Achieving Personal Goals

When pilots prepare for takeoff, they don’t look at each other and say “Let’s see, what are we supposed to do now?”. They follow a checklist, and they use it every single time they takeoff, even if its 10 times a day.
 
Franchised businesses are similarly built on the idea of systems – well defined, repeatable processes and checklists that produce consistent results.
 
We should do the same thing. Creating a system, a repeatable routine that encourages us do take action toward your goal every day, insures behavior that greatly increases our chances for success.
 
For example, making a practice out of having a simple checklist of a few essential things you will do every day, preferably in the same order or at the same time, helps insure that those critical things get done. Once you get a sequence that works for you, making it a part of your regular routine will pay huge dividends.

My Approach

I use what I call my Daily Agenda. If you’ll adopt the idea of following some sort of checklist or routine that defines a few key activities you will take each day to reach your goal, you’ll be 3 steps ahead of most folks.
 

 
By the way, I’m definitely no role model with this and I struggle just as much as anyone. Still, if I can just follow my plan 75% of the time I’m still way ahead of where I would have been without it. This simple daily process has been very useful for me.

The Daily Process

1. Good Start: Up at ? am
2. Review The Day: Spend 10 minutes reviewing the day’s plan before I leave in the morning, and remind myself what the payoff is (focus on the benefits).
3. Planned Reminders: Send myself 2 text message reminders/day (morning, afternoon), just as reminders to stick to the plan for that day (I’m easily distracted!)
4. Record Activity: Stop whatever I’m doing at 9:30 every evening to record which of the key planned activities I accomplished that day (see “Record Your Progress”). Takes about 5 minutes.
5. Plan Tomorrow: Plan tomorrow’s key activity(s). Takes another 5-10 minutes.
6. Journal: Make notes about anything significant that happened today (not essential, just something I like to do).
7. Regular Rest: Lights out at ? pm

The details really don’t matter. What matters is if you can find some process to make sure you follow a few key activities each day, you will get consistent results. The biggies for me are (1) plan the key activities I must get done tomorrow in advance, and (2) recording whether I did the things I planned or not.

If you can give yourself just one or two things that you follow on a daily basis as your “system”, I think you’ll find your far more productive than if you just wing it.