Let’s Celebrate…

Q1, 2012 is in the record books. What…you haven’t accomplished all that you planned; WHAT…hardly anything? Oh, my!

Well, the good news is you’re hardly alone. In fact, you’re in the majority. We really are a species of habitual procrastinators. So, apparently, you fit right in. After all, most of us do like to feel as if we’re one of the crowd.

Now for the bad news, if you had planned to accomplish X, and didn’t, you bargained with the devil. You repeatedly forfeited some portion of your future success, abundance, and/or happiness for some short-term pleasure or comfort. Hardly a fair exchange, although at the time it may have seemed so.

Now for some more good news, you can still salvage your year. Oh, I know you have no doubt that you intend that you will …right? However, lacking a palpable change, Q2, Q3, and Q4 are very likely to end the same way. Want to explore a surprisingly simple solution to the lack of accomplishment conundrum and turn this year into a year of achievement? Keep reading.

The Monthly Project

Here is a simple monthly program that will guide you to ending your year with nine meaningful achievements and/or accomplishments.

Create a list that contains all of the achievements, goals, objectives, and projects that you have routinely put off starting or finishing. Take 15 minutes, right now, write it or type it, but DO IT. Make it personal and meaningful. Don’t stop until you have a minimum of 20 items. Your list has to be real, and it has to be uniquely yours. Here are the types of items that I often hear from others in seminars:

• start an exercise program
• paint the living room
• write a book (or a chapter)
• learn Photoshop (or some other program)
• clean out the garage, or basement, or closet, or shed
• launch my Etsy business
• become a volunteer
• organize that box (or boxes) of pictures
• prepare my will
• visit ________
• join Toastmasters
• create a website

(Do not continue reading until your list is complete.)

With your list complete, choose the 14 items from your list that are the most important to YOU (circle, underline, or check/tic). Now analyze your list carefully and pare it down to the most important 9 (nine months remain in the year). Attach each of your nine projects to one of the nine remaining months. A bit of finesse may be required here depending on your already scheduled monthly activities or commitments.

For the 1^st monthly project only, break the project down into as many as 30 mini-goals, one for each day, which will culminate in the achievement or accomplishment of your project. Assign the mini-goals to a specific day of the upcoming month. It is not necessary to have 30, you may have fewer, but one for each day is the max. Further, slot each of the mini-goals in specific time slots on their assigned day. Now you need only complete each of the mini-goals which have been assigned to specific time slots on specific days. Do whatever is necessary to complete your daily goal …but, DO IT. When the month ends, you’re a winner …you’ve completed a project that you have been putting off since …well, you know. Just repeat the mini-goal assignment process on the last day of each month for each succeeding month.

You may have noticed that I used the words achievement and accomplishment. Here’s the difference in the two. Accomplishments are things that you feel you must do. Achievements are things that you have never done before that you would be proud of, as in goals. As an example, cleaning out a closet or organizing a box of pictures would usually be considered accomplishments, while starting an Etsy business or writing a book would usually be considered achievements. This doesn’t mean that accomplishments that can be monthly projects aren’t as important or as valuable as achievements. If it made your list, it is important enough in your life to be meaningful and impactful for your wellbeing, therefore it’s a keeper.

Daily Goals Are The Best Kind Of Goals

Completing small daily goals is the key, not only for these nine projects, but for all success endeavors. One the biggest reasons most of us don’t achieve nearly as much as we’d like is that our goals often seem monumental and daunting. We need to get away from creating long drawn out goals and replace them with long drawn out objectives. Daily goals are the best kind of goals for four reasons:

1. All goals should be “I will achieve this, no matter what,” if they’re not, don’t call them goals.
2. Daily achievements are ‘bite size’ successes.
3. Missed ‘bite size’ achievements are much easier to recover from and make up.
4. Daily successes are the best motivator for more and bigger success.

Look back over your original list. Now imagine having your nine most important projects complete …and in the record books. You only have to do one small additional thing each day, just one 30^th of one project. You still have time for all of the other things you want to do. And what a wonderful success habit you will have created for yourself. You can do this! You will be are a winner!

Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!

photo credit: David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Related articles:
> Q1: 2012 – What I did in first quarter of year? (Sheersh’s Blog… A Journal Of Life!!)