08/23/2018 / Personal
This Routine Will Help Fast Track Your Goals
Willpower comes with a certain amount of limitation. We cannot solely rely on willpower to propel us to where we want to be, it takes more than that. As humans, we all falter, fall flat or regress at some point along the journey and that’s ok, it’s perfectly normal. What happens to willpower then, however? You get where I’m going with this. What I am telling you is that creating a plan of action, reenforcing that plan on a daily basis, and making incremental strides towards achieving the goals within that plan is far greater than any amount of willpower you have. Benjamin Franklin said it best; “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” It’s true, much more so than I realized in the past.
I think of my business as my child. Some people will call this crazy, I get that, but if you’re a business owner and a parent (I’m not a parent yet), tell me there isn’t a serious parallel between the two. Obviously, the life and well-being of a child is more important than any business venture, let’s just clear the air on that right now, I’d never suggest otherwise. If you’re a parent, follow me on this. Your child is born, what happens next? Do you just say “Great! We’ve got this awesome child thats going to bring us a ton of joy and we don’t have to do any work!?” HELL NO you don’t say that. Even though I’m not a parent, I am an uncle and have been around enough parents in my day to know it is a constant struggle to raise a child. It takes consistent effort and strength to battle through adversity to raise a wonderful human being and to those of you who are parents making this happen, I cannot applaud you enough, seriously. Think about all you have to do to complete one successful day as a parent, it’s A LOT of work. Between waking them up, feeding, changing diapers, feeding again, having to diagnose what they’re crying about (probably food), feeding AGAIN, taking to doctors appointments, etc, etc, etc…the list never ends and you have to do this or things along these lines for years until they are able to form habits that help them maintain themselves. Business is no different.
Similarly, you don’t just one day decide you’re going to get into business and think you can take zero action and achieve positive results. If you do, let me save you a lot of heartache and just tell you to hang it up right now while you still have some sanity left. Your business is also your child and it needs to be fed (financially, mentally, physically) in order to grow up to be a big, strong force for good and that takes time and an absolute monumental amount of effort to accomplish. If you don’t feed your kid, what happens? If you don’t feed your business, what happens? You get it. I’ll elaborate much more on this in detail in another post, but the point of this is that you cannot expect to get results, without a certain amount of action that is taken, and you cannot take enough action solely on your willpower to succeed alone. You need to design your path, then navigate the roadmap step-by-step (day-by-day, pun intended), until you’ve reached your goal. Then, you need a bigger goal. Always shoot for the stars, there is always another level to reach in life, you can never be to the point where you’ve reached the absolute pinnacle. If you believe you’re there, you’re declining. If you doubt what I’m saying, let me ask you this…did you know Elon Musk has an active plan called SpaceX which, in the future, will shuttle people regularly to Mars after colonization? Yea, you’re not at the pinnacle and neither am I. There is always another level.
So, how do I currently structure my days to maximize productivity? I perform a digital journal entry in the evenings that recounts my entire day and lays out my top goals for the next day and in the morning, I hand-write my most pressing goals physically (pen to paper, DO NOT CHEAT YOURSELF AND SKIP THIS) so that it becomes a reality. It’s scientifically proven that the connection between the physical act putting pen to paper allows the ideas to manifest themselves as reality. Do this daily and I promise your life will change for the better. As for the evening journal, I segment my days into 7 sections, all of which are recounted in the evening through the digital journal process. I’ve also learned that most things I do in life have a series of steps and the number of steps involved is usually 7. I don’t know why, that’s just how it works out. The segmentation of this daily journal just so happens to be in 7 steps.
These are the seven time segments I break my day down into (enter your email below for the download and a full breakdown of daily tasks and rules I live by):
5:30a – 7:30a
7:30a – 10:30a
10:30a – 1:00p
1:00p – 4:00p
4:00p – 7:00p
7:00p – 10:00p
10:30p -5:30a
Takeaways from the day:
Action Goals for tomorrow:
Gratitude Moments:
Misc:
I have broken these segments down in great detail for you in the link to the journal below to really clarify the message and how living in segments has helped me become far more productive. I’d encourage you to grab it below. You have my word that I will never spam you or sell your email address, I’m only looking for an account of how many of these forms actually go out and I would welcome your feedback with open arms. I hope this helps you transform your life. Grab yours here: