By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore
As I conduct my Time Management Seminars all over, my audiences consistently tell me they want more out of life. Almost everyone I speak with has a yearning for improving several aspects of their lives. They have dreams and goals about their future as yet unrealized.
Many come to the end in life with those visions unrealized, pictures in their minds only.
Achieving goals helps us to get the “want to’s” in our lives. Life ought to be more than just achieving the “have to’s.”
I offer three important tips to help increase the probability of achieving your dreams, getting more of what you want in your life.
Having written out the goal, placed a picture in our goal scrapbook, quantified it, and set a deadline, we can now break that goal down into its little component pieces so that achievement becomes realistic and manageable.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. No goal achievement is a leap across some huge canyon. Many are intimidated and driven away from going after what they really want in their lives for fear they will have to take a giant leap across that canyon and, hey, what if I don’t leap far enough? Disaster.
Let’s say you have a goal to get an additional $10,000 in savings two years from today. Make up a picture of your new bank statement two years from now showing the additional $10,000 in your account. The goal is in writing. It is quantified and a deadline has been set. Now you can break that goal into its little steps for achievement.
To get $10,000 over the next two years requires getting an additional $5,000 per year. A year is made up of twelve months, so that means you need to get approximately $400 per month. A month is made up of four weeks, so that’s $100 per week. And a week is made of, let’s say, five business days. That’s $20 per day. (I have not added in interest to these calculations just for simplicity.)
I don’t know about you, but the notion of going out in the world tomorrow and getting an extra $20 is a whole lot more realistic and certainly a whole more doable than getting $10,000. Getting the entire $10,000 is the leap across the canyon. It scares me. $20 is the single step. That’s something I can handle. Now the goal seems realistic and is realizable.
But until you write out your goal, quantify it, and set a deadline so that you break it down to its small steps, it will forever appear to be too big a stretch and therefore unattainable. But every time you follow these three steps and break the goal down, you will always find that you have within your control what it takes to accomplish that next step. And once you begin, you are on your way!
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Dr. Donald E. Wetmore
Certified Executive Coach, Consultant and Trainer
Author, “Organizing Your Life” and “The Productivity Handbook”
Productivity Institute
Personal Productivity Solutions to Leverage Your Impact
127 Jefferson St.
Stratford, CT 06615
(203) 386-8062
(800) 969-3773
info@balancetime.com
https://www.balancetime.com
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