goal achievement

Not To Do List

/ Achieving Goals / Leave a comment

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.

Action. Failure. Success.

/ Achieving Goals / Leave a comment

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.

Action. Failure. Success.