Since writing my last post this question of how I can scale my life has consumed me. It’s the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I can get out of my brain at night (making my ability to go to sleep at a reasonable hour impossible..).
After nearly a week of unrest I realized my problem; I have all of these aspirations and goals but not the focus and dedication to follow through on them. I keep telling myself “if you want it bad enough you’ll achieve greatness,” but that seems to be where my effort stops, with good intentions.
And of course I’ve got a million excuses why I continue along the current road I’ve been on.
“I’m too busy.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“I’ve already got so many other things I’ve committed to.”
“I’m working on it…”
This one is my favorite. The ultimate justification.
A past co-worker had perfected this one to a tee. He had kind of lived under a rock most of his life so I had tried to introduce him to…well basically everything from the last 30 years. We would have these amazing talks at work about his life and goals. Then it would come time to pull the trigger and actually try something.
“Hey man, you watch Fight Club yet? Listen to that indie album I told you about? Talk to the David’s Tea girl that you have a crush on?”
His answer unequivocally was always “man, I’m working on it.” But he wasn’t…and in fact he never did. It was all talk and no action.
This drove me nuts. What a waste.
Sadly, I think this is now my life.
How had this happened and more importantly how can I fix it asap!?
The answer fortunately is simple and came to me at about 2am while I was desperately but unsuccessfully trying to sleep. Ambition is not my problem, commitment is. And it’s not enough to just say “okay I’ll start being more committed now.” I’ve said that, we all have and it doesn’t work. I need a catalyst, I need structure, I need accountability and I need action.
Epiphany time. I need to go back to basics.
When you’re younger you have all this structure and accountability built into your life automatically. School, sports, work all had hard deadlines and consequences. You had a paper due in 3 weeks and if you didn’t get it done you failed. Simple but effective.
When you grow up so many of life’s deadlines are now variable. You want to be successful but the deadline is basically your death. You have 50-80 years to complete the project, lots of time right? So you do the same thing you did in school, procrastinate. Only instead of a few weeks, you procrastinate for 5, 10, or 20 years…
I need to bring this hard deadline, short-term structure back into my life. Make my life goals bite sized and stay accountable to them.
Here is my plan:
There are 12 months left in the year so why not make 12 lofty but bite-sized goals for each month. No excuses, no procrastination, just simple accelerated execution.
This concept gets under my skin immediately. You know that feeling you get when you’re both nervous and excited? This is the ultimate solution to my mediocrity. All I have to do is focus on just 1 goal at a time and nothing else and in a year I’ll have accomplished more then in the last 10. I’m exhilarated!
Now the one million dollar question, what 12 goals do I make?
