vacuuming the carpet!
And there it is. Now, to get rich quick (which precedes gobs of money), simply get clear on what it is you really love to do, and do it FULL THROTTLE. My friend Gary Vaynerchuk says “CRUSH IT”! I say “smash the heck out of it, and do it with all of your might”. Either way, bring your passion to the table, take great care of your mind and body, engage yourself in pertinent, consistent activities to bring you towards your goals, surround yourself with good vibrations, delegate what slows you down, then buckle your seat belt to take the ride of your life to financial independence and true personal empowerment.
“Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character” ~ T. Alan Armstrong
A few mornings ago, after my fitness boot camp workout, one of the coaches said to me as I was leaving “eat like a champion today”. As I got in my car and drove away, I thought more and more about those words and how very empowering they were (and still are). I immediately peeled the banana that was in my car! Of course, you know all too well that I just had to apply this to business (it is who I am)!
I started thinking that we should all live like champions, and that the concept shouldn’t intimidate us, either. If you said to some people, “live like a champion today”, they might become pressured by it and take it to mean that living like a champion requires over-the-top, relentless “A” game strategies every moment of every day. Actually, it is much more liberating than that to live like a champion. Bottom line, it means to be exceptionally good to yourself, which is something we all can OWN.
I am ON IT! I will live like a champion everyday. I will be my best without distress! That means that during my morning workouts with Coach Cliff, I will go at MY OWN PACE and push myself to MY best. It means if my marriage seems a little crusty, I will tell my honey how thankful I am that he is in my life. For my business, it means that if sales are slow, I will call a few people who I know need my help, because I have time. It means that I will make the best use of my resources each day, focusing on those activities that are in line with my goals and that will propel me forward, and I will delegate or ditch the rest.
Living like a champion means I deserve to have a prosperous business that makes money and does not needlessly leak funds. Knowing that so many real, average, normal people have built incredibly successful and extremely prosperous businesses testifies that I can too. SO every day I work at being a champion. I keep a good attitude and stay in the moment. I try new things and measure what is working, I repeat those activities that bring results, and I drop the rest. I hone in on my ideal customers more and more each year, and focus my marketing efforts on them alone. I open myself to new ideas and new ways of applying old ideas, and I listen to others, apply the feedback, and I learn. I am a champion, so I NEVER stop learning.
I continually indulge myself in sessions, seminars, and conferences that energize me and keep me up on the latest technologies that apply to my field. I stay sharp to always be there for myself as well as for others. I eat right, I make my body move because I am its boss, and I guard my sleep (a new activity for me) so I am well-rested when I do my work and enjoy my play.
I am a champion, and that means I am amazing, and I deserve love and goodness from myself. If others give it to me fine, but I am not waiting for that. I am the one who gives that to me, and I can therefore give to others. My friends and family “get” me, my colleagues appreciate and value me, my clients love me, and I respect me.
YOU are a champion. It does not matter if you feel like one or not. You are because you want to be. You are synergetic. Each step you take in your life—in your business— to build something big and meaningful may seem enormously small, but when you add all of those important little steps up over time, you gain phenomenal results because the sum of your steps is far greater than each part.
You will not notice much happening as you go along, but a champion lives in the moment. You tick and you tock and you keep a constant, consistent cadence with channeled activity you know is moving you forward, inches at a time, until one day, you see it. You have gained something incredible, and it is finally here, and so you keep going. You are building, forming, creating, envisioning, and the synergy gets richer, thicker, grander, until the little steps accumulated become giant steps seamlessly tied together with a business stride that causes you to fly— and to go on to win the race— YOUR race.
That’s how it works! You are a champion. Today, you made it to your desk. You fueled your body wisely. You thought about your goals, and you focused on one. You moved your joints, your mind, and your business and marketing plan. Way to go! Now just keep up with the movement and stay on course. Be steady and consistent, and be gentle on yourself, too. If your engine stalls, restart it. If you veer off course, ease back on. Tell yourself how exceptional you are. Tell yourself “this is easy”. Tell yourself you deserve all of the financial freedom that is in your life and all that is coming your way. Embrace every small task you have the privilege to work on, and silently celebrate every actualized goal, no matter the size.
You ARE a champion! You may as well live like one!
