About a month ago I came back to the idea of Resolutions.
It’s the New Year and it’s that time of year when many of us are trying to improve our lives.
I had just finished reading Arnold Schwarzenegger’s autobiography and he was big on setting goals each year. It was interesting. He would look at annual goals for himself, but he also had a more long-term view.
It was a refreshing way to think about New Year’s Resolutions.
Instead of getting too vague like losing weight or working out more or eating better, Arnold set more specific goals. He looked at year long goals and even longer than that. It was good.
After One Week, How Are Things Going?
So let’s say that you set some goals for the New Year.
How are those going so far?
Hopefully things haven’t gotten pushed back already. That’s easy to do and I’ve been there. That first week is difficult. That’s when you’re actually making the change and it’s really easy to think that you can push it back to get one more week to get in the swing of things after the holiday hustle and bustle.
If that’s happened, don’t worry. There is still time to turn things around, but you have to look at your routines and how you’re setting yourself up to achieve your goals.
Routines & Systems
One of the things with Arnold was that he really had laser focus. He was pretty good at saying no when he needed to. He had big goals to be successful in body building and business and acting. He structured his days, weeks, months and years around accomplishing his goals.
I really believe that it was a big key to his success.
For example, he had a long-term goal to be successful in business. You could call it an annual goal, but he wanted to purchase an apartment building one year.
So set himself up to achieve those he did some key things.
He signed up for English classes and business classes at various colleges. He wasn’t even there to get a degree. He just wanted to learn how to speak English and how to run a business and spot opportunity.
Second, he also surrounding himself with successful businesspeople and especially real estate experts when he got the idea to buy an apartment building. He wanted to learn as much as he could and it really was a mentorship type of situation that he put himself in.
Those are key things. Whatever your goal is for this year you have to look at what you’re doing every day to achieve those goals. You don’t have to reach the finish line right away this week or this month, but you need to do things every day to move yourself toward your goals.
The Three-Month Rule
I’ve kind of changed things up for this New Year. I have a few sales goals for Ghost Blog Writers and I’ve been looking at my daily tasks and routines. I know that if sales is the most important item on my priority list that I need to work on sales first thing each day and each week.
I’ve always liked to keep my Google Calendar open each day with a few tasks on it like writing a blog post or working on sales, etc.
This year, though, I’m purposely setting myself up to review my daily routine every three months. I’m hoping it works a little better than in past years and I think it will.
I have a routine that I’m setting up from January through March. Then the tasks end and my calendar goes blank. It forces me to evaluate my daily routines. It forces me to revisit my priorities. It forces me to assess how I’ve been doing to achieve my annual goals.
It’s easy to get into routines in life. We keep ourselves busy and we feel busy, but a lot of times it can be a situation where we’re busy, but we’re not really achieving anything. We’re not doing things that really matter to us and to our business and to our team.
Final Thought
We’re only a week into the New Year. It’s an odd time to be looking at how things are going with resolutions, but I think it’s a good time because we’ve had a week now of daily routine. It’s important to look at what we’re doing every day and figure out if we’re really doing what we need to do to achieve our goals.
Long-term goals are the key, but it takes daily routines to achieve long-term goals. Arnold understood this early in life and it’s a lesson we can use to achieve the things we want to in life and in business.