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Back to Basics: Setting Priorities
Move Big Rocks
There are only 24 hrs in a day. You can fill it up with meaningless little tasks, or you can do the big stuff first, then the smaller stuff, and finally fill in the spare moments with the useless stuff.
Sit down tonight before you go to bed and write down the three most important tasks you have to get done tomorrow. In the morning, tackle them one by one in order of importance.
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Reason to set priorities
When we don’t set priorities, we tend to follow the path of least resistance.
We’ll pick and sort through the things we need to do and work on the easiest tasks– leaving the more difficult and less fun tasks for a “later” that, in many cases, never comes – or, worse, comes just before the action needs to be finished, throwing us into a whirlwind of activity, stress, and regret.
Eat a Frog
Popularized in Brian Tracy’s book Eat That Frog, the idea here is that you tackle the biggest, hardest, and least appealing task first thing every day, so you can move through the rest of the day knowing that the worst has already passed.
Covey Quadrants
Covey suggests you divide a piece of paper into four sections, drawing a line across and a line from top to bottom. Into each of those quadrants, you put your tasks according to whether they are:
- Important and Urgent
- Important and Not Urgent
- Not Important but Urgent
- Not Important and Not Urgent
You’d like to spend as much time as possible in Quadrant II, plugging away at tasks that are important with plenty of time to really get into them and do the best possible job.
Getting to Know You
In the end, setting priorities is an exercise in self-knowledge. You need to know what tasks you’ll treat as a pleasure and which ones like torture, what tasks lead to your objectives and which ones lead you astray.
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Destination Goals
While we set our personal goals, we make the common mistake of setting a 'destination goal', focusing on the end result, without considering the hardships and daily challenges.
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Life Direction
Instead of sticking to dream goals it is better to set a life Direction.
How to figure out a Life Direction? Ask yourself these fundamental questions:
- What energizes me?
- What do I look forward to?
- When do I feel the happiest?
- What do I want to learn?
- What kind of places or people inspire me to strive for more?
Action Plan
Determine and plan in advance all the critical parts of your goal, and break it down in small, actionable tasks.
The small, divided tasks keep you motivated by providing a feeling of progress on a daily basis.
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Why Set Personal Goals
- You are in charge. Personal goals force you to take responsibility for the actual efforts and progress.
- You see the small steps leading to a big picture: big goals c...
“Which? Why? What? How?” Technique
... for choosing personal goals. Ask yourself these questions:
- Ask yourself which aspect of your life you would like to change most.
- Think about why you want to change this.
- How will that change make you feel? Determine what exactly will make you feel this way.
- Ask yourself how you can make this happen and then make it your personal goal.
The Life Balance Chart Technique
- Draw a chart. Write down each of the various areas of your life (family, health, self-development, career, relationships) in a new column or line.
- Assess your current happiness level in each of these categories by giving it a score from 1 to 10.
- Think what will make you be fully satisfied with these areas. Write down your ideas – you will be able to transform them into personal plans.
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The Relationship Between Goals And Burning Out
Effective goal-setting underlies the fundamental aspect of your motivation and keeps stressful situations at bay.
If you don’t set goals in positive, attainable ways, you may fall i...
Reorganizing Your Goal Hierarchy
As losing resources is more likely to cause burnout than gaining resources is to mitigate it, dealing with the negative aspects is more beneficial than using positive “band-aid” fixes. You want to drive down uncertainty and inefficiency to ensure that you aren’t doing unnecessary tasks and minimize your emotional exhaustion. To do that:
- Create a chart and place your major goal at its top, followed by layers of very specific subgoals needed to attain the major goal.
- Find and fix the inefficiencies in your goal hierarchy.
- Determine the attainability of each goal.
Burnout Symptoms And Signs Of Exhaustion
- Chronic fatigue
- Insomnia
- Impaired concentration/ forgetfulness
- Loss of appetite
- Anxiety
- Increased illness
- Physical symptoms
- Chest pain
- Shortness of breath
- Dizziness
- Gastrointestinal pain
- Depression
- Interpersonal problems.
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