I’m sure that your busy (crazy busy) with lots on your plate, so how can you keep yourself focused and following through on your key projects and goals?

Doing a few things well and consistently is better than doing lots of things not so well and inconsistently. It makes sense, but I keep seeing myself and others fall into the trap of getting spread too thin and loosing focus. This can also happen when you chase every guru’s new ideas while constantly “collecting information”, but not taking any action. You need to have a clear plan on how to make progress on your goals.

You should find a few core goals and then focus your time and attention on the steps that will move you toward achieving your goals. Aim to make consistent and regular progress towards achievement. Break down your goal into achievable steps and tackle them one-by-one, and then cross them off of your list as you accomplish them.

Remember the 80/20 rule, keep working towards your desired goals, and you can achieve them!

Did you know that you can severely limit your success by having too broad of a focus? Are you working on several projects where you’re doing a good job at all of them, but none of them can get enough of your focus to be truly great? Is the good keeping you from your best? Remember the 80/20 rule… 80% of your results will come from 20% of your effort, and that effort must be focused on your core goals to achieve maximum results.

Start dissecting your work to see if you are spreading your efforts too thin. Even within a heavy workload there are decisions that you can make to thin your workload. You may need to say no to a new project, or prioritize and let a couple of your lesser projects sit on the back burner while you focus on your top project or projects.

If you’re an entrepreneur, I would recommend working on the projects that can help increase your profits. If you work for someone else you should focus on the projects that are important to your boss, or if you are self-managed I would encourage you to think like an entrepreneur and focus on projects that increase profits for your company.

Ask yourself: How can I focus more on my core projects and push the less important projects to the back burner?

It is well known that most of us will do more to gain pleasure than we will to reduce pain. If you look at what gives you the most pleasure, it usually comes from one of two sources, life’s simple pleasures (walking on the beach, a kiss, a hot cup of coffee) or the feeling that you get when you accomplish something (or that your life is on track). You see if you look at things like receiving an award, having a clean desk, or having a well kept lawn, they all start with the same thing… taking action.

The first category of actions coming from life’s simple pleasures are easy, these are things that you naturally love to do and that you will even go out of your way to get the feeling that comes with these pleasures. The second category of actions coming from accomplishment requires discipline. For example, if you allow your lawn to become overgrown with weeds and the grass to grow tall, you will not receive the pleasure that comes from having a well groomed and manicured lawn.

This same principle of taking action using discipline can be a boost to your career, and is largely responsible for the size of your bank account. If you are in the habit of doing only the easy things to get pleasure, then you will miss out on the second category that can be even more pleasurable and rewarding than the first category.

Jim Rohn says “Every Discipline affects every other discipline”, “Every let down affects the rest of your performance”

This compounding affect can bolster our careers and our lives or it can seriously disempower us.

Let’s take a scenario, one that is a little hard to swallow but will demonstrate this effect. You decide to stay up late watching a movie, you usually go to bed at 11PM but you stay up until 2AM. In the morning you are sleepy and need large amounts caffeine to get you going. You hit snooze on your alarm clock three times and now your running 30-minutes late for work. You skip your normal morning shower in order to get to work on time. On the way to work you don’t feel clean and fresh and you feel a bit worn down. Immediately when you get to work you are asked to go into a meeting, your clothes are wrinkled, your not fresh, and your tired. Your meeting goes lousy and you don’t have anything fresh to add to the conversation.

Lets take another scenario, this time you iron your clothes, pack your lunch, and lay out your clothes for the next day. You take a half-hour to read positive material before you go to bed at 11PM. You get up immediately when your alarm rings, take a hot shower and get a cup of hot coffee and a small bagel. You leave slightly ahead of time because you know you have an important meeting and don’t want to be delayed in traffic. You feel great and are listening to great music all the way to work. You go into your meeting freshly showered, alert, and feeling great. It’s a tough meeting but since you feel well you contribute to the meeting and give them lots of fresh ideas that came to mind the night before when you were reading.

What a difference! And… what pleasure

Sometimes you must delay gratification in order to get this second kind of pleasure

Follow these three simple steps for getting what you desire

1. Create a mental picture of your outcome, what you want it to look like
2. Keep on track by doing what you know needs to be done in order to set you up for success
3. You must persist and follow through with consistent action

The mind can work in your favor if you can convince it that there will be more pleasure to gain by taking action than the pain that you will feel by not having taken action.

One more example, suppose that you want to finish an important report for work, right now in your mind this equals pain so you have been procrastinating. Let’s turn the tables and think of how this can be made pleasureable

1. Ask yourself, how can I do a great job on this report and enjoy writing it
2. You might get a raise or a promotion as a result of doing an outstanding job, this could allow you to
3. Take a vacation when your done
4. You can go on a cruise with the extra money that you get from your pay raise
5. Your boss will be more agreeable and pleasant because you did such a great job
6. You can sleep better at night knowing that your job is secure and that you are well respected and needed in your organization
7. You will feel great when the job is accomplished

I’m sure that there are more that you could add to the list. So start thinking ahead in your life, taking action on those things that can reward you and bring pleasure. Using this technique will bring a feeling of satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment into your life.

This article was featured in The Third Edition of the Carnival of Improving Life.

In my last post we talked about how that not finishing the small things can lead to actions (or lack of actions) that lead to negative feelings and results. In this post, I will provide five positive steps for getting things under control.

Reduce procrastination by chunking it down

It is often difficult to look at a mountain of work and feel like you can make any progress, however, it can be done if you can size it into workable chunks. For example, your office needs to be cleaned, you have let the little things pile up and you know it’s going to take several hours (if not days) to get it cleaned up.

