Are you really burnt out, or are you just doing too many things?
How many hours are you spending watching TV?
How many hours are you spending drinking and socializing per week?
How many hours are you spending surfing the net and social media?
The Not To-Do list is one of the biggest strengths of successful people.
Think about it, how many hours do you think Elon Musk spends watching Netflix each week?
If the average person cut out surfing the Net and watching TV, they would add back over 20 hours per week to their schedule. Imagine what you could do with an additional 20 hours per week?
Many people will make the argument that watching TV and surfing the Net relaxes them. That is fine if that is the case, but don’t claim there is not enough time to achieve or finish your goals. You are choosing to watch TV over productivity. Ironically you would probably be more relaxed if you spent the couple of hours at night catching up on your work, as opposed to going to work the next being behind from the start.
A good way to start is to spend an hour of your TV / web time working on your goals, then reward yourself with the TV / web time once the hour is complete.
Alcohol is another great activity to put on your Not to-Do list. Nothing against alcohol, but it will affect your sleep and leave you operating at a lower level the next day. If you are an achievement-oriented person, this is only going to slow you down in hitting your goals.
From my own experience I have found that no alcohol gives me the ability to go hard 7 days a week, allowing me to include additional fitness activities and fun activities with the kids on the weekend. I am also keen to do some work on weekends, getting me ahead of the week to come. When I do drink on rare occasions, I feel sluggish and tired the next day, and really cant be bothered working on my goals. I enjoy alcohol and love having a beer with friends, but I operate at such a higher level when I don’t drink.
If you are taking drugs of any sort, this would be a good one to add to your Not to-Do List! From a burnout point of view you cant light the candle on both ends for an extended period of time. You may need to choose drugs or achievement. Ironically many former drug users become high achievers due to the personality type of chasing a hit.
Other activities to add could include gambling, pornography, hanging out with non-compatible people, sleeping too much, or any activity not related to your core goals.
The chances are you are not burnt out. It is highly likely that you are spending too much time completing too many activities. If you want to regain your energy and still achieve your goals, you will need to identify the activities that you are spending time on that do not move you to your goals.
Below is an exercise to determine which activities that you should stop doing, continue doing, and start doing.
Stop Doing:
Watching 3 hours TV per night
Drinking week nights
Hanging out with
Whatever your vice is…
Continue Doing:
Any activity that gives you energy, eg
Taking a walk with family after work
Exercising
Sleep 8 hours per night
Start Doing:
Start slowly and build up, eg
Add an hour per night to work on your goals
Exercise (if you are not already)
Complete your to-do list for the next day the day before
One of the biggest secrets of goal achievers is they make space for their goals by removing many of the mind numbing activities that the rest of society spends most of their time on.
You need to take action to be able to achieve something.
Most people accept and understand this.
Why then do so many people not take action on their goals?
For a large majority of people it is because of a fear of failure.
They are scared that if they fail at something, it will have negative consequences. They will have lowered confidence levels in themselves, people will think less of them, they will be defined by that failure.
The irony of all this is that you need to go THROUGH FAILURE to be successful.
Ask any successful person whether they have failed before and they will likely laugh at you. They will laugh because they have failed so many times that it is funny. They have failed so many times that they learnt the right way to do things.
The path to Success most often looks like this:
Action
At the start of a venture / goal you have no idea what will work and what will not. You need to take massive action to try many different actions to achieve your goal. Some things will work, some things will not. Only by taking the action will you know what works and what does not.
Failure
You need to be prepared, (even want) to fail. Only by failing will you know what actions will be successful. You then start to remove all the actions that don’t work, and dial up all the actions that do work. If you want growth in business this should be a continual cycle. Always trying something new, some failing and some working, then removing the failures and keeping the successes.
Success
You will only achieve success when you are completing successful actions. Unfortunately even at this point you will not be able to rest. Business is dynamic and always changing. Your competitors are always growing and trying to take your market share. As such you will need to continue to try new ideas / processes in your business to maintain the growth.
Most people never make it to success because they don’t take any action. How many business owners do you know that sit around and HOPE that the economy will improve, HOPE that customers will just walk into their door, HOPE that their staff will improve. They are reluctant to take action because they are scared of failing, however they will never experience success until they do start to fail.
Forget about how you will get someone else to do them at this point, just list everything that comes to mind.
Examples include:
Bookkeeping
Cleaning
Data Input
Opening and Closing the Shop
Answering Phones
Banking
Stock Ordering
If it helps, carry around a notepad for a few days and list every activity that you shouldn’t be doing as it comes up.
