How to Achieve Your Most Important Career Goals in a Fraction of the Usual Time

These themes can be nurtured, for instance, through daily rituals. These are processes in which we feed the “right wolves” and “turn on all systems” to ensure alignment with our theme and the right level of performance through the day.

Cultivating a Theme: Try It Yourself!

As a practical example: Many of us wish to cultivate a “productivity” theme, so that we can grow a “proactive” mindset and inject more effectiveness and better execution into our everyday lives.

How can we do that?

There is plenty of literature out there on how morning routines can help us start the day with a can-do and productive attitude, the same way that a top athlete tunes up body and mind in the hours before a competition to perform at his best once the race starts.

Wake up a bit earlier in the morning. Build it progressively and in very small increments over time until you give yourself a 60–90 minute window to feed your brain and soul before opening your email and getting dragged into your day:

• Feed your attention: journaling in the morning is a great way to focus your attention, as it triggers the Reticular Activating System in your brain and prompts you into action. You may try the Morning Pages technique, by Julia Cameron. I actually nurtured my interest in coaching and personal development writing to myself about it in my morning pages, over a period of a few months.
• Feed your ambition: a few sentences outlining your affirmations and your end goals will go a long way. Taking some time to visualize yourself achieving your goals (and imagining how that feels) will fuel your determination. You may do this on paper, or as you meditate for as little as 10 minutes every morning.
• Feed your love for learning: read non-fiction quality content, just 20 minutes every morning. Not only you will go through dozens of books per year without even noticing (a decent goal in itself), but you will adopt an openness to acquiring knowledge that will prove very valuable work.
• Feed your resilience: a while ago I adopted Tim Ferris’ practice of 30 seconds of cold water as I finish my morning shower. It reminds me that I can get through uncomfortable things every day. It seems like a silly act on the surface, but this will help you develop stamina and resilience.

Key Consideration: Choose daily lifestyle options over life-changing transformations, start really small, and focus on consistency over anything else when you start.

Short term, you will feel the immediate rewards for completing tasks before your work day begins, releasing dopamine which will help with habit formation. You will get used to taking small, daily action towards your goals. This will create motivational momentum and will feed your productive spirit.

Longer term, you will be cultivating the right themes: proactivity, duty, excellence. Your new mindset will influence how you conduct yourself through the day.

Conclusion

As you implement these methods into your life, favor decent execution over perfect planning. Focus on the process. And if you fail to execute or stick to your plan, accept it, and get back to a “doing” mentality as quickly as possible. We cannot hope to perform at our peak with 100% consistency all the time. But we can catch ourselves and get back into action when that happens.

A lot of it is in your hands. More than you think.

Very quickly, you will feel more empowered to set meaningful goals and to follow with consistent action.

You can establish your true professional aspirations, define high-impact activities, implement the routines, track your progress and adapt as necessary. Leave as little as possible to luck, and luck will come to the rescue when needed.

Acceptance of this reality is key. It releases pressure and gives you the strength to correct course and come back to your systems, to acknowledge and reset. Because when working towards the person you want to be, progress is all there is—not perfection.

And what about Bob?

Was he promoted to managing director, his End Goal?

As much as I would like to say yes by now, the process is not finished yet. Bob’s promotion was a 2-year end goal. But we have good news: his last informal management review showed strong progress on all key fronts, and Bob is on track to achieve his performance goals for the year.

The fact that he is already shortlisted for the prize only a few months into his coaching program is a testimony to how his sharpened mindset, plus a renewed focused and consistent execution, are tilting the odds in his favor in a fraction of his original timeline.

Bob is making the words of James Allen his own: “The world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going”.

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