We all have goals we want to accomplish. Sometimes we focus on professional goals, sometimes the focus is on personal goals and often it’s both. Regardless of the focus, too often we don’t meet our goals, even when they’re really important to us.
Why is that?
Throughout the years I’ve been working with busy women, the #1 reason I’ve discovered that my clients don’t reach their goals isn’t a lack of passion, it isn’t a case of a “bad” goal, it isn’t even other people taking up too much of their time. The main reason most people don’t reach their goals is that they are trying to do too many things at once. Clients work with me because they want to lose weight, eat better, get a new job, find their passion, be a good mother, create a vibrant social life, start a business and so on. Sound familiar? These are all terrific desires, but too much for one person to handle at any given time.
It’s totally normal to want to make lots of improvements or changes to your life, yet trying to do them all at once is overwhelming and unproductive. In fact, recent studies have shown that multi-tasking is actually less efficient than focusing on one project at a time. Our brains just aren’t wired to do lots of things simultaneously.
Although it’s great to have multiple goals in life (I know I do), the key to success is to step back, examine what you really want right now, and pick ONE goal to focus on. I know that’s hard to do, but if you spend the majority of your time focusing on just one goal, you’ll accomplish it in record time. Determine the steps you need to finish that project, follow those steps daily before you tackle anything else on your daily to-do list.
What’s amazing is that with this type of laser focus, you’ll reach that goal sooner and be able to move on to the next goal on your list. Handling your goals one at a time like this will actually enable you to achieve more each year than if you try to complete everything at once.
If it helps, give yourself a time frame (90 days is an often recommended chunk of time) to really devote yourself to the goal you’ve chosen to focus on first. After 90 days, if you’ve been taking consistent and concentrated actions you’ll have hit the goal – or at least come a lot closer to it than if it was just another item on your list of things to do.
Won’t it feel fantastic this time next year to know you have accomplished the most important goals you’ve set for yourself? Give this method a try for the next six months and you’ll see how it feels!
