You've probably heard that you have to give it everything if you want to get somewhere. I don't quite agree.
We need focus, but we also need balance. So let's do the maths.
168 hours
A week has 168 hours. We sleep away about 56. With an ordinary job, 40 go to work. Of the 72 that are left, 40 probably go to family, the home and everything around it.
That leaves a little over 30 hours.
What you do with those decides what your future looks like. Not the 56, not the 40 at work. The 30.
What isn't negotiable
Before you fill those 30 hours with something new, I want you to decide what can't be touched. Sleep is priority one for me. I need time to myself in the morning and a break in the middle of the day to keep going over time.
Your things may look completely different: training, the relationship, the kids, one evening a week that's just yours. Write them down. They're not an obstacle to your goals, they're the foundation your goals rest on.
If you don't know where you want to go
If you don't know where you want to go, it's like getting into a taxi and saying: drive somewhere. You'll get moving. The only question is where you end up.
That's why I always start with the goals and wait with the plan. Don't confuse how with what. Your how is really a who: someone who has done what you want to do and can help you put a plan together.
A simple way to get started:
- Write down 30 things you want to achieve in ten years. Big and small, without censoring yourself.
- Pick ten of them for the coming five years.
- Pick five for three years, and three for the coming year.
- Circle the goal that would really mean something. For me it was freedom.
Everything else can wait
Once you know what matters, it gets easier to say no to the rest. I have a folder called Someday maybe. That's where I put all the ideas that are clamouring for attention but shouldn't get it right now. Then I don't have to carry them around in my head.
If you always do the same thing, you'll always get the same result. You have to do something different to get something different.
The question is never whether the plan works. The question is always whether you choose to do what it says.
If you want to work through this properly, I've gathered the whole model in a free workbook, A Simple Model for Goal Setting. It takes a cup of coffee and a pen.
