Learn to prioritise your time instead of wasting it.
Focus on being productive instead of busy.
As human beings, we often try and juggle far too many ideas and new behaviours at the same time without ever actually getting any closer to our objective. In my previous post, I used the OST framework as a guide to outline what you want to achieve, how to get there and how to use strategies and tactics in order to make sure your objective is reached. Since the post I’ve been speaking to members of the gym and clients with regards to goal setting and it’s become more apparent to me that you don’t really know which goal is the most important. Here’s my take on how to go about it.
I want you to first off imagine you’re going on holiday and you write a list of all the things you need to pack…what is the first thing that goes in the bag?
Unless you’re not the most sensible person in the world – it’s your passport. You can buy all your new clothes, shoes and perfume but without that little book your going no where.
I now want you to take the holiday analogy and apply it your goals. Make a list of all the things you want to achieve this year and give yourself a reason why you want that goal. After you've written your list I now want you to go through the list and start to eliminate the ones that aren't going to make the biggest difference to your current situation until your left with one specific goal. We often hear,
“when setting a goal go big”
but what I want you to do is go as small as you possibly can. Pin point the major reason for your current predicament, figure out which goal your going to reap the most reward for your effort and attack that with everything you’ve got. Quite often when you knock one goal out the way the next one opens up and this leads to a domino effect whereby before you know it your path to success is wide open.
Highlighting the area you need to give your most focus is the tricky part and often getting other people’s opinion is required. I have a lot of clients who ask me to help them loose weight and often they just start training more - ignoring the fact that they can reduce their total calories and still make fitness gains without running their bodies into the ground. Or maybe a client who wants to improve their clean and jerk but their back-squat numbers are way off where they should. Its common to think the more I clean and jerk the better ill become but instead if they focused on a squat program alongside some light technique work they would reap far more reward. It’s easy to allow the fear and stress of seeing other parts of your life or fitness be pushed to one side for a while but trying to juggle too many things at once leads to nowhere.
This STRATERGY can be used on anything you want to achieve and try to apply it to as many parts your life you can. From being more productive at work, saving money, improving relationships and improving your health and fitness learning to prioritise ONE thing at a time allows you to focus your time and energy in the best way possible.