How to Stay Focused on Your Long-Term Goals on a Daily Basis

“The greater danger for most of us isn’t that our aim is too high and miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

Michelangelo

How to stay focused on your long term goals on a daily basis? That’s the million dollar question. If I was a raised with the know how, I’d be popping champagnes and rolling in dough.

How to align your Daily To-Do’s to the Long Term Achievements that matter to you?!

If you know what it feels to be exhausted by endless mundane to-do’s on a daily basis and lose the track from your dreams because of the ‘busyness as usual’, this outline below is for you.

Vision | The What you’re pursuing.

Strategy | The How you’re going to pursue it.

Execution | This is the Holy Grail of moving forward in the first place.

The Aim of this Practice

• The Aim is to Link Vision to Execution. 
• Another Aim is to Filter out ‘Opportunities’ that are Not connected to Your Vision and thus become merely distractions. 

The Strategic Links you need to Use

Link 1 – The Vision Script

It’s not a one-sentenced Vision Statement.
It’s a Master Document for 3 – 5 Years in the Future.

Link 2 – Annual Plan

The Rubber meets the Road What do I need to do to get to the completion of the annual plan.Indicates what’s Yes and What is No. Review this regularly with Quarterly Goals. 

Link 3 – Quarterly Goals

Select 2 – 3 of your Annual Goals that to be achieved with Deadlines in one Quarter.

Link 4 – Weekly Objectives

• These are not Goals nor Tasks. 
• These are Milestones for Progress Outcomes on a Weekly basis.
  • Achieving those objectives fuels your motivation for thriving towards quarterly goals that might otherwise lose the momentum.
• It defines the win for Every Week. It will get you from 0 > 1!
• Implement Weekly Planning Process > GTD Weekly Review (Getting Things Done time management method, aka. GTD).
  • 3 items for a week that serve Quarterly Goals. 
  • Keeping 3 things per week as Objectives helps to Get the Clarity about what’s important and avoids derailing.
  • Most importantly, it makes you Feel Good even if your to-do list gets piled up by other stuff. You know you have achieved the Most Important that moves the needle for you. 🙂

Link 5 – Daily Tasks

• Doing this The Right Way will avoid feeling overwhelmed and defeated.
• These are High Yield Specific Actions > 3 tasks that need to be Important, not urgent per se, but Important that connect to Weekly Objectives. 
  • It is deceptively simple but incredibly powerful to keep 20/80 rule for daily tasks. 
    • The 20% = 3 important tasks that move the needle.  
  • Set 3 tasks for Every Next Day > GTD Daily Shut Down Review.
• Based on GTD method you Need to Distinct a Single Task (Discreet Action) from a Project with many tasks!
  • Projects can be Weekly Objectives but Not daily tasks. Otherwise it Populates the daily tasks throughout the week.

This is how you Won’t Get Stuck and Create your luck!
You’re welcome 🙂