In Alice in Wonderland, the Cheshire Cat teaches that if you don't know where you're going, then it doesn't matter which way you go, and that's when you really feel lost. Often the battle is to first decide exactly where you want to end up. It's not enough to say, "I want to get out of this situation." You must know what you want to do instead and then it becomes easier to find how to get there.
Thus it helps to set goals. You can set lifetime goals, five-years-from-now goals, yearly goals, monthly goals, and even weekly goals. These provide direction and help us to achieve tasks we wish to accomplish.
In the realm of self reliance, goals can help you get out of debt, find a better job, organize your finances, and even in promoting a business.
Then once you have good long-term goals, it helps to have daily mini-planning sessions to help organize the time of the day. What do you want to work on that day? How can you push forward?
The Self Reliance lesson manual suggests the following 5-point plan for optimizing daily time.
- List Tasks: Make a this list in the morning of things you want to accomplish.
- Pray: Review the list, pray for guidance, and commit to do your best.
- Set Priorities: Determine which tasks are the most important -- perhaps putting a "1" on the highest priority, and a "2" on the next, and so on.
- Set Goals, Act: Follow the Spirit to know how to proceed, and work down the list.
- Report: At the end of the day, pray to God and report on how you did, and ask how you can do better.
Okay, a little honesty here: I don't have time to do all that every single day, but I've incorporated some of these principles, and a month ago, I believe that I've successfully altered my goal system to something that better fits the way my brain works, and also minimizes time I spend administering the system. This also borrows from principles learned from 7 Habits.
Weekly Planning Session
Every week, I have a planning session -- no more than an hour. I consider my yearly/monthly goals and determine what I want to concentrate on. I make a list, using the todoist.com system. It's free and flexible. It works on desktops, phones, iPads, etc. (you have to download the free app). So, I can open it and use it practically anywhere.
During the weekly session, I go ahead and split the tasks among the following seven days and assign priorities, of which there are four different levels. The default is Priority 4 (white color), and the highest is Priority 1 (dark red color). Tasks left done from prior weeks stay on the list and have their priorities escalated. For example, I added "Blog -- Principle #5" on my list a month ago, which I left undone until this past week when it obtained Priority 1. Thus I remembered today and finally got around to it.
Daily Routine
The weekly sessions not only help me reach my long-term goals, but it also helps me to save time during the week. Every day, I only need to look at the list I had already put together for that day. Thus Step #1 above is already done. Step #3 is also already done.
I then prayerfully and thoughtfully move the list around. With Todoist, you can click and drag to rearrange the order of the tasks (within each priority level). Thus I can set the order of events for the day. This usually takes only a couple of minutes. Sometimes I'll move something from the "Overdue" list to today.
At the end of the day, I consider what I accomplished. The unfinished tasks will move into the "Overdue" status at midnight, but that's okay. I've learned that worrying about what you didn't get done is not productive. Rather, it's better to celebrate what you did get done. If you can say at the end of the day, "I worked hard," then it was a good day. You can attack the undone tasks at some later time.
With this setup, I'm able to spend more than 95% of my time actually accomplishing the tasks rather than having extensive daily planning sessions wondering what to do. When I accomplish a task, I just check off the circle, and the task is removed from my list. It also never gets old -- the joy I get from being able to click a circle.
Hopefully you can find or refine your own goal system so that you can move closer toward strengthening your own self reliance, and closer to achieving your dreams. Go and do it -- test it out, and see if it works.
The weekly sessions not only help me reach my long-term goals, but it also helps me to save time during the week. Every day, I only need to look at the list I had already put together for that day. Thus Step #1 above is already done. Step #3 is also already done.
I then prayerfully and thoughtfully move the list around. With Todoist, you can click and drag to rearrange the order of the tasks (within each priority level). Thus I can set the order of events for the day. This usually takes only a couple of minutes. Sometimes I'll move something from the "Overdue" list to today.
At the end of the day, I consider what I accomplished. The unfinished tasks will move into the "Overdue" status at midnight, but that's okay. I've learned that worrying about what you didn't get done is not productive. Rather, it's better to celebrate what you did get done. If you can say at the end of the day, "I worked hard," then it was a good day. You can attack the undone tasks at some later time.
With this setup, I'm able to spend more than 95% of my time actually accomplishing the tasks rather than having extensive daily planning sessions wondering what to do. When I accomplish a task, I just check off the circle, and the task is removed from my list. It also never gets old -- the joy I get from being able to click a circle.
Hopefully you can find or refine your own goal system so that you can move closer toward strengthening your own self reliance, and closer to achieving your dreams. Go and do it -- test it out, and see if it works.
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