10 Weeks Until Year End – January 1, 2017 is coming!

Did you accomplish everything you wanted to achieve in 2016?

I know I haven’t yet.

Earlier in my career, I was obsessed with the smaller goals. Over time, I learned that the TRUE GOALS are to live your best life and make the greatest contributions to your work (writ large) and the world.

January 1 Sunday

Psst… January 1 is almost here!

Did you accomplish everything you wanted to achieve in 2016?

I know I haven’t yet. Although I did write a book (my first), there were many other goals I set for myself that remain undone. One of these was writing 50 posts for this blog in 2016. So far, I have written 21 posts, plus one guest blog and this post totaling 23. And I have only 10 weeks to go.

You may have your own goals that remain unmet….

Earlier in my career, I was obsessed with the smaller goals. Set a goal, and meet it. Set another one. It was textbook tunnel vision.

Over time, I learned that the TRUE GOALS are to live your best life and make the greatest contributions to your work (writ large) and the world. Sometimes our smaller goals, if we let them take precedence over our greater goals, obscure what is really important. Other times, when we are doing it right, our smaller goals support our greater goals.

When we are doing it right, our smaller goals support our greater goals.

So in the last 10 weeks of 2016, what now?

Now, you get to decide how to spend the rest of this calendar year, before you rip off the last page and turn to January 1, 2017. (Did you ever think we would be here?) No pressure. These are YOUR days to live. Make them count.

There are 10 more weeks until the end of the year, and less if you plan to take off for holidays or vacations between now and then. May I suggest you take an hour or two this week to plan your days for the rest of the year? You will be much further along in meeting your goals before we ring in the New Year.

Here’s the key: prioritize.

Here’s the key: prioritize. Not every goal needs to be met. How much time do you actually have? What can you reasonably accomplish in the weeks and days that remain of this calendar year? Which goals are the ones that will bring the most results in the short-term and long-term? What do you want and need to do? How can you set yourself up for next year and beyond?

Anne Marie Segal is a career and leadership coach, author and resume writer for attorneys, executives and entrepreneurs. Her book on job interviews, Master the Interview, is available on Amazon.com.

Image above from Adobe Images.

The 80/20 Rule for Faster and Better Results

Whether it is how to network more effectively, advance in one’s career, or reach any other important goal, I often suggest the 80/20 Rule to clients and colleagues as a way to streamline processes, save time and achieve better results.

Originally created by Vilfredo Pareto in 1906 as a way to quantify the distribution of wealth in his native Italy, the Pareto Principle (or 80/20 Rule) has been applied to (and become better known for) its use in other areas capable of measurement, including time and business management, as a means to increase effectiveness in those areas.

Put simply, 80/20 means that 80% of the rewards in your life, however defined, generally come from 20% of your efforts. The key to utilizing the 80/20 Rule is to focus a greater proportion of your efforts on the 20% that is most fruitful rather than spreading your efforts across areas that do not correlate to results.

We don’t always intuitively know what are the most effective uses of our time, although we can often identify those that are time-sucks. If you are in a client-interfacing business, for example, this could be a client who pays bills late or complains about fees, saps your energy and is unlikely to give you additional work or a referral. If you tolerate this type of client (or worse yet, invite these clients into your life), you will consistently be disappointed and deprive yourself of the opportunity to shine in front of those clients who will grow you and your business. Yet often, because we fail to plan ahead, we get sucked into spending our best hours of the day (or even vacations), servicing those same clients that yield the slimmest results.

If you are in a client-interfacing business, for example, a time-suck might be a client who pays bills late or complains about fees, saps your energy and is unlikely to give you additional work or a referral. A client that, in other words, is a headline (not a footnote) in the 80% of your efforts that are the least rewarding.

With a mentor or coach, or by using metrics to approximate the return on your investment of time and energy, you can refine the 20% and your approach to leverage it for greater results.

As you can imagine or may already know, you can apply this same approach to many areas of your life, improving how you allocate time at a job, in your writing, with your spouse and children, etc. Focus on the activities, tasks and moments that create the most value, enthusiasm and joy. Delegate or eliminate those that create little value, enthusiasm or joy yet require great efforts. In some ways, the 80/20 Rule is a more refined variation of just saying no to things that don’t serve you and people who don’t enrich your personal and professional life.

