Start2Finish: Fueling Discipline, Focus and the right mindset
Start2finish is about starting a journey towards achieving fulfilment and the guidance to travel through the voyage until reaching the shores of your goals and visions. The mission is reaching the finish line in whatever endeavours of your life. Many of us lose track of our goals or abandon ship due to situations surrounding us or we lose the will power to go on. Hence regularly reminding each other of what is at stake is key to keep us going
Start2Finish: Fueling Discipline, Focus and the right mindset
Audit Your Progress: Regular self assessment is the secret to reaching your goals
Are you still on track with those goals you set at the beginning of 2024? Whether you're reading this three months into the year or much later, the principle remains vital - regular self-auditing is the hidden engine behind meaningful progress.
Drawing inspiration from Steve Jobs' wisdom that "you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward," this episode dives deep into why looking back is essential for moving forward. We explore how ambitious goals - from cycling 10,000 kilometers in a year to transforming business operations - require constant evaluation and honest recalibration to remain achievable.
The real magic happens when you don't wait six months to check your progress. Weekly or bi-weekly audits allow for minor tweaks rather than major overhauls when things go off course. I share personal examples from my cycling journey and transport business to illustrate how unexpected obstacles (from mechanical failures to simple lack of motivation) can derail our plans without regular assessment.
What's holding you back from achieving your goals? Is it resources, motivation, or unrealistic expectations? By embracing the process of regular review - just as every successful company does with their data - you can identify exactly what adjustments are needed to maintain momentum. The journey from start to finish isn't about perfection but about persistence informed by reflection.
Ready to make real progress? Take time this week to audit your goals, check your trajectory, and make the necessary adjustments to stay on course. Your future self will thank you for the honest introspection that keeps you moving toward your finish line.
Fueling Discipline , focus and the right mindset!
In order to make progress, you have to look backwards. In order to make progress, you have to look backwards. So we're already almost three months into the new year, 2024,. You're listening to this right away, or if you've come across it somewhere, you know, in the year or years later. The principle is the same we're talking about taking an audit, just looking back and checking whether you're making the progress, the needed progress. I like the words of Steve Jobs when he said you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect the dots looking backwards. In everything that we do, we have to check on our progress. We have to check if we are making a dent or if we are chipping off on that thing that we are working on. We don't just arrive at a finish if we don't do that. Welcome to Start to Finish.
Speaker 1:I'm your host, kd, and today we're just talking about taking an audit. I'm just coming from my cycling right now, just trying to make that progress. Cycling is my thing. I do it, I enjoy it. It's my space to think creatively, it's my space to plan. In my head it's just me on my bike, just killing it, just grinding.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so today we just want to talk about looking back. You know you cannot connect the dots forward. The only time you look back is the only time you see how much progress you have made or how much you have wasted away your time. That's what we are talking about here. We are already three months into a new year and it's important to take an audit. It's important to check on things to go introspection. You don't need to wait six months, you don't need to wait a long time until you take that introspection, until you check on yourself, until you check on the inside to see whether you know you're making that progress.
Speaker 1:We all have set goals at the beginning of the new season. We all want to lose weight, we all want to make more money, we all want to improve our relationships, our marriage relationships with our kids, with our co-workers, and you have set that goal, which is really dear to you. But there are so many things that can distract us on this journey, so many things that can take our time and kill our momentum. But when you take an audit, that's the only way to check whether you are making progress. That's the only way you can check and, most probably, recalibrate yourself to go back on track if you are missing the point. That's what the journey is all about. What is that commitment that you have made for yourself to achieve? Look back on that commitment.
Speaker 1:An audit should not wait more than a week, I think, depending on what you have set goals for and the things that you want to see change on. The more audit and checkups you give yourself, the more progress you are going to make. So, with this business that we're doing for transport, we had set a big goal for the new year and now, three months into the new year, the first month, you make an audit and you're checking. Okay, we are not chipping away the blocks. We are not making the expected progress that we want to make in this space.
Speaker 1:So what do you do? You then take an audit, review your goals. Did I shoot myself on the foot on this goal? Is it something that I can achieve? Can I improve to make sure I recover the losses that I've made in these three months, or I need to review and come up with a new goal that is more realistic, something that is more achievable?
Speaker 1:You committed yourself to exercise five days a week. Am I doing it, or you're only doing once a week? Is it enough, doing that thing once a week, or you need to increase, most probably to three times a week. Maybe when you said five, you were super excited and over motivated. Now, when it comes back to doing the thing, you know it's like a mountain. So I think I said this before in one of the podcasts when we were talking about accountability. You know we set this big goal with my crew to say we want to do 10,000 kilometers by the end of this year. Now, three months into this period, by now we should have cycled almost 2,000 kilometers, but we've just managed to do over 1.5. So the real question is between our busy schedules, other life commitments, are we able to achieve that goal? And also, some days you know you don't feel like doing it, so it means you are losing that momentum.