“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You hear it all the time, “Life is short, so you should live it fully”. For some people that means keeping the keg going, or grabbing as much money and fame as they can squeeze into every one of life’s transactions. Regardless of whether or not life is really “short”, the fact that we are here, that we are alive, and that we are cognitively aware, is a huge signal that at the very least, we should be living lives of purpose and meaning, not just running after the green stuff, the skirts, youth, and all of the other misleading bells, whistles, and detours this earthly existence can offer.
Since you have the opportunity—and somewhere deep down, the desire—why not spend your life doing the things you are really passionate about, the things you dreamed about doing, and doing them in the way you dreamed about being? It’s a good idea, but first you have to get still for a bit, and allow your personal desires to resurface. You may even have to conjure up a few from scratch, and that’s o.k. No matter what you are doing now, you can and should re-ignite with the passionate desires that once motivated you to see life as an exciting and rich experience. No matter where you are currently, you CAN live your life based on your deepest desires, and you CAN find, develop, and then live, your dreams.
That’s what I want to talk to you about—your dreams. There are two kinds of dreams: those you encounter while you are fast asleep, and those you bring into play while you are wide awake. For the rest of this message, I’d like to visit with you about the second kind, those you activate when you are awake—the ones you have total control over authoring and bringing to some type of fruition.
Dreams can be fantastic, fabulous, or even a little freaky! Dreams are more thanhopes, because you play a crucial role in fulfilling them. They are not left to chance. Dreams have the element of creation and animation built right into them. Dreaming is something you do, something you engage in, and something you are involved with. When you dream, you are first daring to believe that you can have more, then you are suggesting to yourself ways to create that. On top of that, the very act of dreaming fuels you to take the actions necessary to actualize what you know you want.
Dreaming is exciting because it stirs up your passions, and convinces you that what you desire is worth going after.
Dreams are dynamic, not static. They are moving, developing, unwinding, unfolding, and even changing as you go towards them with the determination to see them take shape. Dreams become realities through a structured process of applying yourself and your resources towards them in a “take action” manner.
That’s what it is all about, taking action. Here is a DREAM RECIPE that you can follow to create a delicious dish of your very own dreams, those that will feed you with more excitement, more meaning, and more personal passion going forward. Living your dreams actually forces all of the energy fields surrounding them to make more room for more dreams. It is a contagious and exhilarating process. It touches the lives of others, too. To live your deepest desires—your dreams—is to live divine.
As you create, plan, and actualize your dreams, remember this:
It is not so much the exact and perfectly literal expression of a dream that is important— although with proper planning you will see many of your dreams almost perfectly come to pass. It is the act of being present with your dreams that is the powerful part, because going towards your dreams leads you to your true destiny. Your true destiny is where the magic begins.
DREAM RECIPE
1. Pretend for a moment that you have no constraints, that YOU (not a false you) can have anything that you want, and that you can be anyone that you desire.
2. Think about what you would do in life (with your minutes, days, weeks, months, and years) if no matter what you did, you received the exact same financial reward and the exact same praise from others for doing it (so the motive is not money, recognition, or fame).
3. Get clear about your personal dreams. Jot down eight dreams you would like to see come to pass in your life over the next one to five years (or even a few years longer if need be). Include ONLY things you are passionate about—that excite you, thrill you, or invigorate you in some meaningful way (leave the other, less exciting ideas for another day).
4. Prioritize your dreams. Go back and circle from the above list, the four dreams that are the absolute most important to you AT THIS TIME IN YOUR LIFE (they may all be equally important, but which one are MOST important now. For example, you could want to have a child and also want to get a masters degree so you can teach, but the degree may be most important AT THIS TIME IN YOUR LIFE, leaving the plans for building a family for a later time).
5. Plan for fueling your way to your dreams. Dreams take resources, which may include money, time, collaboration with specific people, trading favors, or a combination. Get out four pieces of paper, and on each piece write out one of the four dreams you circled above. Then in the space below each dream, give a rough estimate of how much time you need to accomplish the dream, what some of the needed resources will be, and what some of the potential challenges you might face will be. Also include—and this is very important—what personal value each dream will help you to live out. Do this for all four. Next, get a little more specific about the action steps you will have to take to realize each dream. The more specific you are, the more likely your dreams will actually take form in “real life”.
