There it tremendous power of knowing what you exactly want to achieve. There is even greater power knowing the immediate results, in the next 3 months for example, that you are trying to get to in order to get to what you want to achieve. The power comes to realization and actually takes shape, every morning when you wake up and look at your objectives, and the results you are trying to achieve and make sure that your commitment for the day includes those items.
Too many times I have said, “wow, I am really busy.” However, when I look at my schedule and what I am doing I notice that my “busy life” has very little to do, and perhaps nothing to do with my main objectives. I am quite literally filling my life with a bunch of sand and not getting the big things done. There is just too much sand in the way.
The only thing I can think of is to just start eliminating the sand and blowing away the frivolous details that are in your way all day long. If you have filled your life with the highly urgent, yet low priority tasks and you have no time to work on your main objectives then I can pretty quickly figure out why you are not achieving what you want in life.
The unproductive life is filled with the highly urgent, yet non-important tasks. Have the courage to say no. I decided at the beginning of the year that answering my email was a main source of urgent, yet not important. So I now limit myself severely to how often I am allowed to even have my email open. You will get the urgent from all over the place, from other people that want to get you to do something for them. It is certainly acceptable to serve others and you should, but not at the expense of the high priority, non urgent objectives that you have set for yourself.
Stop the madness by waking up each morning and asking yourself, what am I going to do to accomplish my objectives today? What exactly am I going to do to take a giant step forward in accomplishing my dreams and my greatest ambitions? Feel bad about telling other people, “no”. Then tell tell them no, but explain very clearly what you are working on. What high level objective you are trying to achieve today. I have noticed that when you explain it that way, people usually respond with, oh, wow that is really important. Never mind, my trivial task can wait.
The 365 commitment has helped me to prioritize the high priority, non urgent activities during my day. I am learning to spend less time responding to the urgent.
Guy Reams (212)
365 Member
