Step 1: Prioritize – Do what is important, not urgent and unimportant.
What are the tasks that require your immediate attention and are very important to your future success?
For example, you may want to apply to specific jobs, work on a business project or speak with an important client.
This first step is all about looking at you agenda ahead of your days and figuring out the important from the not important, the urgent from the not-so-urgent. Prioritizing this way, you ensure that you keep moving forward, one bit at a time, towards success.
Click here to learn how you can prioritize your tasks the same way as President Eisenhower did.
Step 2: Commit – Publicly declare what you are going to do in the comments section.
Remember that our future are made of what we do today, every day. If you are waiting for that “one day when I will have time to dedicate a lot of time to do that one, big task” – forget about ever getting to it. As the time goes by, it will seem as if the task is harder and harder because day after day, it kept falling off your agenda.
No matter how big or small the task is, this should never stop you from making a commitment.
Commit to doing small amount of work every day and to never stop moving towards achieving the goals you set.
This is called the Kaizen approach: making small, incremental improvements over a long period, taking huge, monumental gains.
For instance, if you would like to start your own business, you wouldn’t do that in a day. You will need to have a list of clear small objective that you can work and that will move you towards the end goal. Those can be basic – writing out different parts of your business idea on sticky-notes for visualisation purposes, or bigger – gathering specific research.
Step 3: Be Specific – Say exactly what you’re going to do and when it will be completed.
You need to give yourself a deadline. It will help you stay on track and not procrastinate. Hold yourself accountable for it. You can even set up a system – reward yourself when you complete your commitment for the day and come up with a punishment for when you don’t.
Our minds are hardwired in a way that they will make us achieve the reward and at the same time will do everything possible to avoid the punishment.
After you have that simple system set-up you say what you’re going to do and when it will be completed. For example “I am going to email one of the important clients on my list by 6PM today.”
Click here to learn how to become more accountable in 7 steps.
Step 4: Keep It Simple – Commit to no more than 3 things and no more than 3 hours of total work. Less is encouraged.
Step 5: Act – Take action and after you complete your task come in and leave a follow-up response.
Last, keep your objectives real and achievable. If you have a big goal – break it into small pieces. Set-up your system for success, not failure.
Making a daily commitment taking the 4 steps above could look like this:
“I will look up courses in entrepreneurship and choose a program that I can start learning in my spare time by 7PM.”
“Today, I will research how to finance my business and will have at least 3 options by 4PM.”
“I will schedule my week ahead and plan how to dedicate 8 hours throughout the week on working towards achieving my goal.”
This website has 1 goal.
“Hold you accountable to accomplish one important business task daily.”
Got it?
OK – so let me break it down as there were a number of key words in that sentence.
Hold you accountable…..
Exactly what it sounds like – you need to do what you say you’re going to do.
In general, your task should take no more than 1 hour to complete. Past that you should break it into multiple parts as you can lose focus fast.
Once completed – post a reply to your public comment stating you have accomplished what you have committed to. If you’re late, well, you’ll be publicly shamed, beaten, and sold into slavery……just kidding. Although we do have an accountability partner system if you decide to become a premium member.
…..to accomplish one ….
You can only commit to one (1) task daily and it should take no more than one hour to complete. If it takes longer – or MUCH shorter – that’s fine.
The key here is for you to get started. Ideally you’ll get on a roll and knock through other things you’ve been meaning to do but have been putting off!
……important…..
What you commit to needs to be important to your business. It should be a high value task that has a large return on invest and something ONLY you can do.
Examples of HIGH value tasks are creating an email sequence, calling prospective customers, creating an A/B test on your sales pages, systematizing a procedure that will save you time/reduce error in the future.
Examples of LOW value tasks are posting on social media, cleaning out your email, fielding random phone calls, non-specific meetings with no end time, and spell checking your website for the 10th time.
Need help here? Click here to learn how to prioritize your work.
……business task…….
A business task is:
- Clearly defined with an outcome – a person should be able to read it and envision what the end state will be.
- Measurable – if you can, tell us exactly how many sales calls you’ll make, how many words your blog post will be and where it will be posted at, exactly what time you’ll email your list or post your video to your audience.
- Specific – don’t be general, give us the details such as what type of podcast you are recording, what procedure you’re systematizing. Details, details, details.
- Directly related to your business.
……daily.
What you commit to should be accomplished ideally within one hour and ALWAYS the same day you commit. Failure to reply to your own comment (or email/call if a premium member) can lead to you being kicked out of the program………yeah, we’re serious about this!
Ready to take action?
Click here to post your first commitment!
More questions?
Curious about the story behind this website?
Click here for who I created this website for and why.