How to focus on nothing but your goals
Your goals are important to you. They are the ones that drive you to do things and to succeed in your enterprise. But there are things that distract you from achieving your goals. These things may not be bad per se, but they can surely keep you busy from succeeding as soon as possible. How do you keep focused?
Here are some tips that will help you:
1. Really focus on the important tasks. When you identify which tasks produce the most income or value for you, you can work more on those tasks to the exclusion of all others. Most of the rest of the tasks on your list aren’t necessary. Drop them or delegate them. Let your staff do the other things while you put your mind into the bigger things. And when you do work on those big tasks, work with intense focus, eliminating all distractions, not allowing yourself to switch to do other tasks. Avoid multitasking. Work with focus and you can complete your tasks faster.
2. Check you emails and other messages only when you really have to. You could free up huge amounts of time by having less online distractions. Instead of checking your email many times a day, and having your social networking accounts like IM or Twitter on, turn these things off and check email twice a day at the maximum. Schedule the times when you’ll check these things, and let people know that those are the times you’ll respond to email. It won’t be easy at the start, but if you focus your energy on changing your online habits, you can do it after some time. Focus on what you need to do instead. Don’t let yourself be sidetracked and distracted.
3. Make time. What activities could you stop doing so that you can have the time to make this ideal day a reality? Most likely, you cutting down on your TV time would do most of the job. For the hours where you’re going to do work, be sure that you’re focusing on the most important and valuable tasks that you could be doing, so that you get the most value out of your work hours.
4. Strive hard to fulfill your goals. With all the free time you’ve found, you now have time to make your ideal day come true, and pursue your dreams and passions. Be strict and stick to your schedule, work less but on more productive tasks, and you’ll now have time to do everything you always wanted to do.
5. Design your perfect day. Your schedule is now blank. Now design your ideal day — what would you do in the morning, afternoon, evening? Which tasks would you work on first? What great activities would you place there to fulfill you, give you value, and produce the most amount of money for the least amount of time worked. Exercise, leisure, education, creating a new business empire, creative outlets … so anything and whatever you want.
Your thoughts
What do you think? What do you do to focus on your tasks? What do you do to achieve your dreams? What other things did we miss? What would you like to add to the things mentioned?
Let us all know in the comments!
Don F Perkins
Hi Stephen
There’s a lot of practical wisdom in this post – I especially like the last idea – “Design your perfect day.” In order to be effective, we must be intentional with our time. This means first and foremost, planning how we will spend our time, right?
I remember an illustration used to help people see the importance of this: a college professor gave students a large glass jar, some sand, some large stones and some smaller stones. The object was to get all the materials into the jar and close the lid. After several different failed attempts indicating that the jar was simply not large enough for the task, the professor showed the class that by putting the big rocks in first, then the smaller ones, and finally sifting the sand in between the rocks, in fact it all fit and he was able to close the lid.
His point was that unless we intentionally carve out time for the “big rocks”; the things we identify as important in life, there may not be room for them with all the other things that happen in a day.
Distractions and multitasking are not always a bad thing. It may well be that just the right distraction is the best thing to help accomplish your goals; like breaking you out of writer’s block or gaining a fresh perspective on a nagging issue. Rather than hard and fast rules like “Don’t let yourself be sidetracked and distracted.” and “avoid multitasking” perhaps we would all do better to think about the effectiveness of our efforts in our individual situations and within our own bent. I say work however it profits you most and process each distraction by filtering it through your own principles and most of all – measure the outcome of your efforts. The bottom line is: is it working? Are you accomplishing what you planned to? If not then perhaps adjustments are necessary.
There’s a big difference between efficiency and effectiveness.
Don F Perkins
Me
Awesome post. And I love the example that you gave too Don. I have to use that one in one of my lectures!
Stephen Nellas
@Don: I’m glad you liked the post. I agree with you. Nothing wrong with multitasking. I was going for those who are doing a little too much of it.
Thanks for your input and I really appreciate the example you gave.