2020 is here…
Yikes!
How long is your list of New Year’s Resolutions? And how many of those made the list last year? And the year before that… and the year before… you get what I mean.
I’m not saying you should never make a New Year’s Resolution ever again. Resolutions, or goals are are fantastic for giving us a general direction to aim for. The problem is, making a goal isn’t enough.
One of my favourite reads of 2019 was ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. A line that really resonated with me was, ‘we do not rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.’
Without solid systems in place, the enthusiasm we have at the beginning of a new goal will not be enough to carry us through to completion.
Other traps of New Years Resolutions is making too many, making them too vague or having no way to break them down and measure progress.
If we aren’t seeing almost immediate results towards a vague, gargantuan goal, such as ‘publish my first book’ it can extremely hard to stay on course – there was no set course!
What is the book about? Is research involved? What kind of research? Who is the target audience?
Instead of heading in the general direction of a vague goal, how can you implement a system into your life that allows you to work towards it piece by piece in a way that is manageable and can be measured?
Forget your New Year’s Resolution for 2020. Instead, let me ask you this –
What is the one thing you are going to achieve in 2020?
Make it specific. Write it down. Make a deadline. Work backwards from there.
The one thing I am going to achieve in 2020 is …
Keep it in your wallet. Make it your wallpaper on the lock screen of your phone. Write it on a post-it note and stick it on your bathroom mirror.
When you have your goal – your single most important goal – write down the systems you need to implement to allow you to achieve it.
Think big – act small.
Break down your goal into micro-tasks you can work at every day.
Start at your deadline date and work backwards marking milestones for completion of smaller tasks.
I use this method for large video projects that seem overwhelming as a whole, but broken down the process is just a series of much smaller tasks built on one another until the larger task is complete.
I recently had a large series of videos to create in a short window of time. I broke down the editing process into a system that looked something like this;
- structuring my files to easily access everything I needed for the project
- identifying the commonalities in the videos – which tasks could I do once that can be used across multiple videos? e.g. text graphics, titles, etc
- creating templates for audio and colour that could easily be added to each video
- ordering the videos based on importance and urgency for completion, then
- completing the most difficult and urgent one first
- editing rough versions of each and applying the already completed templates and graphics to create a uniform look
and so on…
Broken down into small, measurable pieces your goal can be achieved.
Tell me below, what is the one thing you are going to achieve in 2020?