6. Pick one of the four dreams to focus on NOW. You probably won’t be able to focus well on more than one dream at a time, so pick one of the four—the one that seems the most feasible at this time based on the resources needed, the obstacles you may face, and the value the dream will help you to live out. You can still make steps towards the other dreams as you focus mainly on one (for example, if one of the dreams is to write a book and another is to go back to college, you can begin writing the rough outline for your book during the same time you save money for your coming education).
7. Take at least one action step toward your focus dream within the next 36 hours. Anyone can write down a dream, but only those who take action bit-by-bit to accomplish them will get to live them out, and share the fruits of those dreams with others (the best part). Let’s say that your dream is to own a retail shop in Aspen, Colorado and you currently live in another state. An easy and first step could be to get online and start checking rental property rates and real estate prices for commercial properties in Aspen or you could find out what types of licenses or permits are need to do business in the state of Colorado.
8. Each week, purpose to take another step toward actualizing your current focus dream. Make the commitment to yourself to make realizing your dreams, one at a time, a lifestyle. Always be working on a dream you are passionate about and one you know is good and healthy for you and others. In the same way you decide to be a healthy eater by making many smart choices each day, allow every day to move you closer to living out your destiny. Make experiencing your dreams a lifestyle.
Dreams are not hard to attain, but doing so does take consistent effort over acertain period of time. Most people do not believe they are worth the investment and the steady, regular, continual effort. Believe me, you absolutely, positively ARE!
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”~Anthony Robbins
“The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.” ~ Denis Watle
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” ~ Henry David Thoreau – Walden, or Life in the Woods
“By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands — your own.” ~ Mark Victor Hansen
I hope you enjoyed the audio I sent you last week.
This week I promised you a very powerful goal-setting exercise, and here it is.
It WILL take a little bit of time, but the PAYOFF will be TREMENDOUS! If you take it seriously and look at it as a potentially life-changing session, it will put you light years ahead in your life and business. It will guide you step-by-step through a process where you will create MEANINGFUL life and business goals, prioritize them with incredible clarity, and determine with ease the action steps you should take to accomplish what you desire in a realistic amount of time!
This strategic plan puts YOU in control and allows you to continually move toward your most important personal and professional goals, accomplish them quickly, and bring what you say you want into reality.
Following is the EXACT TEXT and PLAN that I share each year with my coaching clients and my network of professionals. I have also personally guided individuals through this process, to see them realize amazing professional growth and success (at the very end of this message is a testimonial from a client).
PLEASE, invest the time in yourself to do it. You will save YEARS of wasted effort for the hour or so you take to do this exercise!
GOAL PLANNING that ACTUALLY WORKS!
Prioritizing your goals and the specific tasks you invest your time in can make a tremendous difference in the way you experience your life and in the success of your business. Skillful goal setting can free you up to spend more time doing the things you personally want to do—the things that are the most meaningful to you.
I encourage you to start this year off with a strategic plan to focus on what is most important to you and to make room and time for the business goals and activities that will catapult you into financial freedom, leaving you a lot of valuable time for family, friends, new business ventures, and many fun adventures.
You are going to learn how to leave behind all of the unprofitable “busywork” that gets you nowhere, and you will in turn become a Master of your own life and destiny.
You may have just left behind a year of dissatisfaction and frustration. You may have often felt overwhelmed which probably kept you from taking the actions you MOST needed to take. You may have thought about time management. The truth is though, that many of the time management principles that are “out there” would simply tell you how to do more things in less time, or more things in the same amount of time. This approach can pose a HUGE problem if the “things” you work on are not the right things to begin with! You need a TIME MASTERY APPROACH, where the tasks you spend your effort and energy on or even complete are totally in line with your values and especially your most meaningful business and personal goals.
