Psyching yourself up for excellence

All of us have only 24 hours a day. While some people seem to be able to accomplish feats in the span of a day, many of us struggle by finding it almost impossible to even starting our tasks.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could find a way to function like the first group of people? Wouldn’t it be great if you could stop procrastinating and start working on things now?

Well, I have great news for you! Met up with a couple of friends last night and they shared with me steps or things I could do to prioritise my time and to start the ball rolling!

Step one : Plan the night before.
Plan, plan, plan, for if you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail. Sounds familiar? While this step sounds trivial and unimportant, I have found that planning and working towards a goal actually serves to provide a source of motivation and energy! You will also find that you will be able to accomplish more in a day because you already know what you want!

Do not fall into the group of people who always ask themselves ‘So what should I do next…’ because by the time you think of something and sit down to actually doing it, a day might have passed!

Step 2 - Prioritise
We all have important things to do in life. To some it might be replying hundreds of emails, to others it might be sitting down and watching that t.v. show and yet to others, it might be spending time with your family. Given that we have so many ‘important’ things to accomplish in life, it is little wonder why many people, myself included, complain about the lack of time!

Therefore, in order to achieve the most out of your time, you have to prioritise! How do you do it? Let’s group our daily activities into 4 main groups.

Group 1 : Create value and urgent
Eg. An assignment or project that is due for submission very soon,
These are the things that create the most value for us (monetary) and are the most urgent hence require the most attention. Failure to produce would result in suicide.

Group 2 : Create value non urgent
Eg. Self improvement, reading books to increase personal value, studying, exercising,
These are the things in life that help increase our value but are not due in the near future. In my opinion, this is the 2nd most important group and more time has to be allocated to this group.
Group 3 : Urgent
Eg. Replying emails, returning smses, returning phone calls,
These are the things that many people mistake for top priority and do them instead of their jobs. As these activities do not create any value, I feel that emphasis on them has to decrease and the time allocated has to be less.

Group 4 : No value and non urgent
Eg. Watching t.v., surfing the internet for fun, playing computer games,
These are the activities that do not add value to our lives and are things I feel we can do without.
In sum, 80% of our time should be devoted to the groups 1 and 2 and 20% of our time to groups 3 and 4. That way, more things will be accomplished and you will feel a greater sense of achievement at the end of the day!

Just for laughs : Can you imagine what it’d feel like if someone came along and asked ’so what did you do today’ and you went ‘I cleared 200 emails!’

See my point?

Step 3 - The most important question of all
Before you begin any assignment, ask yourself this.

‘If I had only half an hour to do this, what would I do?’

This question will help your brain focus and zoom in with laser accuracy on things that are important and need to be accomplished.

Hope you’ve found this post useful. Drop me a comment!