80/20. Try it. You may be hooked for good.

Originally published as Get Results Faster with the 80/20 Rule on LinkedIn Pulse. Shutterstock image.

Ten Ways to Beat Your Procrastination

Have a lot to do today? This week? This lifetime?

So why aren’t you finishing that little task that should take 10 minutes (two hours later) or that looming project that should take 10 hours (back-burnered for two months)? And what can you do about it?

AdobeStock_79742635 (beat procrastination).jpg

There are many different motivation killers, and you could be suffering from one or more of them. Are you bored? Ambivalent? Out of your comfort zone?

Here are ten common reasons you may procrastinate and how to get going:

1) You are tired. It happens. We have high-energy days and low-energy days. So what do you do? Finish the small tasks that will make you feel that you’ve accomplished something on the days that you are dragging, and save the bigger tasks for the days (and times of day) when your energy is at its peak.

If there is a day you can get more done, schedule some time to relax on another day, such as on a Friday afternoon. Procrastinating is time-wasting, and it is non-productive. Reprioritizing your time is taking advantage of your normal highs and lows, and catching yourself at your best. Nap or have downtime if you are tired, and later make it up. Or finish your memo or report first, then get an hour of reward time. And don’t squander it on Facebook or mindless web searches, you earned that hour!

If you know you’ll be tired this Friday (your deadline) because you plan to be out late Thursday night, let your motivation be enjoying Thursday night because you’re finishing the project by Wednesday.

If you are consistently tired, of course, get more sleep and nutrition. You have to keep yourself running well to do good work, and a tired brain or body can’t go the extra mile when needed.

2) You are hungry. In the modern world, we put off lunches and dinners because we think we will be more efficient. In the long run, we are racing to finish things but not being more effective over the course of a month or a year.

Eat when you are hungry. Have an apple with some almond butter. Or whatever suits your fancy and fuels you up.

I don’t keep it a secret that I have food with me at all times and stash the storable variety in desk drawers at my office. If your workplace does not have a refrigerator, consider investing in a mini-fridge for yourself or with a group.

3) You are bored. Boring tasks are hard to finish. It’s just a fact of life. The worst part is when they take over half a day or more because they are SOOO boring that they rain on your happy-parade. (Yes, I did say that.) I have two solutions for making boring tasks less tedious: get creative and drum up a deadline.

Make a boring task less brain-draining, and keep your focus, by using brightly colored pens or highlighters or crossing out lines on the page as you complete each one. In other words, dress up the task to make it more interesting.

You can also create a deadline, even if one doesn’t exist. I often set a timer on my phone and bet myself how quickly I can finish something. This doesn’t mean you do everything on ASAP mode or ignore important details. It does mean, however, that you get the hard parts done with the momentum of adrenaline. Sometimes, it works even better if you have someone else who can be your designated “taskmaster” on the task. For example, bet that you will pay a friend $1 (or $10) if you don’t finish the super-boring-thing by noon. Or more, if that’s not enough to motivate.

Betting yourself you can finish early doesn’t mean you do everything on ASAP mode or ignore important details. It does mean, however, that you get the hard parts done with the momentum of adrenaline.

4) You need to move. Maybe you are procrastinating because your muscles feel as stiff as hard as the chair you are sitting in. Get up from your desk. Stretch. Walk around. Oh, and make a plan to go to the gym this week, or get outside and run, walk or swim in the sunshine.

5) You are distracted. Distractions abound, and you need to find ways to get around them. Sometimes they are physical distractions, like conversations you can’t help overhearing that drown out your own thoughts in your head. Can you take action to create a more peaceful atmosphere? Or can you relocate?

Sometimes distractions are emotional, like expecting an important phone call or being upset. Take a moment to recognize the feeling and, if possible, address whatever come up. If it is a phone call, for example, and you are worried about what you’ll say, write down five speaking points for the conversation. If you are upset, maybe the priority for you in that moment is to work out what is going on (or, if you are on a deadline, take at least take five minutes to honor the feeling, rather than trying to bury it). Then you can go back to complete the other task that you have been distracted from.

