June is fast approaching, with the blink of an eye I’ve found myself in the middle of the year again. Time seems to fly, and I decided to take a quick look at my planner and check in with myself and how I’m doing with my goals. As I looked at my planner a huge list of goals were facing me and not many were crossed off. That got me thinking, I’ve accomplished and done plenty by mid year yet it doesn’t it feel like it.
Was I setting more goals then I could handle? I decided to consult with some some friends whose opinion I valued. I got their approach on goal setting and a look into what they had planned for the year. When they shared their goals I was shocked they listed out a simple 3-4 goals for the year.
With one of their 3 goals crossed off, It felt as if they were making way more progress then I was with my long list of goals. It seemed that by cutting their goals to 3 they were able to hound in and focus on accomplishing whats important.
Find The Meaning Behind Your Goal
I started looking through my list and identifying which goals were the most important and they “why’s” behind them. Reasons to “why” I wanted to achieve that goal and what it meant to me, in hopes i’d put more effort into achieving them.
Don’t Try To Do Too Many Things At Once
“If you chase two rabbits you will not catch either one.” -Russian Proverb
My goal list was long, and progress felt slow. I decided to shift my focus to 3 main goals and tackle them from there.
Three major goals for the year can help you narrow down and focus on whats important to you.
This doesn’t take away from your daily supporting goals which will eventually become routines. Like going to the gym, looking put together everyday, eating healthy, reading affirmations, writing. Once I conditioned myself to sticking to my daily routine I was able to separate my mini/supporting goals from my large goals.
Set Goals……Then Set Daily Routines/Supporting Goals
If your large goal is moving to a new city by the end of the year, then a routine/supporting goal could be losing 10 lbs. Losing weight can go into the mini goal bucket because if you set a daily ritual of going to the gym and keeping healthy food in the fridge you will reach that goal on auto pilot.
Or Do The “One Thing”
Sometimes goals seem like a far stretch, achieving them may be discouraging because it feels like they are too far into the future.
Thats where The One Thing comes in. The one thing is asking yourself What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
The book encourages us to focus on one main thing. We often set up too many goals and to-dos. The author encourages you to focus on the one main thing you want to accomplish and have everything else supporting that goal. This brings a narrow focus and forces you to drive that goal with more intensity.
Key Points from “The One Thing”
1. Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.
2. Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority. Instead of a to do list, you need a success list — a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.
3. The majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do.
4. Success is actually a short race — a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.
5. It takes an average of 66 days to acquire a new habit.
6. You make doing what matters most a priority when your willpower is at its highest. Do your most important work — your ONE thing — early.
7. How we phrase the questions we ask ourselves determines the answers that eventually become our lives.
8. Focusing question: What’s the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
9. Our purpose sets our priority and our priority determines the productivity our actions produce.
10. Who we are and where we want to go determine what we do and what we accomplish.
