by S J Scott
Family: “I will strengthen my bond with my family by taking them for a vacation at least once in six months. This will be accomplished by setting aside two hours each month to plan our family trip.”
Marriage: “I will identify three things I really love about my partner and tell her about them on Friday night. This will be done by scheduling a 30-minute block on Tuesday so I can reminisce about all the good times we’ve shared together.”
Spirituality: “I will take five minutes each day to give thanks for everything that’s good in my life. I will develop this habit by setting aside time right before my lunch to remember what’s important.”
Artistry: “I will dedicate three hours every week to learn and practice watercolor painting. This will be done by eliminating unimportant habits, like watching TV.”
Finances: “I will save 10 percent of every paycheck and invest it in index funds through Vanguard.”
Fitness: “I will work out a minimum of 30 minutes per day, three days per week by December 31.”
Hopefully, these seven examples give you an idea of how to create S.M.A.R.T. goals that lead to a balanced life. Now, let’s go over a six-action process you can use to create your goals.
Action #1: Focus on Five Projects
As mentioned before, people often procrastinate because they say yes to everything, which causes them to feel overwhelmed by their laundry list of obligations. That’s why I recommend focusing on just five projects, like I discussed in the previous section.
Not only will you make more progress with these five areas of your life, you’ll also feel less stressed because you’re not trying to juggle dozens of personal responsibilities.
Action #2: Focus on Three-Month Goals
It’s been my experience that long-term goals constantly shift. What seems urgent today often isn’t urgent next month. Lengthy goals (i.e., anything over six months) are often demotivating. When you know a deadline is months away, it’s easy to procrastinate on a task today. The result is you’ll put off a task, promising you’ll work on it next week. Next thing you know, it’s a year later and nothing has been accomplished.
You can fight your procrastination tendencies by taking the five priorities in your life and breaking them down into three-month S.M.A.R.T. goals.
As an example, let’s talk again about my current five projects:
Being present with friends and family.
Completing an IRONMAN race.
Writing and marketing my books.
Increasing web traffic to my blog, DevelopGoodHabits.com, and converting these visitors into email subscribers.
Fixing and updating sections of my home.
These are the general outcomes that I’m currently focusing on, but most don’t have a concrete outcome. So, they need to be turned into a series of S.M.A.R.T. goals that I hope to achieve by September 30, 2017. As you’ll see, some of these are one-time milestones and others are specific habits that I’d like to incorporate into my day.
1. Being Present with Friends and Family
Shut down my laptop by 5:00 p.m. every evening.
Dedicate 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. every day to spending time with my son.
Go on a date with my wife at least once every two weeks.
Visit my parents at least once every two weeks.
Go on a week-long vacation with the entire family in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in July 2017.
Go on a week-long vacation with my wife and son to the Finger Lakes in New York in August 2017.
2. Completing an IRONMAN Race
Build up to an average of 20 hours per week of combined exercise time.
Complete two or three 20-mile training runs.
Complete two or three 3-mile swims.
Complete one or two 100-mile bike rides.
Complete three short-distance triathlon races.
Complete a half-IRONMAN.
Complete IRONMAN Florida on November 4, 2017.
3. Writing and Marketing My Books
Write, publish, and launch three books (How to Stop Procrastinating, Upgrade Your Lifestyle, and a revised version of Master Evernote).
Create an email follow-up sequence for each of these three books.
Set up pay-per-click campaigns (through Amazon Marketing Services) for each of my five top-selling books.
4. Increasing Web Traffic to My Blog, DevelopGoodHabits.com, and Converting These Visitors into Email Subscribers
Optimize the 50 most-visited web pages by targeting specific keywords to increase their traffic.
Build an email marketing sequence for each of the ten top performing categories of content.
Write and publish at least two articles per week.
5. Fixing and Updating Sections of My Home
Finalize the organization of my home office.
Set up a bat house in our garden (an article on WellnessMama.com explains the benefits).
Repair at least ten items around my house.
Those are the important milestones from my list of five projects. As you can see, it’s not hard to break down a priority into a series of specific goals, each with a specific deadline and action item.
Action #3: Use a Weekly Review to Tweak Your Goals
It’s not always easy to consistently work on your goals when you have a dozen other obligations. Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this dilemma—schedule a weekly review session where you create a daily action plan for the next seven days.
The weekly review is important because life is always changing, which means you’ll need to make small, constant adjustments to your schedule. And occasionally, you’ll discover that you’re no longer interested in one of your five core projects. So, you can also use the weekly review to switch your focus to something else.
