Staying Focused on the Big Goals even if they are borrowed
I have just finished reading Charley Gilkey’s, Start Finishing for the second time after first reading this book 3 or 4 years ago. It’s about how to go from Idea to Done. I found myself building bits and pieces of his methodology into my planning when I was busy studying for my Masters in Financial Planning. While we all work differently, I found the methodology resonated with me and helped me structure my time effectively so that getting stuff done wasn’t overwhelming.
1 Know Your Goals
In my article Distilled decision-making for farm business and personal success – Financial Services SA I talk about drafting your goals. By that, I mean know what is important to you and the priority ranking of your goals.
2 Pick the Top Three to Five to Work On
Focus on which goals matter most, life tends to get in the way of what is most important to you. You need to prioritise your most limited resource – time. You need to weave your daily schedule around your goals, not the other way around. Typically, in life we all do the opposite.
To get traction on a project, ideally you need to spend 3 to 5 focus sessions on it each week. We all work to different rhythms, but a focus session is 90 – 150 minutes long. Plan your typical daily tasks around your focus sessions.
3 Chunk It Down
Take a helicopter approach and break the project down into year, quarter, or month long goals. From there, break the monthly goals into chunks that will take a focus session to complete. We all under-estimate how long it will take us to do something. One of the best tips in Charley’s book is to think of a number and double it. You will get better at estimating time scheduling as you get into it.
Why double the time? There are always road blocks, interruptions, or distractions that crop up. The reason I like the term focus sessions is that I turn off all alerts from emails and phones and just focus on the job at hand. There is nothing wrong with having a closed-door policy while you are doing your most important work.
4 If It’s Important Schedule It – The Five Project Rule
One of the keys throughout “Start Finishing” is limiting your focus to what is most important. There are always those annoying, but must do, tasks such as dealing with non-urgent emails, phone calls and staff/family questions that do not fit nicely into a desired time slot. I find that scheduling time to focus on those things helps in them not being as distractive while I am working on a project.
If it’s important, put it in your diary and map out the job/task/project.
The book espouses not starting the next job until you finish working on the job at hand. In the consulting world, I always have many projects on the go – and they are all important. What I find works best for me is to focus on the chunk that I want to complete during that focus session, and to not start the next project/chunk until it is completed.
You always get delays or hold-ups during the course of a project, even more so if you are waiting on someone or something before you can move on. If you find that you have spare time within a particular focus session, use it to leave bread crumbs for when you will next pick the project up – keep on mapping so you don’t have to spend a lot of time of remembering where you left off. This helps you pick up the flow you had when you were focused.
5 Don’t Get Ahead Of Yourself
I am sometimes accused of over planning my projects and this could be right. Charley recommends when you are planning your day, don’t look any further ahead than the week; if you are planning your week don’t look any further ahead than the month and so on.
My preference is to use a combination of the moving forward system above, and working back from a deadline, which is why I sometimes end up with too many balls in the air at once. The best way to overcome this syndrome is to prioritise, refresh, renew, reschedule, or refer to someone else. This is where Know Your Goals comes in handy. You can use that as a filter for what is most important to help prioritise; Should it be the next most important job? Is there a looming deadline? It could be the income you will make or the savings you will generate from completing the project. Referring back to your goals frequently will help you choose.
If in doubt, the simplest way is to opt for the project which will take the least work to complete, then you can finish it and move on to the next project.
It sounds simple but it is never easy, however being disciplined makes it come more naturally over time.
Good luck. I will see you at the finish post to celebrate your success, just don’t forget to take some time out for yourself and family along the way. I highly recommend reading Charley Gilkey’s book “Start Finishing” if you have found this article of value.