Your guide to a healthier perspective of life
Focus on finishing one task before moving on to the next one.
In today’s ADHD world, it’s easy to get distracted by new ideas or to think you can multitask effectively, but the truth is if you are constantly chasing after two dissimilar goals, you’re unlikely to accomplish either of them.
Have a SMART goal in mind.
S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym standing for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. These goals are designed to keep you on track and motivated to achieve what you want in life. They work because instead of just having a general idea of what you want (i.e., “I want to retire early”), they make you think about the path of how to actually get there.
For example, if you want to retire early, how early? Does retiring early mean retiring at 60? 55? 45? You need to set an end date to create a sense of urgency. This will also help you reverse engineer your goal to see if it’s realistic/attainable. You’ll need to figure out how much you need to live off of per month or per year and then can use cool tools like the 4% rule to see how much money you need invested to hit your retirement goal. Are you ok living off of $40,000 per year ($3,333 per month) or do you need $80,000 or more? What expenses will you have when you retire? In addition to basic living (food, water, transportation, cell phone), will you still have a mortgage payment? Don’t forget you’ll likely need to pay for healthcare. Using the 4% rule, you’ll need $1,000,000 invested if you want to live off a $40,000/year income.
The good news is that if you’re young, you have a lot of time to make good financial decisions and allow those good decisions to compound over time. The bad news is, it’s a long time to stay focused on a goal. So Instead of taking a straight line to where you want to go, it might be more of a winding road.
How do you stay focused for 20 years? To do this, you have break it down into more manageable chunks (having “milestones” to look forward to), celebrate the wins once you achieve those milestones, review your goals regularly, have an accountability partner to make sure you’re not straying too far off your path, understanding that sometimes you’ll have to delay gratification, not worry about what others think and stop comparing your life to theirs, and have a strong reason for wanting what you are stating is your goal. Do you want to retire early only so you can sit in front of the tv all day or do you want to enjoy life with others? If it’s the latter, who’s to say you can’t do that now?
Some of us set goals (or have New Years resolutions) and feel like we did something just by writing them down.
Some of us start out with good intentions to accomplish the goals we wrote down, but when motivation wanes, when things get tough, or life gets in the way, we conveniently forget about our goals or discard them.
Some of us accomplish our New Years resolutions early in the year, not because we’re overachievers, but because we set the bar too low (almost like a checklist that has “brush teeth” on it).
And some of us achieve our goals and then relax or return to bad habits to celebrate the accomplishment. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating wins (big and small), and I actually think it’s important to note how far you’ve come. But don’t get complacent. Don’t celebrate too long or get too far off-track. It’s time to get back to work. Just because you’ve accomplished a goal doesn’t mean you’re finished. After all, you’re still alive, right? Everyday, you can get better. Strive to be better than who you were yesterday.
“We aim above the mark to hit the mark.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Set lofty, stretch goals that are challenging and make you question how you’re going to actually achieve them.
If you ask big questions, you’re forced to come up with big answers.
You don’t have to know every step to get there. But figure out the big steps you think it will take and start with the first step. Figure it out as you go – following the rough outline you laid out and letting your experience and mentors guide you along the way.
Even if you don’t hit your lofty goal, you should have still succeeded in other areas along the way. Swing for the fences and you might still hit a double. But the key is to strive for improvement, don’t strive for perfection. Keep a positive attitude and enjoy the journey.
“It” can always be better. “It” can always be improved. But it won’t magically improve…it only gets better if you make it better. The world isn’t out to get you, but it’s not out there trying to make your dreams come true either. If you want your dreams to come true, you need to do something about it. Ask yourself, first, what are the most important goals in my life (short-term and long-term). Then figure out where you need to be and what you need to get done within the next 10 years, 5 years, 1 year, 90 days, 7 days, and by the end of the day. Take an action step. What do you want? How will you get there? Go out and “do.” Because without doing, you’ll be at the same place tomorrow as you were today. And then 30 years will pass in the blink of an eye and you’ll have achieved nothing of great meaning (or, at the very least, achieved very little in comparison to if you had a goal and an action plan to achieve that goal in place).