My Ultimate Guide to Start Crushing Your Goals
I’ve been trying to accomplish many things over the last nine years. While I’ve certainly have had my successes, many of them have just been things that I am supposed to do. But I’ve always had those dreams and goals that I’ve just never been able to hit. This pandemic has given me the opportunity to really spend time with myself and focus on figuring out what I want in life. As we enter the fourth month of 2021, the clarity that I have has never been greater. Since September of 2020, I’ve been actively trying to set goals and try to achieve them. It’s was mostly hit or miss for most of that last quarter in 2020.
I spent the last two weeks of 2020 really trying to figure out how I could start crushing my goals instead of just thinking about them. It took me a while, but I was able to lay out a plan that I would start using to crush my goals and start getting closer to realizing my dreams. The first thing I did was buy myself a planner. I purchased two of them because in my hurry to get one, I purchased one that was only for 3 months. I would highly recommend you do your research before going out to buy a planner, but make sure you get one if writing things down helps you out. If you prefer doing things digitally, I also found that using Jira has greatly helped keep me and my wife on track. We can share important things that need to get done and it allows us to plan our weeks like we do at work. Whatever way you think works for you, try it. For me, it’s writing things down early in the morning and then putting things into Jira so that I can collaborate with my wife. I have found that not writing things down usually just leads me to wasting precious time trying to figure out in the morning.
But I realized that having a planner and using Jira wasn’t enough. Things needed to flow and make sense. I also found out I couldn’t just plan out that morning. I needed to come into the day, already knowing what I needed to work on. I started writing things down the day before, but that wasn’t sticking very well. Eventually, I changed over to planning everything out on Sunday. And this worked wonders! I was able to lay out a 5–7 day plan on Sunday and really keep myself accountable. Everything would be folded into Jira on Sunday and on Monday, I could just pull up Jira and start executing.
This strategy has been super powerful for me. I would highly recommend that if you want to start crushing your goals, it starts with getting organized. You need to have an end goal and then you can work to fill in the blanks. Not writing things down causes me to lose a lot of precious time and momentum because I have to figure out what I’m going to do instead of just doing.
My second big secret to achieving your goals is batch processing. I used to do things on the fly. I would create my blog posts, script out my podcast, record and edit my YouTube videos in the moment. Nothing was preplanned, and I just did whatever came to mind and started executing. Over the last few months, I’ve realized that it is much better to batch execute. If you are not familiar with this process, it is doing a lot of something in sitting. I will write 3–4 blog posts in one session. My mind is already in writing mode and I can continue my focus and train of thought better this way. I do the same thing with my TikTok videos, YouTube videos, and podcast scripts. I can dedicate a chunk of my time to just one platform and create enough content for the entire week. Then, when the time comes, I just release content on a schedule basis and I don’t have to worry about it in the moment. All my content is preplanned, and prepackaged, ready to be consumed by the internet.
I highly recommend you give batch processing a try. Group tasks that are similar together because then you do not have to tax your brain with context switching so much. Your mind and body are already in a position to execute on that task. You just keep doing it a little longer. This also works out well if you are using equipment to capture content. I’ll have my cameras, lighting, and sound set up. This takes time because I do not like to have clutter in my office. By batch processing my content, I can just set up my equipment, capture all the videos I need for the week, and then I can put things away. Compare this to setting up and tearing down equipment 3–4 times a day, you can see how much time is saved just by only having to set things up once.
And finally, my biggest technique that I’m using to crush my goals is to Pomodoro all day long. I have a really short attention span and I can’t do tasks for too long. I have to break my tasks down into 25 minute tasks that I can do with zero interruptions. By practicing the Pomodoro technique, I am able to break my tasks down into bite size tasks that I can focus on for 25 minutes. I do a series of Pomodoro blocks and then take a major break. I come back relaxed and refreshed, ready for another Pomodoro session. I even started folding in the Pomodoro technique into my live streams which I’m also using to not only document my journey into entrepreneurship, but to also help keep me accountable. If you haven’t tried the Pomodoro technique, and you are curious to learn more, I have a blog post I wrote about using Pomodoro with your kids which I think you might find useful.
https://apetechda.medium.com/pomodoro-with-kids-1c985056ea32
And that’s it. Those are my three secrets on how I am crushing my goals. I’ve been tweaking things here and there to finally get to a point where I’m just executing on my goals. I don’t think about it anymore, I just do. I create content, engage with my community, and share everything I am doing. I’m still not 100% sure that I am going to be successful, but at least I tried it. Using these three techniques is really helping me to stay focused and on track which should drastically increase my chances of success. If you have been thinking about crushing your goals, but just weren’t sure how to do it, I recommend you follow some of my tips. Everyone is different, but I really do think that if you write things down, batch process, and Pomodoro all day long, you too should be able to crush your goals and achieve great things in your life. Onward!
