The Key to Success in 2019 (For me anyways)

I’ve discovered some amazing advice from a productivity and life-hacker guru named Darius Foroux (https://dariusforoux.com/) (Maybe the advice came from Scott Adams of Dilbert fame?) Being a writer myself, I took something Darius said about writing to heart and indeed applied it to other aspects of my life. His advice basically was “Write everyday! Don’t set a goal of 1,000 words a day or 10 pages a day. Set a goal to write everyday. Even if it’s just a sentence, write everyday.”

That rocked my world. The idea of writing one sentence a day floored me. Not because it seemed super easy, and it is, but after learning so much about habits and goals recently, I felt blind to have missed it. The key for me in writing everyday is to set the goal small enough to achieve it any day at any time, and at least, no matter what, it’s still progress. I’ve created a very visual graph and included why the truth of it is so powerful.

As my beautiful graph shows, you can get more accomplished some days than others. But even in those days when you get a small amount done, guess what? You’re still doing something towards that goal!

Let’s say you’re a Realtor. Hello, Sally Realtor! If you want to start making phone calls as a source of lead generation, instead of setting the goal of 100 in a week or 20 a day, set it small, real small because you want to make it attainable on a daily basis. Maybe start at one phone call a day. Do it. Make the call. Congratulations. Seriously! How awesome is that? You made zero phone calls yesterday, but today you picked up the phone and made one call. 1 > 0.

You know those days when you didn’t pick up the phone, didn’t prospect, didn’t do whatever it is? Those days are gone because you’ve set yourself up for success.

Here’s the next piece of that easy-to-implement puzzle: schedule your time to allow for greater expansion after you met your daily goal. Give yourself an hour. Make your one call. High five yourself. Go do whatever it is you want to do. But, here’s the funny thing. You probably won’t want to. You’ll probably go, “Huh. That was actually pretty flippin’ easy (Pardon my French, I was raised better than that.) I bet I could make another call!” And, you probably will. That’s two calls in one day! You just doubled your daily goal, Rockstar!

It’s all about hacking apart large things into smaller things and tricking yourself into doing more by positive reinforcements and happy, good vibes coming from your own noggin. So if you want to make making 100 phone calls a week your brand new weekly goal, on day one guess what, your kid gets sick. Being the good parent you are, you help your child.  Halfway through day two, after still nursing your kid, you forgot you needed to make dinner because the leftovers are gone! Okay. Day three comes and, yup, you have plans to meet up with friends who are in town. Is there some truth here? Those things ate away three of your work days. How do those 100 phone calls in a week look now? Does it appear to have beaten you? Do you feel like there is nothing you can do?

For me, I’ve gotten to know I discourage myself when I don’t meet some expectation/goal I made. Well, look what would have happened if I would have only written one sentence a day since I first ever had that notion of writing a novel. I would have at least finished one novel, a goal that has been on my back for …well…20 years now!

It’s a place to start. Always start small. Build that foundation of daily habit. And then, assess. If you ain’t accomplishing what you want, double, or triple, or increase it however much. But, always do. Always, always do.

(This blog doesn’t count for my Novel Goal. So, I gotta go pound out a sentence and then congratulate myself. I’ve earned it.)