With a fresh new year before us, the hopeful anticipation of possibility is almost palpable. We have our resolutions and goals and we look to the year ahead with confidence.
Sadly however our resolutions and goals often fall victim to the systems that run our lives.
The truth is, we live our lives according to the systems we have either created or allowed. These are our habits and patterns of behaviour that, if left unchecked, can have us live on autopilot, and enslaved to those systems that are not helpful to us. Let me give you an example of my own life before systems.
Frustrating Pattern
Nothing frustrates me more than waking up fresh and energetic in the morning, settling down at my desk anticipating a super productive day…then….getting stuck…I don’t know what to do first.
I pull out my to-do list, scan the 15-plus items I have there and feel the overwhelm creeping up my back.
My thought process often goes something like this –
“What shall I do first? Everything seems urgent, some, no, most of them have been rescheduled a few times already, surely those are the most important…but should I really research a project management tool before updating Client A on that task we were reviewing last week? My laundry is still on the couch, maybe I should do that first…wait! Should I grab a snack?”
Finally – after about 3 minutes of musing, I finally pick a task from the list, set the timer for 25 minutes and settle down.
7 mins in – email notification – “Oh, great the Cult Beauty Catalogue is in! Let me quickly check what the holiday gift is, last year it was amazing!”
*checks email, opens the web browser…scrolls through a couple of hundred beauty products, some land in the shopping cart (yay!)
Oh, wait I was supposed to be working on this task.
*email notification* Fantastic! Client B responded to questions about the holiday break —-ugh…why is she coming back a week earlier? The project timeline doesn’t require that… I better respond to reassure her everything is on track for delivery on time!
“What was I doing again?… oh yeah” Back to work.
*timer rings*
“That was fast, I guess it is snack time!”
Can anyone else relate to this scenario?
This used to happen to me a LOT, making my productivity sporadic at best and completely nonexistent at worst.
Victim of my own nonexistent systems
The truth of this scenario is I was a victim of the systems that I allowed to run my life. I had not taken the time to create a plan or a system that would result in consistency in my work or give freedom in my life! It set me up for failure time and time again.
As a result, I was constantly frustrated, non-productive, and tired.
Finding the Right Systems for Me
Nothing changes unless something changes. I work with my clients to evaluate their systems and processes so I decided in order to be super clear on what the priorities were in my own life I would do my own audit.
So I sat down and looked at my last week, 2 weeks, and month. Then I mapped out how I really spent my time. I took some time to evaluate and look at the activity reports on my devices, and these told a colourful story of where my time was going.
The hard truth is that what you spend your time doing is what you are really prioritising. Let me tell you something -my personal evaluation did not look good! Just looking at the percentage of time that I spent on social media – for non-business-related reasons, email – and not for responding to leads or other income-generating stuff shed light on my reality.
I realized that if I spent this amount of time on these “useless” things, that meant I’d taken away time that could have been used more intentionally, whether in my business or with my family.
This was not how I wanted my life to look.
Committed to Change
So, I committed to change. I took the time to do for myself what I often recommended to clients. Taking the time to do the following three things changed my life and business for the better. I share them with you now hoping that if my scenario above sounded familiar you might find help through these steps as well.
3 Tips to Create Systems for Success
01. Get really clear on your dreams and goals: It may seem a little cheesy, but I’m telling you that having a vision board is a game changer! Collecting images and words representing your lofty dreams isn’t just a fun way to spend an afternoon. It gets you excited about the future, about “what could be”. It lets you dream uninhibitedly by what’s around you. And yes, science does support the power behind visualizing and using images to set your intention for success.
02. Articulate the goals: With my vision board done, I distilled all those big ideas and visions into 3 goals. These I could focus on this year. Where exactly do I want to go? The travelling analogy works perfectly here. If I’ve decided to go to Maun, then I can chart my trip with that destination in mind. This leads us to ask ourselves a few questions.
- What’s my strategy to get there? And here is where it gets interesting. Because now you are thinking about the deliberate steps you will take to get to your destination. You will decide what pace you are going to move at when you will take a break to assess how you are doing, and perhaps who you need to take with you.
- What do I need to get there? What are the resources or skills I need to reach this goal? Is there anything that I currently have that I’m not using correctly? (I.e, my phone – I was using it for games more than using it for productivity). Is there anything that I am currently using that is not helping?
- What new habits do I need to adopt? What old habits do I need to let go of?
- How will I know I’m making progress and how will I celebrate the small wins? Reaching milestones needs to be celebrated. Acknowledging the fact that you made it from point A to point B is proof that you are capable of making it to point C and beyond to the end!
03. Take action to move towards your goal. After asking yourself all these questions, and putting them down in your journal, you have the beginning of your action plan. But you need the first step, to begin the thousand-step journey, right? So, what’s the first thing you will do actively, and intentionally to move forward?
For me, it was changing the settings on my phone. I set up focus hours, stopped certain notifications and put limits on my social and game apps. This immediately changed my environment which eliminated those pesky distractions I kept getting when I sat down to work!
How to Create Your Own Systems
If you can relate to my story, I am here to encourage you. You can create the life you want. Designing your life means intentionally setting yourself up for success. It means taking an honest look at what systems you’ve allowed in your life and your business. It means looking at the habits you do every, single day. Then once you see where your challenges are set yourself up for success by determining what small steps you can take right now.
That’s simply what a good life and business system is – the intentional habits that compound to create favourable outcomes daily, weekly, and monthly until you reach the goals that you have set.
I’m still a work in progress…even while writing this I still got up to randomly put laundry in the washing machine, because I “suddenly remembered”.
Focus is a discipline I myself am working on every day. If my scattered brain can do it you can too!
To help with this I’ve put together a time audit you can download to help you find the areas of your life that may need some work. Just fill out your name and email below and you can download it today and then set new goals for yourself to help you achieve a productive and successful year.
Looking forward to hearing how it works for you – comment in our facebook group once you’ve completed the exercise!
