Set weekly and monthly targets for what you want to accomplish. For example:
Prepare two new recipes each month.
Take three twenty-minute walks every week.
Complete one home repair project each month.
Read a book a week.
Make two new business contacts every week.
Write a blog post or a chapter of a book each month.
Seating targets or quotas for what you want to accomplish can help your productivity in a number or ways. You’ll be better able to manage your time, first of all, because you’ll have a clear reason to avoid distractions. It’s easier to avoid low-productivity activities like watching television eat up your discretionary time when you know that you have a project due.
Targets help keep you focused. We have all had the experience of letting an important project fall by the wayside. We get side-tracked, and before we know it, weeks or months pass without any progress.
Establishing weekly or monthly goals can help to prevent this. Regular delivery of results keeps us busy and productive. We establish a rhythm with its own compelling momentum. We also build skill when we work regularly, and that helps us to be more productive.
But here’s the best part of all. When we complete regular deliverables, we have the opportunity to share them. The books you read, you can discuss with your friends. The repairs you finish, you can show off to your relatives. Your family will enjoy the new recipes that you prepare, and you can talk about how well it worked out (or laugh about how badly it flopped) with your colleagues the next day. Sharing your results will help you to stay motivated; you’ll want to keep busy and produce more results.
These are some of the advantages to setting regular targets for productivity, but there are some caveats that you should keep in mind.
First, don’t try to do too much. Set easy to reach goals, at least in the beginning. As long as you are accomplishing some small thing every week or every month, you’re being productive. There’s no need to increase your stress by taking on a massive burden.
If you try to cram too much into each period, you’ll run the risk of getting frustrated. You can always ramp the work load up later if you find that you have untapped capacity, but be cautious about adding too much work to your schedule. If you do discover that you’re trying to do too much, dial back the workload right away. A slow, steady, comfortable pace will get you to where you need to be.
Secondly, avoid the temptation to set daily goals. This may seem counterintuitive, but you can get yourself in trouble by trying to meet a target every single day.
The amount of free time that we have each day varies. We all have deadlines to deliver, appointments to make, and events to attend. Further, emergencies and unexpected inconveniences can pop up at any time. When such demands present themselves, we have to take care of them. We can’t just brush them aside simply because we intended to work on an important objective.
When you face a demanding day, you might need to skip or skimp on your daily target. Miss your targets a few times, and you might stop taking them seriously. The motivating factor of having a regular deliverable will be lost if you get the idea that it’s okay to let it slide once in a while.
Weekly and monthly targets give you more flexibility. You can work less, or not at all, on days when life throws a lot of demands at you. Work on your target projects on days when you have more free time, and you’ll be able to stay on track with less stress.
I hope that these ideas will inspire you to take on new challenges and perhaps start important project that you didn’t think that you had time to pursue. I would love to hear how this works out for you. Best wishes!
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