So We Start a New Year...

So We Start a New Year.....  

With new goals, a new determination to get it right this year, to be better, to be the person we are striving to be.  It has been said that 80% of New Year's Resolutions are broken by Jan. 2^nd.  Sad, isn't it?

So how does one execute these goals and plans, get them done, in a world that careens at us 90 to nothing?  By time blocking the activities and tasks. To-do lists don't work to get big picture things accomplished, they are only good for minor tasks.  Big stuff takes time.  You need to block it off.  For example, let's say one of your goals was to organize your database better and begin a follow up system.  Unless you have no database, organizing all of your contacts into groups takes time. If you have it listed as a to-do it will keep rolling over every day.  The tyranny of the urgent will overcome it.  That phone call from the frantic client, the need to get a closing to get some cash, the e-mails, the calls press in on us and that database will have to wait.  Week after week, it gets pushed off, and then, another year is gone.  It happens quicker and quicker every year.

The key is to block off time to execute these key tasks.  Like an appointment with an important client, you block off the time and get it done.  When you are face to face on an appointment with a VIP, you don't check your e-mails, your calls go to voice mail.  The key to successful living is to treat your goals with the same respect.  Block off 2 hours Thursday morning to update your database-don't take any calls, don't look at your e-mail, unplug from Facebook, just do the task.  Your entire day should be made up of blocks like this where important goals are nailed down.  But Mark, I have to take that call, check that e-mail, deal with that crisis.  Really?  What happens when you are on the lunch appointment with that VIP?  You did not answer that e-mail then.  When will we realize that until we place the important but not urgent above the urgent, we will never really live!  Everything that makes life great is important but not urgent, you NEED to plan these things into blocks of time and just do them.  Time blocked out to exercise, to date your wife, to love your children, we actually need to set aside time to do these things or else the urgent will impose itself upon us and we will flounder around in mediocrity.  Another year wasted.

If you want to make this year better than last, you need to block off the important but not urgent things that need to get done.  Block off time to execute those goals, and then nail those blocks.  That is how you get the important things, the things that matter done.