Set Yourself up for Success (10 Day Blog Challenge)
So today’s challenge – set yourself a daily success plan – concerned me slightly! I’m not great at disciplining myself and being consistent about what I do every day, although I’m aware that it’s really helpful to be organised. I think I’ve said before that my workload at the minute varies, so it’s hard to plan when I’ll do things. However, if I apply some structure now, that’ll stand me in good stead when my work’s on a more even keel.
This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 5
Daily Success Steps
I can give myself 20 minutes at the start of my day to reflect where I am with business development, and identify my two or three MIAs (most important actions). I’d also like to use this time to reaffirm my intentions, which I know is a good way to fix your ideal lifestyle in your mind. I’ve been using e.ggtimer.com for a few months and find it helps my concentration massively, but I work in 20 minute bursts, so I’d best move on to the pomodoro option!
I’m also cutting back on attending external events, unless there’s a clear benefit for me moving forward (and closer to location independence) and trying to have more meetings via Skype, which is more efficient and practical. So the time I save there I can reinvest – I’d like to have one pomodoro session devoted to reading a business or reference book. I’ve got a pile on my shelf and a virtual stack on my Kindle, so this would be a proactive way to tackle them.
I’ll also switch off my phone notifications and use Inbox Pause on my Google account. I’m fortunate to have a small room which I can use exclusively for my office. I’ll reinstall Leech Blocker as well to stop me checking the news and so on.
I feel like there should be something specific I should add to my daily routine to show I’m making progress towards my goals of working from anywhere and with high-impact entrepreneurs, but I’m not sure what. Maybe this needs more thought!
I noticed your comment on the #10DBC and related to your struggle. I’m not one for having a ‘regular schedule’, but I have found that I have a work routine, and within it I get a lot done – it sounds like you do too.
I wonder if you might benefit from a couple of free tools I use? One of them is called Pomotodo, and combines a task list so that you can look back over the week / month to see the progress.
The other one is an android app called Goal Tracker. You might set this up so that you have a reminder to affirm intentions 5 times a week. Anytime throughout the day, you can mark the item as done, or defer it to another day. Or, a goal that you’d like to read 1 business book a month (broken down into little chunks – pages read, or time spend reading), and again, mark as complete or deferred. It has nice progress graphs so you can see how close you are to reaching your goals 🙂
There are similar tools for the iphone too, but I haven’t used them… just thought I’d mention them both, in case it helps ease things in your life, like it does in mine.
Thanks Loralee! They both sound great. I’d definitely benefit from something to keep me on track and having a reminder on my phone to prod me into action would be a plus. I’ll investigate them both 🙂