The weekly review is a vital part of the anti-procrastination process, so we’ll talk more about this concept in the section that I’ve devoted to planning your week.
Action #4: Turn Each Focus into a Project
Think back to the eight reasons that people procrastinate. One of the biggest roadblocks you’ll face is not knowing how to get started with a task. When you have “write report” on your to-do list, it’s easy to put it off because this action item doesn’t have an obvious first step.
That’s why you should turn any multi-step activity into a project—with tasks that can be completed in a short block of time.
The advantage of creating a project list is you never have to guess about your next action. Instead, you can use a key technique from Getting Things Done in which you continuously ask one question whenever you work on a project: “What’s my next step?” Then, once you’ve identified this action, you make forward progress on one of your five core projects.
Yes, on the surface this might seem like simplistic advice. But I think it’s a very effective strategy, because people often procrastinate on ambiguous tasks when they don’t know the next step they need to take. For instance, the book you’re currently reading required over a hundred separate actions to go from idea to publication. That’s in addition to the habit of writing for 30–90 minutes every day. Here are just the first 12 steps that I have on my project list that I need to complete before I even write the first word:
Think of a basic book idea (look in my book “idea garden”).
Go to Amazon to gauge the profit potential of a book idea; use the rule of #30,000 (described on Authority Pub) to see if it’s popular topic.
Poll my audience to identify their specific challenges with this topic.
Create a folder for the book project on my desktop, in Evernote, and in Todoist.
Identify the hook and basic premise for the book.
Dedicate two weeks for brainstorming talking points.
Identify s
even target keywords.
Research the topic, including reading books, reviewing Blinkist and using Google to find quality references.
Do a book “brain dump” to brainstorm every possible idea to include.
Review these notes by identifying potential chapters and fleshing them out.
Sort the index cards into a logical order.
Map the outline.
As you can see, this partial project list is a mixed bag of actions that take from a few minutes to a few hours of effort. But the critical thing to remember is to have a central hub for every project with clear actions for each step of the process. Done correctly, this project list will become an invaluable companion you’ll refer to throughout the day.
It’s not hard to create a project list. In fact, you can get started in five minutes with two great tools that are completely free—Todoist and Evernote.
Todoist and Evernote each have a specific benefit, so let me give you a brief overview of both, and then we’ll talk about how they can be used to assist your efforts at maintaining the projects in your life.
Evernote is a cross-platform tool that allows you to take notes, capture ideas, and organize this information into a file structure that’s based on your personal needs. You can use Evernote to create simple text-based notes, upload photos, record voice reminders, add videos, and clip specific web pages. Anything that can be digitized can be uploaded to Evernote.
I like Evernote because it can act as a central location to capture any important idea or thought: a strategy you’d like to implement, a website to bookmark, or a time marker for a multimedia file. Basically, whenever you come across a piece of information that’s important for your long-term success, it should go into Evernote.
It’s easy to get started with Evernote. My recommendation is to create a “notebook” for your skill and then add notes for each reminder or idea that pops into your head. An article on Evernote titled “Organize With Notebooks” can walk you through the entire process.
Todoist is the perfect tool for creating and managing project lists. I prefer this app over others, because it allows me to maintain multiple projects and store tasks for each one while also creating simple daily lists that don’t cause me to feel overwhelmed.
Like Evernote, Todoist isn’t difficult to use. Simply create a project for your skill, add tasks for that project, and then schedule these items into your weekly routine. To get started, the Todoist blog provides a quick start guide.
If you feel confused by either of these apps, I’ve created a simple video that walks you through each one. You can access these videos on the free companion website.
Action #5: Review Your Goals
The key to achieving anything in life is consistency. That’s why you should review the list for each of the five projects and make sure you’re hitting every important milestone. I recommend creating specific measurements for each step of the process and using a weekly review to make sure you’re touching on those as well.
Setting aside time for a daily review is a key step to achieving any goal. It doesn’t matter how busy you are—if you are not reviewing your goals every day, you will be less likely to succeed.
The truth is, sometimes life can throw major curve balls in your pursuit of a long-term objective. Often, these challenges can be frustrating and cause you to feel less excited about a goal. So, my advice is simple: review your goals at least two times per day. That way, you can keep them at the forefront of your mind and remind yourself why you’re taking a specific action on a daily basis.