In a nutshell, you need to:
• Establish meaningful business (and personal) goals
• Prioritize these goals
• Create a list of tasks to accomplish each goal
• Prioritize these tasks based on which are the MOST IMPORTANT
• Concentrate the majority of your daily efforts on those important tasks
Begin with a Goal Planning Session
Mastering your time begins with finding the right direction for your business and for your life in general. You have to know where you are going but more important than that, you have to choose where you want to go! This will require an initial small amount of planning on your part. Let’s call this your “goals planning session” (this can be a “business goals planning session” or a “life goals planning session” or both wrapped up into one). Either way, you should do one of these goals planning sessions about every 6 months since business goals and life priorities do change, and short term goals get accomplished quickly.
Your time mastery session will involve establishing and prioritizing meaningful business and personal goals, and prioritizing projects and specifically tasks in terms of how they fit into your long-term goals, your mid-term goals, and your short-term goals.
Once your goals are set, each day you will take a few minutes out to plan and you will decide DAILY which activities and tasks are most valuable for you to work on to help get you closer to accomplishing your targeted goals and dreams.
With this approach, every day you will inch a little closer to realizing your goals and dreams, even when part of your day is spent on menial tasks and routine items that most of us must do. A time mastery approach will help you to best use some of the prime hours of each day.
Following is THE exercise in goal planning that will change the direction of your life and business for the better. Please don’t make the mistake of believing you do not have the time to do the following exercises. You simply cannot afford not to.
TIME MASTERY Business Goal Planning Session exercise:
• Get out three sheets of paper, one each for your list of your long-term business (where you want to be in 4-5 years), your mid-term goals (where you want to be in 1-3 years), and your short-term goals (things you want to accomplish in the next 6 months). You can adjust the time frames to best suit yourself and your life, but make your short term goals within a few months. Put the labels at the top of each page.
• Take about 3 minutes for each sheet, and write your goals very quickly. Do not stop and think about it. If something comes to your mind, do not judge the thought, just write it down. When you are through with each page of goals, spend an additional minute or two adding to the page or fine-tuning it. Do this exercise for each page.
• It may help to know that a goal is not “something you do”. A task is something you do. A goal describes where you want to be or what you want to accomplish, for example, “I want to my yearly sales revenues to be $300,000.00 within 2 years, or, “I want to write a book on interior lighting”.
• Next, take the sheet of your long-term goals, and circle the 3 most important. Now label them A, B, and C, with A representing the long-term goal you want to focus on first or that you find to be most important to you at this time in your life, and B and C representing the long-term goals you will work on after long-term goal A is accomplished. Do this same activity for the other two pages (mid-term goals and short-term goals).
• You will now have 9 goals circled; 3 long-term, 3 mid-term, and 3 short-term goals. Each of these goals has an A, B, or C next to it. Now, Take out a clean piece of paper, and transfer the A goal from each sheet onto the new sheet.
• The new sheet will now have 3 top priority goals—-one from each category (a top priority long-term goal, a top priority mid-term goal, and a top priority short-term goal). This is your Focused Goals Target.
• The final step in this goal planning session is to make a list of all of the possible tasks and activities you could do that would help you towards accomplishing each of the three goals on your Focused Goals Target sheet.
• Create a page for each of these three goals (your top priority long-term goal, mid-term goal, and short-term goal) and list everything you can think of that would help you to attain this goal. This is another brainstorming session so you should just write and not make judgments. Take several minutes to do this for each goal. Then revise this list, adding more activities and crossing out others that will not work.
• Now it is time to prioritize tasks to ensure that you will make the best use of your time each day. Go through the list of tasks (do this for each page) and circle the ones you feel will give you the most result for your effort. You may end up circling 6 or 8 of them. Then draw a star next to the ones that you would like to work on first.
• Schedule these tasks into your daily to do’s, focusing on the ones with the stars first. Daily, when you plan your business activities, try to schedule in at least one or two tasks from e ach list to accomplish that day. Before you know it, you will be checking goals off of your Focused Goals Target because you will be accomplishing your business dreams and life goals in record time!
(Testimonial follows)
Congratulations! Have a Wildly Successful Week,
Margo
TESTIMONIAL:
I have spent my life in pursuit of a clearer understanding of the life I was searching for. Having many interests and many responsibilities, I often stayed overwhelmed with too many choices and not enough progress to suit my desires. Then, I met Margarett (Margo).