Speaker 1:So when you take that audit as quickly as possible and review it and recalibrate into something more realistic, more tangible, something that you can achieve, then you continue on that particular journey. So it's important to look back and take that audit. That's how you know you're making progress, that's how you know you are achieving results. There are applications that can help you to take an audit. That can help you to take an audit, you know, for example, in cycling we use what is called Strava Strava. What it does is that you are recording every time you go on your bike. You just put in this meter that measures if you're doing it consistently and you see okay, this is how far I've come, this is how much I've done, this is how much I've achieved. Can I achieve more? Or this is all I can give for myself? So taking an audit becomes very important.
Speaker 1:As I was talking about our business for transport, so many things have been happening. One of the vehicles developed a fault again and the other one in most of this is human error. So you then have to look at the whole list, all business, and you have to look at your human resources and you have to say, okay, fine, what measures, what system can I put in place to make sure we achieve our results and stop bleeding money? So that's the thing when you take an audit you have to be honest with yourself. For you to make the progress that is needed, for you to make the dent that is required to achieve that goal, my desire Is that you reach your finish line. This is start to finish. We start things, but we have to see through to the end, and if you don't achieve that end, then you miss the mark. But at the end of the day, the journey that you're walking, the journey that you're traveling, is it fulfilling? Is it bringing the results that you want? You can only check on these things when you take introspection, when you check yourself.
Speaker 1:I've made commitments on this podcast. There are things that I've said to myself I want to achieve and, as I'm looking at it, I've only managed to do two interviews. I want to do much more, but where am I going to get those? What leverage do I need to build in order to achieve my results? So, as I take that audit, I have to review my method of trying to achieve my goals. I have to review my methods of inviting people to the platform, okay, and I have to make necessary adjustments to make sure I achieve the desired results. So take that audit, look at your business, look at your relationships. Are you making the progress? And, if not, then start making the necessary adjustment that allows you to make the necessary progress that you need.
Speaker 1:So take an audit, take time out to think and to look back and to recalibrate and then continue on a journey we are on, a voyage. We want to achieve amazing results, but we cannot achieve those results if we don't stay true to ourselves, if we don't look back. That's where real progress is. Every company, every podcast, every podcast, every business. They take an audit, they do research, they take data. They review this data every single time to check are we making the necessary progress that is required? So why are you not doing that for your business? Why are you not doing that for your business? Why are you not doing that for your relationships?
Speaker 1:It's time to make real progress and the only way to do it is to take an audit to check on yourself frequent enough every week, every fortnight, every month what works for you. But you have to do it within the shortest possible time to allow yourself to make the necessary progress that you need to make. We set ambitious goals. With ambitious goals comes great responsibility. Are you responsible enough to yourself? Are you accountable enough to yourself to see through to the end? So let's go. Let's get it done. Let's check on ourselves. Let's make that progress. Check on ourselves, let's make that progress. This applies to all areas of our lives. What is it that you want to achieve? What is it that you want to make progress on Progress don't just come because you said I want to do it.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you said, okay, I want to make 10 calls per day, I want to make maybe a thousand calls by the end of the month. What's stopping you? What's holding you back? Can you be brutally honest with yourself to improve the hustle? Is it because of resources? Is it because you're not motivated enough? What do you need to make that progress so that when you look back and check on your progress, it excites you, it moves you forward, it keeps giving you the energy, the momentum that you need to see you're making progress.
Speaker 1:You know, the fascinating thing about Steve Jobs is on his journey started Apple, lost it, but he was driven enough to move forward and go back to his first love.
Speaker 1:He did other amazing things, but I'm sure he sat down with himself and knew exactly where he wanted to be. But every experience that one goes through helps you to pivot to where you are supposed to get to. Maybe the trajectory will change for you. But when you embrace it and accept it and continue on the journey to reaching your goal, sometimes you circle back to that thing that you're so passionate about. Continue on the journey to reaching your goal. Sometimes you circle back to that thing that you're so passionate about. But an audit allows you to check on yourself to make sure you're making the necessary progress that moves you forward. Life is a constant review, is a constant checkup and readjusting. It's all compound. But if you're not going to look back, if you're not going to check on your journey, if you're not going to check on all the aspects that allow that business to grow, that allow that relationship to blossom, you might think you're doing the right thing and yet you are missing the point.