Do the Thing That Matters to You the Most by Noon
And you will see guaranteed results.
You need focus to become exceptional at anything. Anyone who ever accomplished anything great or significant possessed sustained focus over time. You don’t have to focus on your goal 24 hours a day — which is impossible. But you do need to put focused energy into a goal for a few hours a day — which is doable.
Carving out dedicated time to focus on your goal, every day, will get you results. If you do this by noon each day, the steps you take at the beginning of your day can drive your afternoon, your year, and your life toward success.
Step One
Find your thing.
Ask yourself, what is the one big goal I want to accomplish?
Is it to write a book, lose weight, get out of debt, or make an income from writing? You can achieve any goal when you put in daily focused energy.
It will happen. You will succeed.
As Gary Keller says in his groundbreaking book, The One Thing,
“All great achievements are the result of sustained focus over time — all of them.”
This theory works, I’ve tried it.
I put sustained daily focus into writing, since June. I’ve seen results, and they keep climbing the more effort I put into blogging consistently.
What is the one thing you want to do to create the life you wish to have one year from now? What is the one thing you could do so that by doing it every day, you could accomplish your goal?
If you want to be a writer, the one thing you can do before noon is — write.
If you want to lose weight, the one thing you can do before noon is — exercise.
If you want to be closer to your partner, the one thing you can do before noon is — ask him/her how their day is going and kiss and hug them.
If you want to get out of debt, the one thing you can do before noon is — make a debt repayment plan.
The one constant in my life has been writing.
But not until I put in sustained, concentrated effort did I see results. Not until I put concentrated effort every morning, every day, for three continuous months, did I see change. It is the one thing I keep coming back to again and again. But it was when I blocked out chunks of distraction-free time, that I saw concrete results, in terms of income.
Once I put a concerted effort into my writing, I saw success.
It is a gradual success, but by showing up every day, I keep seeing more results — more followers, more engagement, more income. I’m kind of amazed at how simple it is.
Do one thing, and get that one thing done in the first few hours you are awake, and you will see change.
Step Two
To achieve your goal: Have a great day by noon.
We are human, and even though many of us put pressure on ourselves to be productive every moment of every day, you can’t maximize every minute. If you tried to be productive every single moment of every day, you could succeed for a while, but it would be a pretty horrible life.
The good news is, to succeed, you don’t have to be productive or focused all day long. No one has that much stamina, not even Tim Ferriss, my productivity guru.
Do the thing that matters to you the most by noon, and that’s a great day.
When you’ve done everything that matters to you most in the first chunk of the day, distractions later in the afternoon won’t matter as much to your overall success.
When you prioritize your essential goal first, the rest of the day can be for other tasks that don’t require focused, dedicated attention — your lesser goals.
If you pursue your nonessential goals the second half of the day, this won’t impact your success because you’ve already given attention to your one thing.
Life is better when you get your one thing out of the way.
Get done what matters most first — be great for that length of time in the morning — and then relax a bit, and remember, you will be focused again, come tomorrow morning.
Step Three
Time block your power hours.
Focused chunks of time create success — time blocking.
It is impossible to have a perfect day every day. You don’t have a steady stream of will power; no one does.
When you wake each morning, whether you wake at 6:00 am, or 10:00 am, these are your power hours.
Remember, the goal is to have a great day by noon, or later if you like to sleep in, get everything that matters most to you finished in that first time block. Get it done and let the events of the morning drive your afternoon. Preplanning your time will allow you to time block those hours where you concentrate on your one thing.
You don’t need more than two or three hours for your core activity, each day, to accomplish a goal.
I used time blocking when my goal was to earn money on Medium. Every morning, I wrote and published a story by 10:00 am for three months consecutively. Every day, without fail, that was my goal, to post once a day. Each month my income increased. It increased only through sustained focus day in, day out, month in, month out.
Step Four
Distraction-free zone.
Make sure the world doesn’t infringe on the time you’ve blocked out for your essential goals.
You don’t always have to fight off distractions if you safeguard against them; take distraction out of the equation, and you won’t be distracted. One way to protect against distraction is to set a routine to ensure you get your one thing done. Have a set time of the day where you do not allow yourself to be distracted; you will get more done through focus.
Think of it like you are going into a movie theater to see a film.
Treat your power hours the same way you treat going to see a movie. Imagine how you prepare for enjoying the movie. You turn off your cell phone. In case you get hungry, you get snacks before the movie starts. You go to the bathroom, so you don’t have to get up during the film. You do everything you need to do, so those two to three hours are not interrupted by anything. Going to a movie is an example of focused time blocking.
It is truly amazing how much can get done during this time if you consistently do this for two or three weeks at a time. If you set aside the equivalent of one movie to accomplish a single task — your one important thing — you will see results.
The results I got from writing for three-plus months were remarkable. During that time, that is all I did — I wrote. I ignored everything else for those three to four hours each day.
Step Five
Avoid overwhelm.
Multitasking means doing a bunch of things, not well. Focused energy means getting something done, quickly, efficiently, and checking things off your essential to-do list.
One grain of sand at a time, one task at a time.
Concentrating on one thing, instead of many, prevents anxiety and overwhelm from creeping in and sabotaging your efforts.
I have so many ideas and tasks running through my head that I get overwhelmed easily, and I shut down, or hit pause, and don’t get anything done. The idea of having so many things to do cripples me, halts productivity, and stifles my creativity.
I then breathe, and tell myself, get one thing done.
If I focus on that one thing, the rest of my day goes more smoothly.
Think of your life as an hourglass with thousands of grains of sand. When the sand reaches the narrow middle, only one grain of sand can go through the glass, concentrate on that one grain of sand because that is all you have control over, that one moment, that one task.
Your mind can only hold one thought at a time, you can’t have many thoughts going on without going insane and slowing you down. If you concentrate on one thing, you avoid feeling overwhelmed.
Step Six
Say no, a lot.
Say yes to the right things. Say no to everything else.
Say no to any distraction that interferes with getting the life you want a year from now, your essential goals. Time is a limited resource, so when you say no to what doesn’t matter to you, you will have more time for what does matter to you, whether that is writing, your business, your health, or your loved ones.
You can’t do two essential things at one time. It is impossible to be successful at both — you need to be present in the moment when you want to achieve any goal.
If you make your moments matter, everything will fall into place eventually because it’s important to you, and you’ve made time to achieve what you want — you’ve made it a priority. Do the one thing right now that will move your life in the direction of your desires.
Focused chunks of time, whether you want to be a writer or you want to clear your email box, creates progress and achieves measurable results.
One grain of sand at a time. One task at a time. One thing.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