Be tough with yourself on this.
Often we can make the mistake of thinking we are the only ones who can do a task properly. Even if the task is only completed at 80% efficiency, it will still be beneficial to the business as it will be freeing up your time to grow the business.
Low Enjoyment / Low Skill Tasks you are currently performing
Everything is starting to line up – physically, financially, emotionally, mentally – for the next year to be a period where i can focus hard on my next level goals.
Physically – i still have the fitness to be able to challenge myself with endurance goals.
Financially – after over a decade in my business, i am in a stable and strong position with work and finances to dedicate some time to outside interests.
Emotionally and Mentally – i am old enough to not want to waste time any more drinking alcohol or messing around. My preference would be to spend time working on some of my long held aspirations.
At 47 years of age, i am ready to dedicate a year of my life to go really hard at my goals.
The following are my 25 Goals for the year of 2025, along with a brief description of why i want to achieve them.
Top 5 Goals – These are the main ones i would like to achieve:
$10m in Settlements per month Consistently
I run a Mortgage Broking business located in a regional area. This means our average house sale is fairly cheap, which makes $10m per month in loans a fairly hard challenge. Last year we averaged $7m per month, so looking to take a step up this year.
Complete a 70.3 Ironman Event
Now this one is way out of my comfort zone. To put it in perspective, the last time that i ran 5km was about 30 years ago. Now i am planning on swimming 1.9km, cycling 90km and running 21km – all in one event! This goal will take most of the year to train for, so I am planning on completing a December 2025 event. The aim will be just to finish the distance, i have no time aspirations at all.
Pay off my Line of Credit
I have a line of credit that i used as a deposit for the business, as well as a couple of investment properties. I now need to pay this off and get rid of it. I only have around $60k left so it should be achievable if i knuckle down and hit the repayments hard.
Pay off my former Business Partner
I have a debt of around $40k left after i bought my business partner out a few years ago. I have been paying it down steadily over the years, this will be the final leg.
Write 52 Blogs for the year
Starting now! The blog will focus on my trials and tribulations of attempting to achieve these goals. 1 blog per week is the aim.
20 Additional Goals –
These are goals that i would really like to achieve, but are not as critical as the top 5.
Take my family to Cairns for a holiday, and explore the Great Barrier Reef
It has always been a bucket list item of mine to go to the Great Barrier Reef. Specifically i would like to eat a seafood meal on a boat, while in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. The plan is to take my immediate family, including my sister and her partner.
Complete a Mountain Bike Event
I enjoy Mountain Biking. It is just good fun riding along the trails and flying downhill. I take it easy and dont attempt any jumps or anything too hardcore. The local MTB events are normally between 25-50 km, and held on fairly easy tracks. Again, i am just completing it to finish it and have no time or racing aspirations.
Cycle 100km in one outing
This links in to my 70.3 Ironman event, which includes a 90km Cycle component. As part of the training, hitting the century on the bike would be a good target to hit.
Run a Half Marathon – 21kms
Again, part of the 70.3 training. Running is by far my worst leg of the triathlon. As such it would be good to have the 21km under my belt before i add in a swim and a run.
Buy another property – Commercial or Residential
Residential prices have been booming in my area, so it would have to be a pretty good deal to make me buy a residential property at the moment. Commercial properties on the other hand are pretty cheap, and my lease will be running out for my business in a couple of years. Plenty of time for me to look around and make the move if the right property comes up.
Re-do the flooring in our house
Throughout our kitchen and dining area we have the old school tiles. These need to be replaced to bring our house into the modern era! We will likely go with new tiles, but ones that look like wood tiling. My wifes mother has them and they look great.
5 x Camping Trips with the Kids
Like most kids, my young ones spend way too much time looking at screens. They are aged 12 and 9, so i would like to make the most of our time together and take them on a minimum of 5 x camping trips together. We have a nice tent, and plenty of camping equipment, so there are no excuses. We all love the beach, so most of the spots will be coastal areas.
Install Solar Panels to our house
There are multiple reasons for wanting this. One is to become more self sufficient and make moves to become more self reliant. The other is that electricity bills keep going up, this should halt the increases. The main reason though is that i want a pool heater, and these chew through the juice. I could get solar heating, but these are only good for the summer months. The heater i want will keep the pool warm all year long, and costs half the price of a solar heater. The downside – it uses a lot of electricity. If run only during the day, the solar panels will power it.
Install a Pool Heater
As per above. Our pool is cold most of the year (or maybe it is my intolerance to the cold water as i get older?). Keeping the pool at 24 degrees will mean i can swim all year round and not experience the dreaded freeze when i jump in!
