Deliberately Focus and Take the Driver Seat of Your Life.
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus”
Bruce Lee
It’s not uncommon to sometimes feel like a hamster on a wheel running in never ending cycles going nowhere. A situation that induces anxiety and causes frustration. You get obsessed by your anxiety, focusing on the problems without moving into the realm of action. Anxiety overtakes your ambition and you start to lose focus on your goals. You realize it’s time to summon your courage and initiate action to change the status quo that is no longer serving you and redirect your perseverance.
Through deliberate focus and action, you can maximize your potential and loosen the anxiety grip.
A method that I personally found useful is what I call: Think, Focus, Act.
Think!
- Start by writing down the 3-5 behaviors or things that you want to change and might be holding you back from accomplishing your goals. This is an essential step to help you decide what you want by eliminating what you don’t want.
- List 3-5 ideas or behaviors that are of the upmost importance to you and that will help you grow
- Categorize your goals, using post-its can be very handy for later steps, into different buckets: Professional, Material, Personal Relationships, Learning… Add categories as you see fit for your own journey.
- For each category of goals decide what are your short-term goals and what are your long-term goals and the ease of attainment of each of the goals (easy, doable, difficult). For example, let’s start with Professional goals: As a short-term I want to earn a certificate in Data Analytics which is doable goal. A long-term goal: Build my own AI start-up. Repeat this step for each of your goal categories.
Focus!
After you have listed your categorized short-term and long-term goals, it’s time to focus on which of these you want to relentlessly pursue. Use the second step in Think! as a guide for prioritization.
- Review in each category the goals you have listed and weigh which is the most important. I personally give 5 stars for the most important ones, 1 for the least.
- Select the goals you want to achieve based on your priorities and weights you have put in step 1.
- You should end up with a nice list of 3-5 prioritized goals from the different categories.
Act!
Now you have your final list of goals you need to consistently follow an action plan to achieve them
- List down steps for each of the goals that can help you with their achievement.
- Decide who in your network have an impact to attain your goals and who can mentor or coach you.
- Without setting milestones and timelines, it will only stay dreams. Be ruthless with setting timelines and meeting them.
- Put your action plan in a space where you can always visualize them. Mine is on the fridge!
- Monitor evaluate and pivot if required.