How to Achieve Your Goals
One of the most significant contributions to getting something done is time management. In your daily personal activities or work tasks, you may experience distractions, high stress, or ongoing procrastination. Creating a dedicated, healthy workspace is just one of the many ways to help foster good time management toward meeting and exceeding your goals. Here are some more tools you need to improve your time management, increase productivity, and achieve your goals.
⦁ Compartmentalize Your Goals
Know your goals for the day, week, month, and so on. Pre-planning your goals is the best way to get to know them; plan in the evenings or the first thing in the morning at a set time each month or week. Once you have listed your goals by timeframe, break each of them down into workable tasks to accomplish one at a time. Developing a mindset of “this is how much I can accomplish at once” will make it much easier for you to achieve your goals.
⦁ Prioritize
Many of us have tasks that we don’t necessarily want to do, but we have to do them. Use your most productive time of day to get those tasks done. If you schedule those tasks for yourself at that time, you’re more likely to get them done that day. Additionally, schedule your tasks on a prioritized schedule from one to four, based on the Franklin Covey Co. Habit 3: Put First Things First® four-quadrant model.
⦁ Quadrant 1: Urgent and Important
⦁ Quadrant 2: Not Urgent but Important
⦁ Quadrant 3: Urgent but NOT Important
⦁ Quadrant 4: Not Urgent and Not Important (A.K.A. Time Wasters)
Aim for as much daily activity as possible in Quadrant 2!
⦁ Say No
If you have tasks due at the end of the day and find yourself feeling weary and wondering if you will achieve your goals, be honest with yourself, your coworkers, or your boss and say “no” to additional tasks. If you accept more task assignments than you can handle, you will only end up failing and over-stressing yourself, causing you to be counterproductive.
⦁ Eliminate Distractions
Your smartphone is the biggest distraction of all. Yes, we said it, and you know it’s true. Because you probably need to use your smartphone for work, it might be hard not to look at your notifications. Consider activating the “do not disturb” function on your phone or your computer, for that matter, so that you can achieve your goals. There are many apps to explore, such as “SelfControl,” a free and open-source application for macOS to help block distractions, or the “Freedom” app available for Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, and Chrome, which offers the brand promise for you to “reclaim focus and productivity.” In the case of these and other productivity-boosting apps, you adjust your settings for what you would like to block for a certain amount of time, and the program will operate accordingly.
⦁ Track Your Time
Most of us are not good at estimating how long something will take for us to finish, so tracking time comes in handy when scheduling your day. You can use any app you desire, but a popular one is “Toggl,” which works with smartphones and computers. “Toggl Track” allows users to track time on tasks and delegate tasks to specific projects to achieve their goals.
A crucial, yet often overlooked, aspect in managing time and maximizing productivity throughout your life is self-care. Eating “clean,” whole foods, and getting your vitamins and minerals each day should come first when setting goals. Water is a great way to wake you up in the morning and refresh you. Whether you prefer aerobic activity, yoga, weight training, or some other physical activity, adding a morning workout is another way to pump you up for the rest of the day. These steps are among the top ways to maximize your lifestyle and achieve your goals.