Noun: the action of delaying or postponing something.
Sound familiar? It certainly does to me. It has taken many years of self-study and learning from leaders, my peers and coaches how to find a solution to this every present issue in my daily life. Know the feeling?
Well, the truth is that dealing with procrastination is different for each of us, as are the solutions to many issues we face. Another good reason why personal coaching is a powerful too, to help find these processes, tools and modes that will help you find solutions to such issues.
Procrastination is a topic that is close to my heart, because it is one of the largest instigators of so many of our issues, so many of my clients share this same illusive issue. Our lack of ability to focus and concentrate on the things in life that would bring us the greatest success sin achieving our goals and ambitions. Much of the time we have no clue that we are filling our time with ‘busy-making- activities, needless to say it is an easy trap to fall into and one that we continuously need to recognise. The good news is that as with everything else with the right guidance and practice it becomes easier to notice and deal with.
I want to introduce you to a clever concept called the ‘80/20 model’, also known as the Pareto Principal. Originally formulated by Vilfredo Pareto, in 1895. Sometimes I hear dates like these and I think to myself I really am behind the times!
What Pareto referred to was what seemed to be a natural division that within society he called the “vital few,” or the top 20 percent in terms of money and influence, and the “trivial many,” or the bottom 80 percent. Later, Pareto discovered that virtually all economic activity was subject to this principle, in that 80 percent of the wealth of Italy during that time was controlled by 20 percent of the population.
The 80 / 20 principal can be applied to many things, it is a simple and powerfully effective model.
For the purposes of this piece I use it in reference to goals. I have a challenge for you. You all no doubt know about the 2424 challenge I have set previously, where I ask you to write down 24 things you want and then once done write down 24 things that you want that you have. Firstly, this is to establish you as coming from a place of abundance with your goals (wealth attracts wealth). Secondly it gives you a list of things that you believe you want in the future. The next step is to go through the list of things that you want and for each one write down if it is a ‘to-do’ or a goal. The difference here being a to-do is to clean the house, a goal would be to notice that you have too much stuff and work on being more minimalist – if indeed that is what you want to achieve. You get the idea. It is important that you are very honest with yourself as well as commit to the process, you have to commit to the process otherwise you will continue to struggle to achieve these ‘wants’ as you have previously.
Now, lets turn these into goals.
Once you have differentiated your ‘to-dos’ for your goals, firstly add your to-dos to your to-do list and put that away for now. I want you to focus on the wants that have become goals. Now I want you to look at each with the Pareto model in mind, beside each one write either 80 or 20 depending on the impact that that want will have on your life. This is not how badly you want it, this is in term of the impact it will have on your life overall – how and to what degree will this ‘want now turned goal’, positively affect your life.
If after this exercise you have multiple 20s that is great, these are things for you to focus on that are really important to your life, to the life you want. The 80s can take a back seat for now and when you have time and space you can look at them.
Now that you have distilled down to you top goals that are going to have the best possible impact on your life, the next step is breaking this down into bite size steps for you to achieve Set a goal for 60 days from now. Some goals will be achievable in their entirety in this time, others will not, work out how many steps you can take toward the goal in 60 days by breaking it down to actions to be done per month, per week, per day.
Put aside time each day to take small to medium sized steps toward this goal. If you can commit 1 hour, 30 minutes a day, if you can only spare 10 minutes that works too, we all have different time commitments so make it what will work for you, it is all about forming the habit. Each day schedule in this time and make sure you stick to it. Every day you will get closer and closer to it and this is the secret behind how successful people in this world get what it is that they want.
Now that you have the secret to success, get to work!
Final Note from the Author:
For those who need help with this I would be happy to talk through with you how to best apply this to your circumstances in your life. It is all fine and well me writing it out like this and making it sound so simple, however we all know that it takes work, especially to begin with. I have developed many models to help you get this right and on track to smashing your greatest goals. Book a Coffee Break Chat with Stuart