Routine usually keeps us productive, but when you break out of that routine, it can get a little harder. When you try do something new, like starting a business, it’s going to be even more difficult. You’re going to encounter much more resistance and you might find yourself putting off those things you promised yourself you would do.
Here’s what I do to solve this problem. At the end of every week on Sunday night, I have a goal-setting session with my friend. We have a shared spreadsheet with my name on one side and his on the other, and we list our tasks for the week. It’s really easy on Sunday nights to think about where you want to go in your business and the actions you have to take to get there.
The hard part about this is on Friday night when you still haven’t done what you said, it turns into doing it when you don’t want to do it anymore. It’s easy to write them down when we’re excited about the week, but after the week wears us down, we don’t want to do them anymore.
To overcome this, my friend and I put money on the line every week and the deadline is the end of Sunday. This week we put down about $120. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s enough to make it hurt. Since there’s a consequence for me not doing what I said I was going to do, it pushes me to complete that task.
These goals need to be specific, measurable, timely, and you should break them down into small pieces. This doesn’t let you cheat yourself if you didn’t complete every piece of it, lets you remember everything that you need to do, and you get satisfaction every time you mark a task as completed. Additionally, if you’re only focused on business, you’re going to burn yourself out. There are other things in life you need to do to take care of yourself that you also might have resistance to.
The difference between success and failure is what you do in those moments when you have a choice. When you think it will be inconsequential to put something off until next week, and do that over and over again throughout the years, it makes a really big difference.
If you’d like to learn more about how to get stuff done even when you’re travelling, go to https://www.christianmartin.org/podcast