I am Always Late

Along with lack of motivation, such factors as vagueness, uncertainty and lack of clarity are among the key reasons of our bad habits, discouragement and procrastination. For those who are determined to fight with these problems and look for positive changes in their life, I would like to offer a strategy created by Dr. Brian Tracy, an experienced time management specialist, lecturer and business coach, who wrote several books of special techniques and recommendations for those who suffer from chronic procrastination and lack of personal effectiveness. He argues that everyone who wants to be successful in this world has to define own goals and aspirations. This can be done in the following 7 steps:

Step 1. Decide, what exactly do you want to achieve in this life, where do you want to be and what do you want to possess? Specifying your goals and your strategies to achieve them will help you in one important thing: to avoid doing useless, low value tasks and wasting your time and efforts. “One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all”, Tracy says.

Step 2. Think on paper. Try to write down at least 10 goals you want to achieve within the next year. Make them clear and crystallize them on paper. Now you see that by writing them down, your dreams and goals turned from fantasies into something tangible and real, didn’t they?

Step 3. Estimate an optimistic deadline and a pessimistic deadline for your goals. If your goal has no fixed time limits, it loses its relevance and urgency. You have to establish clear time frames for achieving your goals and assume the responsibilities not to procrastinate all the time, but work on this day by day.

Step 4. Think about everything you need to do, learn or accomplish in order to achieve your goals, and make a list of the findings. This will, definitely, make your goals closer to you. Also, this list will give you a picture of the most important or the largest tasks you need to accomplish on your way to every goal.

Step 5. Organize the list of the findings by priority and time sequence. You can use charts, boxes or circles. This plan will help you to increase your productivity and efficiency, so you will definitely be more successful than anyone who carries his goals in the mind.

Step 6. Take action! Find something that you can do right away in order to get closer to your goals at least for an inch. You can arrange a meeting with your future business partner, or find some important online information for your project. Do anything right away!

Step 7. Make a habit of doing something that will move you toward achieving your goals every single day. Learn something new every day, get engaged in specific activities or discussions, and involve more and more people in your projects. Keep moving forward and do not miss a day!

In my previous articles I was mentioning motivation as the main moving force for personal development and success. It is quite obvious that if a person is not enough motivated and challenged to do something, he or she will not struggle to succeed, as well as never feel sad for lost opportunities. Now, we are about to learn the second not less important factor which frequently causes our absolute indifference and poor self-discipline. This factor is lack of clarity: a lack of clear and specific goals, and lack of understanding what we want to achieve, when and in what way.

It is reported that only 3-5% of people have clear realistic written goals and objectives for their life. Such people are supposed to be more confident and more determined on their way to achieving those goals. They are also considered to be more reliable, more pragmatic and precise, and they usually have fewer problems with estimating the time for accomplishing their tasks. Finally, they are supposed to be more successful.

That is why time management specialists recommend to write down your specific long-term goals on a piece of paper, then write down your short-term goals, and then do all that “scheduling” thing, specify the deadlines for every step, etc. They say that this will be your roadmap to success. Well, this idea can sound useless and quite senseless to many people, especially to those who have some unclear and “standard” goals in their mind, like “I will buy a better car when I get paid for this project” or “I will start a diet and lose 10 pounds till the end of this year”. I understand those people, and I admit that they can live their life happily without any planning and scheduling on paper.

All I want to ask you now is just giving a clear answer to yourself: do you have some certain ambitions or aspirations in your life? What are you trying to achieve in this life? What is you life? Is it like going with the flow and sitting on fence, or like looking for something special and helping other people to feel comfortable in this world? Where do you want to be in 10 or 20 years? What do you need to do for that? It is not for scheduling or planning something, it is for yourself. Take a break from your daily routine for a minute, sit down and think about your future, your goals and reasons you live this life for. Also, try to understand that the clearer your goals are, the easier it will be for you to overcome your procrastination and laziness, learn being successful and find your place among the most productive people of your generation.