To Do or Not To Do

There are 24 hours in a day, of which you need at least 7-8 hours sleep, leaving 16 hours to get what you need done, for everyone, CEO’s, prime ministers or entrepreneurs, that needs to include exercise and down time. While some people see a dwindling clock, we, the entrepreneurs see opportunity, 10 to 12 hours of it. So, if you regularly surrender to that voice in your head telling you to put off that task, this is where we challenge it.

The Why Before diving head first into that To Do List, take a step back and understand the bigger picture. It’s important to reverse engineer your tasks. What are you actually trying to accomplish? Whether it be closing a deal, or updating a spreadsheet, think of the end result and constantly envision how this will get you closer. Got it – great. Now visualise yourself achieving it.

Visualisation is a great tool, underutilised by most of us. Often associated with athletes–whilst this is imperative to the success of most athletes, it’s not limited to just them. Our brain is hard wired to take paths previously explored, when we find ourselves in stressful situations and have yet to explore this previously, whether it be mentally or physically we are bound to choke up. Hence visualising the scenario with a number of different possibilities, will keep your mindset strong and ready to tackle any situation. Have a very clear picture of what the outcome is, and keep visualising yourself achieving it. This will constantly drive you towards the bigger picture and feed your passion.

The How Now that we have the why and have stacked our motivation, all we need to do is achieve our goals, right? Pretty much. It can be that simple. This is ‘The How’; the steps in between where you want to be and where you are now. Coming from someone who usually assigns all the responsibility to my future self, I now must implement a structured regime to my tasks, this is the only way I can start achieving my goals. I organise my tasks in order of priority, usually setting myself no more than 3 major tasks per day; these are my days’ focus. I bang these out first thing, honing all my energy into them often setting myself deadlines for each task. At the end of each task, I allow myself 20min to power through some of the smaller tasks, almost as a reward. Get a gym buddy By having someone who will hold you accountable, you are more likely to complete your tasks. Have regular meetings, set yourselves the weeks goals, and check in on each other to make sure you are achieving them. Keep in mind that if your partner does not have invested interest in you completing your tasks, or there are no repercussions for noncompletion this will inevitably fail.