For the five procrastination triggers above, the key is being aware of yourself and your surroundings. For the five below, beat the procrastination game with tactical strategies and your own priorities.

6) You haven’t broken a large project into smaller tasks. Create a chart or list to map out what you need to do, then cross off each task as it is completed. You will feel a sense of accomplishment to have 6 out of 10 parts done, rather than a sense of defeat that you still have not finished the project. Consider breaking it down by function or mini-deliverable (even if the only recipient is yourself) rather than a step-by-step list.

7) You are out of your comfort zone. Sometimes you may not have the skills or information to tackle what is expected of you, or what you have designated as a new area that you would like to master. Where can you get it? Who can you ask? Or can you start first and fill in the details later? For example, can your first task be to familiarize yourself with the process? Cross that off your list, and you are one step closer to your goal of completion.

8) You have forgotten your priorities. Next time a work project or task is taking more time than it needs, ask yourself what you could be doing with the time if you were more efficient. What’s your big picture, based on your own values and priorities? Chances are that you’ll have lots of good answers about how you could be using that extra time.

At the same time, sometimes we focus more on a smaller task because we don’t want to get to the larger one that is really the priority. It’s fine to do that if you are really getting things out of the way to have a clean slate to concentrate, but not if the lower-priority items weigh you down or are time-wasters masquerading as helpful tasks.

If you looked back on your life a month or a year from now, would you be thankful for how your spent your time. Does it fit into your big picture?

9) You are ambivalent about whether you want to do it. This point is similar to the one above. If you are consistently late responding to someone or deciding whether to commit to a project, maybe you are uncertain whether it is the best use of your time or resources, or if you can make the emotional commitment to see it through. This can manifest as procrastination, but really it’s your gut talking to you. Can you hear it?

Take the time to sort out your thoughts and feelings. How does this person or project fit into your bigger plan? Will you have more energy, move yourself further toward a life or professional goal, do important work and enjoy it? I used to think that at least one of these had to be true to make the commitment. Now I look for all four.

(Note: the “important work” from time to time may only be keeping your job, but if it often feels like that’s the only importance of your work and time spent, maybe a life change is in order?)

10) You want it to be perfect. Life is a process, and so is work. Deadlines require that we complete things before they are perfect. And frankly, what may be “perfect” to one person may be only “pretty good” to another, or even to your future self!

You will get more points for getting something done, on time, when you are fresh, than belaboring it through to a long and bitter end, where the big thought could get lost in the polishing of details. Take satisfaction not from perfection, but from valuing yourself and each moment of your time on this planet.

You only get one life, after all. How do you want to spend it?

If you have any more tips to get motivated and beat procrastination at its own game, please leave them in the comments. Thanks!

Anne Marie Segal is a business and career coach to attorneys, executives and entrepreneurs.

Will You Bloom this Spring?

If you are located on the East Coast of the United States, as I am, you have been desperately waiting for spring to be more than a date on the calendar. Spring means warmer weather, pleasant outside gatherings and a fresh chance for a new beginning.

Yet unlike plants that have an internal guide on when to bloom, many of us have lost our intuition on the “where and when” of new growth. We carry the memories of too many prior Springs, where we have bloomed and then forgotten to water ourselves, or to get enough sun, only to end up foiling our own plan for new growth that Spring had so hopefully promised.

What is the cure for the lost hope of a dozen of Springs past?

Trust yourself. Life is a process, not a study in perfection.
Keep yourself accountable for the changes you wish to see in your life. Find your own “Board of Advisers” – just like the Board of any company, find the Board of You.
Set your goals and prioritize your time to reach them. May you look back to today, this Spring and this year, and feel that you used your time to set your own path (years, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds – they are yours).
Surpass obstacles, like the plant that blooms around the rock.
Approach life with an open hand, ready to receive what you seek. The closed hand receives nothing. In the same way, if you grasp at every opportunity, you will lose your focus when the right one is presented.

Will you bloom this Spring?

Psst… January 1 is almost here!

When we are doing it right, our smaller goals support our greater goals.

Here’s the key: prioritize.

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