Here you need to break the task down into bite size chunks

1. Take everything off the desk and put it into a cardboard box
2. Dust the desk
3. Dust the computer screen and computer case
4. Now begin by going through the box…
5. Wipe down all of the accessories in the box that belong on your desk
6. Sort the papers into three piles, throw away, file, and “take action”
7. Put everything in your throw away pile into the trash
8. Empty the trash can
9. File all of the papers in your “file” pile
10. Now take the “action” pile and work on any of them that can be done within 10 minutes
11. Take the rest in the “action” pile and put them in a fresh folder right next to your computer screen, so you can act on it as you go through the day
12. Reward yourself, you now have a clean desk. Continue to chunk down the rest of the major tasks that are required for you to have a clean office. If any one task seems hard, then keep chunking because you probably haven’t broke it down into a small enough sub-task.

Learn to face challenges by discovering where you are

Many times the scariest part of any problem that you’re avoiding is fear of the unknown. I have found that one of the easiest ways to reduce this fear is to “discover where I was”. For example, if your a student and you have fear of failing a class and so your avoiding going to class, avoiding your classmates, and avoiding doing homework because you know your way behind and so why bother?

You can help your situation tremendously by getting a clean full sheet of paper and writing the problem down at the top, and then write down everything that you can think of that can help you get control

I am afraid that I am going to fail my human anatomy class

1. I can find out exactly what my current grade is in the class, every test, every quiz, every homework assignment
2. Using that information I can figure out how high my grades need to be on the last tests/quiz and homework to pass the class
3. Is there any extra-credit that I can do?
4. Can I ask my instructor for extra time, extra-credit assignments, help, or recommendations
   (most teachers want you do well in their class)
5. Can I get a tutor?
6. Do I know anyone that can be my study partner?
7. How many hours a week will I need to put in to bring my grade up to passing?
8. Am I committed to finishing strong?
9. If it is too late, how can I keep 100% focus on the class and learn as much as possible so that when the next time I take the class, it will come easier for me since I will have already seen the material
10. How can I learn the material and have fun while doing it?

You can use this technique for facing your finances/credit, a bad relationship, a project at work, or anything else that you need to stop avoiding

Decide to decide

For you to decide, you need to write down all of the tasks that are pulling on you. These tasks swimming around in your head will drive you crazy! I recommend using a combination of a normal “To do” list and a “Today’s Tasks” list. You can learn how to use this technique by signing up for my email list. I will then send you my free eBook “How to Gain at Least 2 Extra Hours a Day” that breaks this process down step-by-step.

Once you have these tasks written down, you can use the technique I gave you the other day to decide which one do first, second, and so forth

1. How quickly can I implement the idea?
2. What is the value to my business, organization or life?
3. How long will it take to see results?

Take Action… Just Decide

It should be much easier now that you know what is at the top of your “Today’s Task” list. Now it’s up to you to take action, this often requires making a decision and then doing it. Going back to our example if your a student. At the top of your list, you probably have “Find out my current grades for all tests/quizzes and homework”. Now it has become much easier, you just need to find the resources to get the job done. Can you call your instructor, find them online, call your guidance counselor, or go to the school office and get a printout. Now TAKE ACTION, do what needs done! This will give you tremendous momentum and you will be doing the small things that are so important in being successful.

Staying Up

Once of the biggest factors in staying positive is not letting everything pile up on you. By chunking down your tasks, facing your challenges by discovering where you are, deciding, and taking action, you will put yourself in a very positive state. When you let clutter build up in your mind and in your environment you can become immobilized, but by taking the steps above, you can see that you are making progress and working out of your negative patterns. Then once you get rid of the things that are causing you the most grief, you can work on maintaining things in a good working state so that you don’t get so far behind and things don’t get so cluttered or unorganized

If you can think of any other positive steps that you can take for getting things done, please add them to this post by entering your comments below. I would love to hear from you.

In my post Finishing the Small Things we discovered how little things left undone compound on themselves and waste huge chunks of time because they require large amounts clean up when they finally reach critical mass.

There are additional problems in neglecting the small things; you’re thinking can lead to actions (or lack of actions) that ultimately lead to negative feelings and results

Five Negative Consequences of Leaving Small Things Undone

1. Procrastination

When things (bills, papers, tasks) start stacking up, it becomes easier to push these activities off to tomorrow. The shear amount of clutter in our minds and in our environment caused by putting things off can lead to avoidance

2. Avoidance

You begin avoiding the messes and unfinished tasks; this can lead to serious trouble. For example, if your needing to pay your bills, but you’re so overwhelmed that you won’t even open the mail, you may miss an important letter that may cost you thousands of dollars.

3. Indecisiveness

You ask yourself “How can I be expected to solve all of this? It’s so overwhelming!”, so you begin to avoid decisions. For example, you’re supposed to take the dog to the vet, clean the car, take clothes to the laundry, get gas in the car, walk the dog, cook for the kids, get a haircut, clean the bathrooms, and the garage, it’s a disaster. You can’t decide what to do, so maybe you sit on the couch doing a little of this, and a little of that, justifying why your not just doing it, and your kids get take out pizza and very few things get done. This can also happen in our business lives with phone calls, paper work, email, meetings and similar neglected items

4. Difficulties in making decisions

When you’re faced with a decision, what choice should you make? The mental clutter caused from leaving so many things undone erodes your decision making power. You’re just not sure which way to go, you want to prevent making a mistake (fear), so you do nothing

5. Depression

This is probably the biggest problem of all. Let’s face it; it’s depressing having financial, social (you forgot to call mom), physical clutter, and mental clutter blocking you. This leads to a state of shutdown. This immobilizing effect is caused from all of the above. The small things have added up and are affecting you psychologically

What positive steps can you take to work out of this negative pattern?

My next post will address these issues and provide useful steps for getting things under control