In just a few short meetings Margarett was able to assist me in the organizing of the clutter in my mind as she helped me define the basic personality aspects of my individual self. We skipped labeling and belief-driven needs to get, quickly, to the core of the 3 most important things I needed to achieve in my life in order to have personal, soulful fulfillment. The process was fast, clear and powerful.
I am happy to say that when I got very clear about what mattered and could articulate it and focus on it with action and intent, EVERY desire came into my life greater than I could have imagined. Far, far greater. And fast, too.
Within 30 short, committed days I had created situations that allowed me to call into my life, the clear goals I’d determined were the most important. I am overjoyed at the results. Pinching myself, actually. Smiling, lifting my face to the sun and pinching myself. This life is real and I am enchanted, clear and on track.
Carol Conlee,
Business Owner and Playwright
Central Texas
“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” ~Confucius
Links to special recordings follow this message.
Today I am sick in bed. I have been down since New Year’s day, and I feel just terrible (tomorrow I’ll see the doctor). I am also in between bootcamps right now (the fitness program I told you about).
I had a plan to walk/run 4 miles a day for the 3 or 4 weeks in between bootcamp sessions. This was a reasonable goal to me since I had worked up to it. Then, on about the third day of this plan, I re-injured (slightly) my calf muscle that I had injured more seriously about 6 weeks ago. Then a week or so later, I got really sick (and here I am in bed).
We set goals, and sometimes things happen that prevent us from reaching them in the time frame we alloted. If we are serious about accomplishing what is important to us, we will make the needed adjustments and then get back on track, after all, this is REAL LIFE! The steps toward our goals can be adjusted, and on occasion, they should be. We are in charge of the goals, not the other way around.
I am big on having a few meaningful, well-thought-out goals, and taking specific actions to reach them. I have spoken on this topic to many different types of career professionals. I believe that how we use our time can either help us create a great life, or lead us to frustration and lives of mediocrity and, as Emerson puts it, “quiet desperation”.
Although I am goal oriented, I am NOT one of these people who thinks good time management is making important calls while waiting in line at the grocery store, or cramming in some work on the laptop during a short taxi-cab ride. That is NOT effective or efficient time management. Cramming lots of things into a day is not necessarily a surefire way to reach your goals. (I have worked with people like this, and it’s annoying in my opinion. I personally love my “mini-vacations”, be it in a line at the store or in a taxi cab just “chillin’ ”. It makes me a more effective executive when I AM working.)
Last week I promised you some audio on goal planning and goal setting and on working on the RIGHT kinds of activities in order to make a huge impact in your life and business over time. Since I am sick in bed right now, and I can barely talk, I will not record a new audio, instead, I have two previously recorded audios that I created last year for a group of Interior Decorating Professionals, and I would like you to hear them. They are spot on! No matter which occupation you are in, these recordings will shed light on three different types of ACTIONS—the types you should be taking, and the types to avoid each day, week, and month so that you can reach your goals.
Then, next week, I will share with you (NOT on audio) a very specific, precise, POWERFUL, life-changing goal setting plan that will enable you to create and then set new and MEANINGFUL goals for yourself and for your business. The plan will then help you to prioritize these goals, decide which action steps to take, and find the motivation and tenacity to take those steps one by one, to actually accomplish what you desire!
The entire time you work the plan, you will be moving with definitive force toward your most important personal and professional goals. Next week’s plan is something you should look forward to getting. You may even want to carve some time in advance—make an appointment with yourself for next week to read the Monday Message and work the plan it contains, which is GOAL PLANNING that ACTUALLY WORKS!
In the meantime, today, just take some time to listen to these two audio messages about action. Give them a moment to load. Ignore the greeting at the beginning to “decorators” and apply the entire session personally to you and your business. Then next week we will be on our way to planning and creating new and better lives.
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” ~Hans Hofmann
Here’s your New Year’s KISS: Keep It Simple, Sweetie!
It is nearing the new year, and as anyone who knows me knows, this is when I get on my soapbox about going forward in a positive way. At the end of this message I have a 5 minute audio for you to listen to that will help you keep it simple and successful as you venture into a new year and decade. In the week’s to come, I have a wonderful goal setting plan for you so you can be in a fabulous place by this time next year!
We all embrace the new year like a brand new beginning. We love starting fresh, with a clean canvas. Perhaps we won’t mess up this time (not likely by the way, because this is REAL life).
What we should be focusing on though, are ways to create step-by-step, incremental measures of improvement and balance, rather than the overnight success sensations we wish we could be.
Success is something we all say we want, but many of us are mistaken about what success really is. I know success is something each of us has to define for ourselves, but any definition that includes just one part of our lives (fitness, business, relationships, personal development) is not a healthy or true definition.
Success is holistic. Real success involves the concepts of unity and completeness (and not perfection by the way). It means that there is attention, improvement, satisfaction, and even excellence in many, if not all, areas of our lives.
You may only find MASTERY in one or two of your many life facets, but you will at the very least seek to be a balanced person within the other facets, and a person who walks towards excellence in all ways, bringing harmony and clarity to your life as a whole.
This is NOT something you do at a weekend retreat, or even in the course of one short year. It is a WAY OF LIFE, a LIFESTYLE. New things crop up all the time to throw you off center and pull you off course, and sabotage a portion of your success, but you keep going.
In each moment of your life, you do what you know to do that is best. You treat yourself and those around you with respect and goodness, you stop to be aware and NOTICE life, you try not to be rigid or too hard on yourself or others, and you require YOUR personal best from YOU. It’s really that simple.
So go ahead and forge on to great success in the coming year, and hey, in the NEW DECADE! I have very high hopes for you, and for myself as well.
Here is the Link I promised you (Simplify for Success ). In this audio I share (for around 5 minutes) 3 easy ways to simplify your life in the new year and beyond. Capturing our own success requires that you simplify life where you can so you are not too confused, busy, or overwhelmed to plan, take action, and enjoy life.
Oh, and by the way, I want 2010 to be a turning point year for you, I really do. In the weeks to come (starting next week), I will be sharing with you in both text and on audio (through the Monday Messages) some POWERFUL ways to set new and MEANINGFUL goals, prioritize them, decipher which action steps to take, and find the strength and vigor to take those steps. The entire time you work the plan, you will be moving with definitive force toward your most important and life changing goals, and if you stick with the plan you will reach them. So, we have a LOT to look forward to in January 2010!
Have a Wildly Blessed New Year,
Your Friend,
Margo
P.S. (what is it with me and the P.S’s lately?)
Do you want a better business? Treat your customers better.
Do you want a better marriage? Treat your spouse better.
Do you want a better physique? Treat your body better.
Do you want better relationships? Treat your friends and loved ones better.
Do you want a better bank account? Treat your money better.
I love the concept of “Flow”. This is the art of being in the moment with a specific goal in mind as you work or play. When you are in that place, you are engrossed in what you are doing and time seems to either stand still or fly by. You lose your sense of self-consciousness as something other than yourself holds your focus, because what you are engaged in is in line with your deepest core values, your honest passion, or your desire for true contribution.
This is a great place to be. I think that as professionals moving towards greater growth, all of us have no doubt spent some time in this place of flow, and when we do we are productive, motivated, happy, tenacious, and free. This is where great things happen, both personally and professionally.
Sometimes though, we get out of that place of flow, particularly in our business life. We can suddenly—in an instant—get pulled from a productive and happy self, to a place of defeat, annoyance, fear, or discouragement. We can look to the left or right, and if we are not mindful, we can get our eyes on the competition, the industry, what others are doing and saying, and what we feel we may lack. As a result, we fail to see our own goals, dreams, and desires, and we veer from the distinct path that is specifically paved for us.
It does not take much to get us out of the flow. All it takes is a ride down the street and the view of a competitor’s big new sign, or a phone call from a client who decided they want to cancel, or a trade magazine page with an article featured that we “were gonna” write. We can begin to question ourselves, our gifts, and our plan. We can imagine how great our competitors are doing. We can start to feel like we have to do something different, something someone else is doing, something that is not really “us”, just to compete, or just to feel better about ourselves.
From there it can be minutes or hours (and for some, days) of second-guessing ourselves, beating ourselves up, and wondering if our ship will ever come in. This is particularly true when we are new to business, or when we have launched a new idea, or when a product or service we will be offering is still in development—when we have not yet experienced high levels of success in a particular area.
