One of the most challenging things in life is deciding what to do right now.
It seems weird because that’s really the only place we actually experience life: right now.
But we often feel bad about what we’ve done in the past. We judge the way we spend our time. Maybe that confuses us about how to work in the future “right now” moments.
And at some points in our life we get busy. Urgency takes over. We get into poor habits. We start to wonder if we’re making the right type of progress and if we’re not we wonder what we are doing wrong.
There is also the important consideration of the long-term. It seems that successful people make decisions for the long-term. They have a great ability to connect the very far off future and the right now. They don’t simply “live in the moment”. They kind of bounce back between the future and today.
So how do you decide on what to work on right now?
Here are a few things that have helped me…
1. Forgive The Past
The more I read about successful people in all areas of life, the more I realize how many mistakes young people make. And it’s really not just “young” people. Some people seem to make fewer mistakes as they age. Maybe it’s better skill, but perhaps it’s also less of a willingness to try new things.
You have to be able to analyze your past. But you also have to be able to forgive yourself and others. You have to be willing to move on. Use experiences to guide what you’re going to focus on for the long-term focus. Use it to guide what you’re going to do in your daily routines.
Realize that spending time doing a certain thing didn’t work. Don’t do that tomorrow. Realize that spending time with certain people held you back. Avoid those people in the future.
2. Consider The Future
Working on things right now doesn’t mean not thinking about the future. You have to consider both. You have to step back from the urgency and busyness of the moment and consider the future. You have to consider how you want your future to look and then work backwards on how to get there.
Obviously you’re not going to know every detail about how to achieve what you want. But you can look at other successful people. You can see what they did on a day-to-day basis. You can start there and adapt along the way.
3. Accept The Unknown
One of the hangups with work and even in life is fear of the unknown. We get comfortable in our daily routines. We might even be frustrated by our daily routines, but we stick with them because they are comfortable. It’s not easy to break out of these patterns.
It’s a simple concept, but not easy to implement. You have to accept the unknown. You have to accept that your best plan will likely need to adapt. You’ll have to accept that you can do all the right things and still not see a perfect result. But it doesn’t mean that you won’t get somewhere really great.
Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus are probably the best strategic thinkers ever in the world of golf. They made decisions based on probability. They likely had many tournaments where they made “all the right” choices and still lost. In fact, they both won about 20% of the time. That’s extremely low in general terms, but they won more than anybody else to ever play.
4. Plan For Failures
Urgency is all around us. We make decisions based on urgency and get into bad habits. Plan for it to happen. Schedule time to analyze how you’re spending your time and make adjustments.
I like to schedule time every six months to review my daily schedule. I like to audit what I’ve been doing with my days for the last few months. I look back on how I planned to spend that time. Then I look at my overall future goals and work backwards to adjust my daily schedules.
Focus is so important for great work. But it’s so easy to get into bad habits. In fact, it’s guaranteed to happen. Often, the most successful people simply change their schedules back to the fundamentals after they fall into poor habits.
5. You Can’t Do It All
Something that seems to throw people off in life is accepting that they’re not going to do it all. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t do many things. It doesn’t mean that we can’t become really great at a few things.
Part of the way to do the right things every day is to force yourself to cut things out of your life.
Rod Stewart had a great autobiography. In it he shared a lesson he learned from his father. It was that a person can lead a very meaningful life with a Vocation, a Hobby and a Sport.
You could add a Family to that list, but the point is that you have to cut down on the things you do with your time. Anything you add to your daily list takes away from something else. Our lives are zero sum games. You can make time to try new things. But if you do that all the time it takes away from something you might enjoy or that you’re really good at.
Final Thoughts
People that are frustrated with life often are frustrated with their daily schedules. They don’t know what to do right now. They may know that they’re doing something wrong, but the fear of doing something else makes them uncomfortable. It’s a terrible cycle.
I hope these tips can help you get on the right track with your daily schedule. It’s something I work on constantly.