Go to Adventure World
This is not really a yearly goal, but i have been meaning to take the kids there for the past 3 years! Adventure World is basically a water and amusement park with water slides, roller coaters etc. The kids are now old enough to use most of the rides, and we all enjoy the water activities.
Buy my parents a new stove
My parents are getting on a bit now (both aged 73) and their stove has seen better days. While it is still working, it would be good for them to have a nice new oven and cook top to work with. Both enjoy cooking and would use it a lot.
Create a Generational Trust for future generations of my blood line
I watched a youtube clip with Kevin O’Leary (the guy from shark tank) who outlined a Generational Trust that he had set up for his grand kids, and then their kids and so on. The trust skips a generation and pays for the kids schooling and expenses up until the age of 21. The child then stops getting the money and is on their own – having to find a job and pay their own way. The trust re-kicks in when they have children, funding that childs education and expenses, and so on. He told the story about how his own child was failing year 10, and when the child realised the trust payments would stop, he improved his grades and ended up completing a high level university degree!
Complete 12 x Diabetes Challenges with my daughter
My youngest daughter has Type 1 Diabetes. She is nine years old. Every year we set some “Diabetes Challenges” which involve us pushing our limits with this condition. Type 1 diabetes means that her pancreas has stopped working, so we have to manually administer insulin every time she eats. This makes keeping her insulin levels in check fairly difficult, and even harder when eating high fat foods or while exercising. Some of our past challenges have included going on a 4km walk, eating pizza, and having a sleepover at one of her friends houses.
Create a “board of directors” for a Diabetes group in my area
We live 200km away from the nearest capital city. As such we have no permanent diabetes facility in our area. The doctors travel from the capital city to our team once a quarter, but they have no base or facilities here. There is also no facility for kids (or their parents for that matter) to catch up on a regular basis. Facilities offered in the city include kids catch ups (where they can all hang out with each other), parents catch ups and information nights, cooking classes, educational nights etc.
The aim is to get a group of people together to start running something similar in our area. The first aim would be a kids gathering once a quarter where they can all catch up and play together. From there we will build up to parents catch ups and some information sessions.
Complete a Mastering Diabetes cooking course
Eating healthy food is a big part of managing diabetes. The Mastering Diabetes cooking course teaches you how to cook food that will not increase the blood sugar dramatically, thereby keeping your blood glucose levels in check. I am lacking in the cooking department, so taking this course will help me feed my daughter better quality meals.
Complete a Full Doctors check up
At 47 years old i should be doing one of these check ups every year. The last one was about 5 years ago so i am due for one. I will get full blood testing and examination to ensure all my health indicators are in the right range.
Set up a mini – Syntropic Garden in my backyard
I have a long term aspiration of buying a farm and setting up a Syntropic Food Forrest on it. This is basically planting a multitude of different species in the same area, as opposed to a single crop of the same species (monocrop). I will practice in my backyard and set up a mini food forrest. This will be challenging as i live on a standard 750m2 block, so space will be tight!
Read 12 x Non-Fiction Books
I do this every year, read 1 x Non-Fiction book per month. Generally the topics are on business development, wealth creation and self development. I have found reading to be a great help to all facets of my life and help me to constantly improve myself.
Work with an Accountability Group
I have a group of 4 business friends that meets once a month on a Tuesday morning. The aim of our meetings have been to discuss our businesses and mastermind any problems that we each have. This coming year we are turning up the heat and we will hold each other accountable to our Monthly aims. At the start of each month we create a list of all the actions that we will take in the coming month, based upon our yearly goals (ie – all the above items). We then hold each other accountable to complete that list every month. The aim is to complete 80% of the list, which allows for any unforeseen issues coming up. Ideally good months stacked upon each other will result in a good year. The punishment if we do not complete 80% of the items on our monthly list is to send a bouquet of flowers to our biggest competitor in town. This is not something any of us want to do.
Eat a piece of Fruit Daily
I do not eat much fruit. I would probably average 2 pieces of fruit per week, which is nowhere near enough. We all know the benefits of fruit so i wont go into that, but obviously i need to increase my intake. Ideally a smoothie with multiple fruits will be the ideal snack, but even a single piece of fruit for the day will be enough to hit this objective.
So that is my 25 in 25. If i am able to complete at least 80% of these items i will be a very happy man. It is going to take a lot of discipline and hard work, but i am prepared to dedicate this year to achieving my goals!
I would love to hear your goals for the year, or if any of the above goals resonate with you.
Stay tuned to follow the progress throughout the year!
