Schedule Your Priorities
Why A Process Leads To Progress
“The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities” – Stephen Covey
Everybody has a goal. Or at least they should. That goal should be something meaningful. Something strong. Something that inspires you.
Question. What have you done today to take another step toward that goal? Or how many steps have you taken towards it in the last week? The last month? The last year?
If the answer is nothing, then you need to look at the reasons as to why you have taken no steps toward your own future. Some people will always find a way to say ‘no’ to something. Always. There is always a reason. An excuse as to why you didn’t take the steps needed to achieve your dream.
There needs to be a process in order to progress with your goals. You can’t achieve something that is going to define you off the cuff. You will meet challenges along the way. These challenges will ask questions of you. You need to answer them to overcome them, otherwise they become another excuse as to why you have given up.
We’ll use this blog to look at some of the processes that you’ll need to have in place in order to succeed.
Prioritise – Challenges will ask a question of you. They will ask you to seek order in your priorities. They will ask you what is more important to you. Now, in order to continue, you may need to sacrifice one for another. This is where you need to prioritise. Don’t see these challenges as something to hold you back. Don’t fear them. Look at what is possible beyond them. This is where progress becomes the immediate goal. Don’t use this reason or challenge as an excuse.
Make a choice. Choose the goal that makes you the happiest. Remember that you can always come back to something in the future. In the immediate sense, you are simply prioritising to step forward now.
Draw a timeline of when you want to achieve things. Order them specifically with the aim of having the end goal at the forefront of your reasoning. Goals that conflict shouldn’t mean the end. Choose one. Overcome it. Move on. Build the picture. Lay the foundations.
Start now. Today. Don’t let fear of failure hold you back. The chance will pass you by every single time you use a reason. An excuse. Just take the first step forward. Each step forward makes you stronger.
Choose your priority, and go for it.
Pathway – You reach a junction. One road goes one way, and one goes the other. Firstly, in order to achieve your goal you need to learn how to do it. You have a choice to make. Take the easy road to another excuse as to why you have taken another step back, or take the challenge head on and learn about how to do it.
Option two will take time. Option one is easy. The fact that you may have to learn in order to achieve something brings hesitation. Prioritise. If your end goal is important to you, you will take the challenge and overcome it. You will learn. You will gain knowledge. After all, knowledge is power.
Choosing option two may be uncomfortable for you. The lazy option may appeal more to you. But look at the reason as to why you are setting out to achieve your goal. It may be your family. It may be your business. It may be for you. Go that extra mile, and stop being lazy.
Take the right path, and crush it. Make. It. Happen.
Sacrifice – You have a deadline to meet. You have little time to meet it. Instead you find yourself flicking through your Facebook feed, and commenting on your friends status. And then you add your own about how bad life is right now. Your procrastination stretches into minutes, hours, and then the time has gone. You’ve failed.
You need to sacrifice the things that are holding you back. You need to put these things on hold. Every time you make the wrong choice is another day, week, month, or god forbid, year that you achieve nothing toward your dream.
The sacrifices might be larger than a little procrastination. It may be a person, or circle of people, that are holding you back. You may need to make a choice to leave them behind in order to achieve your goal. It’s a challenge to do so, but one which needs to be overcome to get to success. Don’t fear the things that are holding you back. Make the choice. You will never get another chance to live your life again.
Solution – Along the way, you may fail. That doesn’t mean the end. You need a solution. If you didn’t hit your goal weight this week, you need to come up with a solution. If you train four times a week, train five times this week. That’s your immediate solution.
If you’re saving for your dream trip, and you had an emergency that you had to fork out money on, establish a solution about how to make that money back. The night out you had planned needs to be scrapped.
Look back to the above point. Make a sacrifice. The sacrifice will be worth it. The sacrifice will mean you make back that money and you continue moving forward toward your dream trip.
If you fail, don’t use this as an excuse to give up. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Draw up your solution to your problem. Act on it.
Everyone fails from time to time. It’s how we learn. But it is worth it.
Reward – Success brings reward. That reward may be something as simple as the satisfaction of achievement. It may be something else. Set yourself a reward scheme for each time you hit one of your targets. Reward yourself with something that will serve to push you toward your goal. Use a reward to enable you to overcome an obstacle that may appear in front of you.
Look down the path and see the possibility rather than the chance of failure. See your success. See your reward.
You may have heard the story of the donkey who fell down the farmers well. Seeing no way of getting the donkey out, he called upon his friends to help him fill in the well. As they did so, they witnessed something incredible. Instead of accepting death, the donkey chose to fight and used every shovel full of dirt to take a step upward toward the top of the well, until he finally reached freedom and emerged successful.
His reward was his life. A little bit exaggerated maybe in this context, but he made a choice. His goal was the ultimate choice. He overcame an obstacle. He defied the fear of failure. He defied the fear of looking stupid, in the face of adversity.
He made it happen. Each step was his reward. Until finally, he was free.
Your reward needs to be strong. It needs to mean something. Write it down.
Your dream body. Your dream holiday. Your dream business. It’s possible.
Prioritise. Pathway. Sacrifice. Solution. Reward.
“If it’s important to you, you will find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse” – Unknown.
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