7 Tactics For Achieving Personal Goals: Get More From Your Time

You’ve started a new project. The excitement, enthusiasm, and joy are at their peak at that moment. It’s normal. You know what you want, you have the image of the result, and you know the first steps.

Time goes by, and even though you start to tackle the first steps, you realize that things are moving much slower than you imagined.

The period of extreme dreaming and motivation is long gone, and now you find yourself in a routine where most of your time is consumed. You’ve reached a point where you forget the steps or can barely recall what you need to do. It takes hours just to review your position in the project to take the next step.

The initial energy is a distant memory, and the quality has given way to confusion.

Instead of being a source of enthusiasm, the project has become a burden. You blame everything external, your colleagues who don’t let you work, and the daily activities you need to do to make a living (where your practical income comes from). Then, you simply forget the reason why you wanted that specific project. You shut down your memory and practically refuse to work on it.

When someone asks you about that project, you shrug, stressed. You say it’s in progress, but you know you’re lying and that you wouldn’t work on it even if someone came with money to pay you.

Maximum disappointment, and it feels like nothing is working. All those who sell dreams are just scammers!

Sound familiar? It sounds very familiar to me. I believe I’m not the only one who has been through such situations. It’s okay to tell me how it was for you!

“Productivity is measured by what you accomplish, not by how much time you spend working.” — David Allen

When you reach this point, it becomes imperative to open the “emergency kit” and take 4 control steps:

Define the project’s result again (exactly what you want to achieve).

Break the process into steps and estimate how much time you’ll need to obtain it (hours of work, workdays, workweeks — it doesn’t matter).

How many actual working hours have you spent in the last week/month on this project that you want so much?

Try to be honest; the fact that you planned to work doesn’t mean you actually did. Staring at the walls doesn’t mean you allocated time to the project.

Be as realistic as possible and write down how much time you worked on the project in the last week. What about the last month?

Now make a forecast. If you were to give the same “HUGE” interest you’ve offered your most important project so far, how long would it take to complete it?

In fact…

“We don’t procrastinate what we truly desire; we procrastinate what we fear.” — Erica Jong

Maybe you haven’t reached critical situations in your project. From my projects, I’ve learned a few useful tactics.

Among my projects was an 800-house residential neighborhood. I’ve had IT and marketing projects as well. I’ve also offered coaching for writing a book, and not just once.

In all of them, there were some common aspects:

1. Daily planning — we wash our teeth daily, so we need to plan our day daily.

2. Prioritizing tasks: the second step of planning is prioritizing the tasks, where we separate what is important from what is urgent. What was important always came first, no matter how much urgency yelled.

3. Time management: when I start an activity, I note the time allocated to that activity. It doesn’t matter if it’s a realistic or unrealistic allocation. Over time, we all learn the pace at which we work.

4. Maintaining motivation: at the beginning of the project, we set the final reward and intermediate rewards. I often chose symbolic rewards.

5. Progress analysis: my golden rule was the weekly project evaluation. I sought a simple formula and chose the traffic light version. On a sheet where the steps I needed to complete were written, I placed a green dot for completed processes, a yellow dot for processes requiring attention, and a red dot for delayed steps.

6. Avoiding procrastination: for each project, I looked for ways to combat procrastination and stay focused on objectives. Most of the time, I used coaching techniques and self-coaching and rewards (because I respond well to fines and threats).

The idea is that it doesn’t matter how slow I go, as long as I keep moving! Even if instead of running, I’m crawling!

“It doesn’t matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.” — Sun Tzu

7. Setting SMART goals: this type of goal isn’t just for companies or business people. They work very well for my personal life too.

Make it a habit to answer one question every day:

What did you do TODAY for your dream?

Remember: don’t lie to yourself and don’t procrastinate. Could you not put it off until tomorrow? Don’t be afraid of success. Or do you lie that you want that result?

How do you plan to finish what you want if you deal with anything other than what you truly want daily?”