Action #6: Evaluate Your Quarterly Goals
You work hard on your goals every day. The problem? Some people never take a step back and understand the “why” behind each goal. In other words, people don’t review their goals to see if they’re actually worth pursuing. That’s why it’s important to evaluate your goals every three months, make sure they’re aligned with your life purpose, and then create new goals based on what you’ve learned.
You can complete this evaluation by answering questions like:
Have I attained the desired outcome?
What were the successful and unsuccessful strategies?
Did I put 100% of my effort toward completing these goals? If not, why?
Have I achieved results consistent with my efforts?
Should I create a similar goal for the next quarter?
What goals should I eliminate or alter?
Is there anything new I’d like to try?
Even though it takes a few hours to complete this evaluation, you should take time to do it every quarter. It will be your ultimate safeguard against wasting time on a goal that doesn’t align with your long-term plans.
Now, the best way to make sure you have enough time to work on these goals is to remove everything from your life that prevents you from taking action, which is what I’ll cover in the next step.
Exercise #4: Set Your Quarterly S.M.A.R.T. Goals
We often procrastinate on tasks that don’t provide instant gratification. However, if you attach each task to an immediate goal, you increase the odds that you’ll be motivated enough to get started. The simplest way to do this is to set S.M.A.R.T. goals for every quarter (i.e., three months) instead of the yearlong goals that most people set.
S.M.A.R.T. stands for:
Specific;
Measurable;
Attainable;
Relevant; and
Time-bound.
You can create these quarterly goals by completing a simple six-action exercise:
Focus on five projects and commit to focusing only on these activities.
Create goals with an immediate deadline (I suggest every three months).
Use a weekly review to track and adjust your goals.
Turn each focus into a project by clearly identifying all the steps you need to complete.
Review your goals to remind yourself of the long-term benefit of taking action on the activities you might want to procrastinate on.
Evaluate your goals every quarter and use this feedback to make more effective goals for the next three months.
Step #4: Say No to Competing Projects and Obligations
Saying no is another part of the anti-procrastination process that will be difficult to implement. Again, not because it’s hard to do, but because it requires a deep level of commitment that most people don’t have when it comes to their personal goals.
In this step, I’m asking you say no when it comes to any task, project, or obligation that doesn’t perfectly align with the goals that you’ve set for yourself.
What does this have to do with procrastination? Well, there are three reasons why this step is an important part of the process.
First, by now you know that the feeling of overwhelm is often the biggest cause of procrastination. When you feel like you have too much to do daily, it’s easy to push off the difficult stuff because you don’t have the physical or mental bandwidth to do them well.
Second, it’s also easy to fall into the trap of agreeing to the requests for your time from other people simply because you don’t want to disappoint anyone. We all want to be liked, so we’ll agree to something—even when we know it’s something we don’t have time to do.
Finally, it’s easy to “tinker” on projects that sound fun, but aren’t part of your five core projects. This is a dangerous practice, because whenever you say yes to something new, you’re basically saying no to the projects that you’ve already identified as being important.
Just think back to the list of 25 items that you brainstormed in Step #2. While you picked 5 core projects, you also had to say no to the other 20. The problem here is that they are 20 items in which you have some personal interest. Unfortunately, on some level, they can be the biggest distraction of them all because you’ll often
feel the occasional urge (possibly induced by a bit of guilt) to focus on these activities.
For instance, when I did the 25–5 challenge, there were an additional 15 items that I included on my list. Each was a compelling project that I’d love to do, but when compared to the five that I selected, I chose to put them off:
Create a physical product.
Launch a podcast related to habits and personal development.
Create an information product related to habits and personal development.
Scale-up my existing product that teaches self-publishing.
Master Facebook ads.
Go on a “podcast tour” to promote my book Habit Stacking.
Start playing the trumpet (again).
Get into CrossFit®.
“Level up” my cooking and meal-preparation efforts.
Start gardening around my house.
Section-hike the Appalachian Trail.
Join more local Meetup groups and expand my social circle.
Learn to speak Spanish.
Improve my photography skills.
Join a local real estate investing club.
Sure, some of these ideas are farfetched—they are bucket list ideas that sound good, but I’m currently unsure of how they’ll fit into my schedule. On the other hand, there are a few ideas that I would love to do now, but I recognize that time spent on them is time taken away from the five projects that are important to me.
So, by now you know it’s important to say no to anything that conflicts with the core projects in your life.
The question is: “How do I say no without ticking people off or getting into trouble at work?”