How To Make 2021 Work
And increase your productivity.
“One who cannot control his day will struggle to control his life” — George B. Kelly
Your success lies in how much you’re able to effectively complete little tasks. There’s no particular time for grandiose accomplishments. A successful life is simply the consistent and active relationship between thoughts and deliberately carried out actions. Having a new year resolution and goals for the entire year is easy. But the accomplishment of those objectives is what matters. The most important thing in your life is not just having desires, but actually having those desires become reality.
The reason you’re reading this right now is that you’re looking for answers on how you can become more productive. You want to know how you can make this year better than last year — you’ve dropped in on the right place.
What you want to do is break those yearly goals into monthly goals, break those into weekly and then into daily goals. Because let’s face it, the only way you can have a successful week is if you have disciplined days. The secret to having a successful year lies on your day to day activities. And for most people, your daily activities have become some kind of habit. Stuff you do without even thinking. You carry them out effortlessly because the brain seeks to serve you better by being efficient.
This is a simple way to gauge if your daily habits are in line with your bigger goals: 1. At the end of each day, can you tick out something on your goal list? 2. Do you feel effective at the end of the day? 3. Are you proud of your actions at the end of the day? 4. Would you mind having that same day again the next day?
If the answer to these questions is no, then sit back and relax. Don’t fret, the following steps are to make sure you start creating the kind of day you want.
You’re In Control
You must understand that your day is entirely within your control. While you may not be able to control what people say, how people act and the weather etc., but you can control how you choose to react. Do not slide into the mental trap like most people; trying to get through the day. But instead, try getting out of the day. Do not see the day as something that happens outside your control. Remember that;
“things don’t just happen, things happen just.”
Plan The Day You Want
When you finally accept the fact that you’re in control of your day, now you go into the action of actually planning the kind of day you want. Yes, that’s right, you literally can have the day you want. All you have to do is take a moment each night before you go to bed and finish the day before you start. What do I mean by finishing the day before you start?
Plan the day as best as you can, layout every objective you want to accomplish. When you’re able to draft your day graphically in your mind and on paper, you’re literally finishing the day even before it starts. You go through an already planned day with enthusiasm, efficiency and confidence. Because you’ve seen it all already. You know what comes next and what you ought to do next. But you have to be smart to leave out room for inconvenience and improvisations.
Break The Morning Routine
Like I mentioned earlier, our habits control our lives. Because our day to day habits has become an autonomous vehicle that takes us through each day. When you wake up in the morning, what’s the first thing you usually do without even thinking about it? Pick up your phone, check notifications and scroll through Instagram? Lay half-asleep in bed not wanting to get up? Or do you usually hit the snooze button only to be racing 15mins later into the bathroom because you just finally realized you’d be getting to work late — again?
The mind has a tendency to slide into old habits effortlessly. That’s why you must create a buffer of consciousness and set up mental alarms or red flags to catch yourself anytime your brain is about to kickstart those negative morning rituals.
Here are some tips to break the waking habits in the morning;
- Start by going to bed 3 hours earlier. 2. Turn off and/or remove all mobile devices from your bedroom 3. Set a little bedside task that you can do easily when you wake up in the morning. It could be to kneel by the bedside and pray. Pick a book from the stand and read just one chapter. Or it could be doing 10 pushups or sit-ups immediately you wake up. I call these the feel-good morning tasks. Because when you’re able to achieve those little tasks, it makes you feel good and confident about yourself. You feel you’ve accomplished something. And that sets the momentum for the rest of the day.
Make Your Goals Seem Easy
Let’s face it, if you’re not one of the few who discipline comes easy to, then strenuous tasks can be overwhelming. Who wants to work out if they are forced to lose 100 pounds in 6 months? Who wants to get out of the bed if they are told they need to clean the entire house? When setting goals you must bear in mind that whatever the mind sense to be difficult, it will run from. The only way your mind would agree to work with you is if you find a way to make the task as painless and easy as possible.
Instead of saying I need to lose 100 pounds in 6 months (which is nearly impossible), say instead, I will only run around 5 blocks today and come back home. Do not scare yourself away by thinking about how can I clean the entire house. But focus on cleaning one room for that day. Instead of worrying over writing a book, focus on writing just one chapter. By making tasks seem easy and painless, you limit your mental resistance to act.
Set Rewards
A while back I was listening to Jordan Peterson who is the author of 12 Rules For Life. He said something remarkable in his speech to some students. He said; most people fail to discipline themselves because they fail to treat themselves with respect. When we negotiate with people, we do it with respect — considering their feelings and how it will be beneficial to them. On the other hand, we fail to treat ourselves the same way.
Rather than negotiating with ourselves, we tyranise ourselves.
Treat yourself as a person — someone you love and respect. I have found this to be completely successful and effective. In striving to create a successful life, what we are actually doing is creating successful habits that will lead us to the ultimate goal. We are consciously replacing negative habits with positive habits. Negative habits hold so strong because of the rewards we get from them; the short term gratifications, the feel-good hormone (dopamine) we get after a cigarette or alcohol consumption.
All these are the rewards attached to the end of negative habits. And that’s why we keep going back to them. The only way good habits will stick is if we create the same kind of feel-good reward at the end.
You could say; I’ll clean the room then after I’ll go hang with friends for 2 hours, or I’ll go to the gym for 30minutes then come back home and have myself a glass of smoothie. You could write one chapter of your book then browse Facebook for 1 hour. When your mind knows there’s a reward at the end of every task, it increases the probability of getting the task done 10 times over.
Finally, the quality of your life is determined by the decisions you make daily. Every bad decision has its payday. So also is every good decision you make.
The fact that disaster does not follow up immediately after you make a bad decision doesn’t mean disaster isn’t coming if you continue on with the wrong choices. The same goes too for good decisions. Failure is simply errors in judgement that you continue again and again over a period of time. Success on the other hand is the same only in reverse; good choices made continually every day.
If you would take a look at the last 3 years of your life and study it. I’m sure you’d find certain errors in judgment that you can correct for this year so you don’t get the same negative results again. Do you want to have a great year? Start having good days — they’ll add up soon enough.
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