Making the Most of Your Year

Do you find yourself amazed at how quickly the months pass? Do you find yourself in a small panic over all you know you have to do and how little you feel you are actually accomplishing? Join the crowd! We live in a busy world where our time, priorities and energy are constantly challenged. The reality is that there is simply not time for everything and we don't have enough energy to complete everything. Bummer, I know! If only God had created the world with 8 days in a week or 30 hours in a day.. sounds good? Maybe, but really we would just quickly absorb that time too and be in the same spot.

What do we do? There are 5 simple steps to create greater success by managing our time and getting things done in Business and life that are important.

1. EVALUATE. What do I really want? Where am I headed? What am I doing now?

2. GET REAL. What is really important that will impact and support your long term goals the best? What is not important? What is distracting me? What is not really supporting my long term goal?

3. PLAN. What do I need to do to accomplish my goal? What are the KEY action steps? How will I do this? What schedule or strategy will keep me focused?

4. FOCUS. Who do you need to be and what structures do you need to have to accomplish this (mindset, attitude, accountability)?

5. MONITOR/EVALUATE. Am I doing little, unimportant things? Am I procrastinating? What is working/ what is not? How could I streamline what I am doing?

What happens with good intentions and goals.

Plans begin as ideas in our head; we desire to have or do something. The key to the success of the idea is a plan. You know the saying, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Sometime our ideas will make it to paper in the form of a SMART goal and sometime not. If we do write a goal people sometimes we will create some action steps, but rarely do they take the time to thoroughly think through what actions are actually needed at each stage to accomplish the goal completely.

Sometimes people will start planning and get overwhelmed at how much work it will actually take or get overwhelmed with the process and give up. Often our goals remain our dreams because we fail to carve out time to make them reality. A management tip is to create a plan from start to finish. With this plan, decide if you have the time, energy, resources and desire to bring it to completion. Next, estimate HOW LONG each task will actually take. It is common to underestimate how much time each step will take and therefore it never gets done. Remember, if you are going to add something to your schedule, you must also plan to say "No!" to something else to make time to accomplish your goal.

Step 1: EVALUATE.

To create an effective plan, begin with a careful evaluation. Most people are constantly evaluating their present state without much problem. We are constantly assessing, "What do I really want right now?" We look at things around us and talk about what we would like to be different in our life. We talk about our goals, New Year's Resolutions, current intentions, etc. We often state them as fact and sincerely intend to accomplish those in our life. We see how they would make a positive difference and desire for them to happen.

There is a small percentage of people who also evaluate the questions, "Where am I headed?" and "What will it take for me to get there?" Evaluation is a tool that allows you to anchor where you are now, determine where you want to go and create markers along the way to ensure you stay on course. Without a longer term vision, we tend to react to current situations, "I need to make more money, I need to lose weight, I need to get this Business off the ground, etc." This leads to wandering through