Now, in steps the concept of Cinderella’s shoe, and a personal message that I want to speak into your life:
Did you know that if you will just keep your mind and heart on YOUR path, and stay in the flow, that your glass slipper WILL appear? It takes just one moment, one phone call, one meeting, one person, one thought, one action—one shoe—to change your life in an instant. Don’t try to control it all. Do what you know to do. Be diligent. Make a plan, then work your plan with consistency and flow. Keep your eyes on YOUR goals, YOUR dreams, and YOUR desires. Don’t however, get sidetracked from your plan of action every time you see someone in your industry or in your town—or wherever—doing something that triggers an uncomfortable response in you. Just let it be. Work your plan. Continue on YOUR path, and that wonderful glass slipper will suddenly appear, when you least expect.
“Never mistake activity for achievement.”~John Wooden
I thought I’d ask you, what are you doing this week…this month, and… Where are you going this week…this month?
That is certainly something worth thinking about.
If you are like most business people, you think you are doing business activities and you think you are going towards your goals. If you are like most business people, you are probably dead wrong! Have you ever heard the saying that goes something like, “I was tenaciously climbing the ladder of success and when I got to the top, I was disturbed to realize that the ladder was leaning on the wrong wall”? How disappointing, especially when the business owner was working, working, working, but working on the wrong things.
The average business person gets distracted with tasks that OTHERS think are important. Tasks that OTHER PEOPLE demand. Theses tasks usually redirect the business owner away from what he or she really desires to accomplish. These can be demands from clients, from office workers, from people in the community, or from just about anywhere. They feel like work, but they are traps.
Now, I know that you are NOT like most business people, because through this network we surround each other and coach each other to follow a better blueprint. But, just as a quick reminder of the better way, I’ll give you a suggestion of how you can do what you need to do in order to go where you need to and be where you want to be!
Start each activity with the end in mind.
You MUST have a PICTURE of where you want to go, and you have to keep that picture always in your mind as you work.
Let’s say you have a certain vision. It may be something small, like revamping your website, or it may be something a little larger, like creating a local annual home show which you sponsor (and make a profit from). In order to ensure that your activity each day, and during each part of the work day, is productive activity, you must start each of those activities with your goal in mind, with a picture in your head of the end result. In other words, everything you do should be attached to the right goal. If it is not, you should not do that activity, or if you must do it, either delegate it, or do it quickly so that you can get back to your goal-accomplishing activities.
Starting each activity with the end result in mind helps you in several ways. For one, it allows you to be clearly aware of the steps you need to take to get there, but it also allows you to avoid tasks and interruptions that are true distractions and that will provide you only with added activity and NOT with a beneficial result when you are through with all of the activity.
Begin to design your business by deciding what your most important goals are. Then get a vision–a picture–of each goal. Structure your week’s activities so that you have a good amount of activity directly tied to that picture— activities that actually move you closer to your DESIRED goal.
Start this way of thinking today, and see if you don’t have a wildly successful week.
September 11, 2010 1885 D.H Lawrence 1862 O. Henry 1885 D.H. Lawrence 1938 Sir Edward George 1940 Bernie Dwyer 1947 Julie Covington 1949 Roger Uttley 1950 Barry Sheene 1967 Harry Connick Jnr
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Did you know that if you will just keep your mind and heart on YOUR path, and stay in the flow, that your glass slipper WILL appear? It takes just one moment, one phone call, one meeting, one person, one thought, one action—one shoe—to change your life in an instant. Don’t try to control it all. Do what you know to do. Be diligent. Make a plan, then work your plan with consistency and flow. Keep your eyes on YOUR goals, YOUR dreams, and YOUR desires. Don’t however, get sidetracked from your plan of action every time you see someone in your industry or in your town—or wherever—doing something that triggers an uncomfortable response in you. Just let it be. Work your plan. Continue on YOUR path, and that wonderful glass slipper will suddenly appear, when you least expect.
If you are like most business people, you think you are doing business activities and you think you are going towards your goals. If you are like most business people, you are probably dead wrong! Have you ever heard the saying that goes something like, “I was tenaciously climbing the ladder of success and when I got to the top, I was disturbed to realize that the ladder was leaning on the wrong wall”? How disappointing, especially when the business owner was working, working, working, but working on the wrong things.