The secret to achieving the important things in your life

Time is always something we desire more of however it is the one thing we cannot control - it is also a resource that is limited in nature. We all want more time in order to achieve more of our goals in life rather than seemingly spending more and more minutes on admin such as banking, grocery shopping etc. Therefore how can we ensure that we make better use of our time if solely for the purpose of not looking back at our life and regretting certain things we didn’t achieve simply due to a perceived lack of time.

The first step is to become aware of how you are actually spending your precious minutes on a daily basis and over the course of the week. Are you spending time on the tasks that will allow you to achieve your goals? Do you even know what those tasks are? Have you aligned your time to reflect the importance of the goals in your life? Have you even spent time considering what your goals are and what you need to do in order to achieve them? Habits can either aid you to achieve in life or detract from your ability to achieve. People may see habits as good or bad but I would prefer not to label them this way. A bad habit may have a useful purpose but only up to a certain point, therefore it is not necessarily bad.

The second step is to focus only on those actions that are proactively going to allow you to achieve your goals and to reduce or rid yourself of your habits that are not. One example is that of watching television. Now watching a certain amount of television may provide some benefits – enjoyment and relaxation being a couple. However at which point does watching television impact your ability to achieve your other goals? If you watch only five hours of your favourite programs rather than allow yourself ‘television creep’ (where you end up watching a lot more then intended) then you provide yourself with more hours automatically. What this means is that you should weight and rank your goals and the underlying tasks in order to know what you should spend more time on.

The third step is to identify ways and means to become more efficient with your time. Time means money simply because there is a financial opportunity cost attached to every second of your day. One hour less sleep or one hour less television produces two additional hours of earning activity. It also affects the quality of your life in respect to the time to spend on non-enjoyable tasks. Look for ways to double up on actions during the one time period. For example whilst cooking dinner listen to study CDs, work on your hobby on your laptop on the bus ride to work, sending out laundry, ensure all bills are paid via direct debit and listen to your favourite music whilst writing emails (and reduce the latter to once a day). Changing your habits is only as difficult as you wish to make it but it is advised to work with a professional coach in order to change your mentality and motivations behind how you choose to live your life. There is no better time to change then today. Realizing you wanted to make changes five years in the future (what they call hindsight) is not going to help you but if you can visualize right now how this might feel it will allow you to make the necessary changes in your habits.

Staying focused and motivated for your goals

How often would you experience the following:

'you have a great goal in mind, something you start off being extremely passionate about. You start with the research and make some good headway. You're still working to keep money coming in but this new idea should be ready to make money within 6 months and you could see it replacing your current full-time job within 12-18 months - that is also an important goal of yours. Some time goes by and you don't see to be making headway and your full-time job starts taking up more of your time. All of a sudden you wake up 6 months later and your great idea is no more. "Oh well", you say, "just wasn't the right time or right idea". Of course you might become disheartened and that's it - no more ideas'.

What I am framing is something that potentially affects many people who have ideas to start off a new project or business. Having an idea is the easy piece, implementing the actions that will progress you past the concept stage requires dedication. It also requires that you focus on the RIGHT PRIORITIES and make the RIGHT DECISIONS (or at least learn from the mistakes you made). It is easy for the brain to ignore pain and disappointment by focusing on something else. This is why if your idea/project is not progressing as expected it is far easier to focus on something else. However we often blame our environment for this 'failure' rather than ourselves. For many of us it is difficult to recognize your own personal biases when it comes to making decisions - whether that be the information you use for input, the experiences and assumptions you make when processing information and the fact that we rarely question our output.

Poor decision making combined with not knowing the tasks that should be prioritized because they offer most value to your project are two key reasons why many people lose focus and motivation. Not everyone is built to continually push past failure after failure and monetary wise many of us could not continue to do so. So what I am suggesting is that you become more efficient when it comes to making decisions and setting tasks. Doing this will result in more small wins and this progress will help you maintain your focus and motivation. So the simple steps to take are;

1. Ensure your idea is accompanied by a vision - supported by internal motivations/values

2. Don't keep your idea in your head. Write down what you need to do and if necessary speak to a business coach who can help you determine which tasks should be prioritized as they will lead to greater progress.

3. Be aware of your decision making biases - always look for independent feedback as well as analyzing why decisions made did not work out the way you expected.

4. Be conscious that you will fail only if you stop. Embrace the fact that setbacks are important but only if you learn from them.

The life conundrum - what life choices should you make?

I was thinking today that there are generally two types of people; those who are constantly learning new skills based on the direction they choose to take at a particular time and those who will not consider a new direction but therefore have the opportunity to develop experience and skill in a single area.

The next question to myself was what was I? The second was what should I be? It's a tough one to answer because some of us stick with a few skills whilst others want to continually learn new ones. The bottom line though is that whatever choice you make it will influence your life path. But then I thought why can't I have my cake and eat it too. Why can't I learn new skills and develop them whilst learning even more new skills? Answer to that is I can but I'll need a lot of one thing. That thing is TIME. Unfortunately along with death and taxes (for the poor and middle class at least) the clock ticking down on our existence is a foregone conclusion. Until 2050 when the cure to eternal life is discovered of course.

What I figured is that I could be both and I could find the time. However it would require sacrifice because there would be a lot of things I would have to give up. And there you have it, the conundrum of life - you can have anything you want but not everything you want. You have to make a choice and live with it. You can retrace your steps but of course the clock is always ticking. Therefore be a man (or person) with a plan and stick to it with no regrets.

Using time effectively and efficiently

Time is always something we desire more of however it is the one thing we cannot control - it is also a resource that is limited in nature. We all want more time in order to achieve more of our goals in life rather than seemingly spending more and more minutes on admin such as banking, grocery shopping etc. Therefore how can we ensure that we make better use of our time if solely for the purpose of not looking back at our life and regretting certain things we didn’t achieve simply due to a perceived lack of time.

The first step is to become aware of how you are actually spending your precious minutes on a daily basis and over the course of the week. Are you spending time on the tasks that will allow you to achieve your goals? Have you aligned your time to reflect the importance of the goals in your life? Have you even spent time considering what your goals are and what you need to do in order to achieve them? Habits can either aid you to achieve in life or detract from your ability to achieve. People may see habits as good or bad but I would prefer not to label them this way. A bad habit may have a useful purpose but only up to a certain point, therefore it is not necessarily bad.

The second step is to focus only on those actions that are proactively going to allow you to achieve your goals and to reduce or rid yourself of your habits that are not. One example is that of watching television. Now watching a certain amount of television may provide some benefits – enjoyment and relaxation being a couple. However at which point does watching television impact your ability to achieve your other goals? If you watch only five hours of your favourite programs rather than allow yourself ‘television creep’ (where you end up watching a lot more then intended) then you provide yourself with more hours automatically.

The third step is to identify ways and means to become more efficient with your time. Time means money simply because there is a financial opportunity cost attached to every second of your day. One hour less sleep or one hour less television produces two additional hours of earning activity. Look for ways to double up on actions during the one time period. For example whilst cooking dinner listen to study CDs, work on your hobby on your laptop on the bus ride to work, sending out laundry, ensure all bills are paid via direct debit and listen to your favourite music whilst writing emails (and reduce the latter to once a day). Changing your habits is only as difficult as you wish to make it but it is advised to work with a professional coach in order to change your mentality and motivations behind how you choose to live your life. There is no better time to change then today. Realizing you wanted to make changes five years in the future (what they call hindsight) is not going to help you but if you can visualize right now how this might feel it will allow you to make the necessary changes in your habits.