The Franklin approach is an effective way to say yes to many things that align with your overarching goal(s). Saying yes to one thing can light the fire under your a** to get another thing done.

Say yes to disparate but aligned initiatives

The act of telling people (even if they don’t care), will make you still feel accountable to your word because you spoke it out loud. Deadlines can provide a concrete timeline for getting something done — but make your deadlines real by putting your word behind them publicly and sharing that you’re going to get the thing done with others, even if it’s just on social media. You’ll feel obligated to fulfill your promise.

Tell people about your made-up deadlines

When you catch yourself being lazy, 10x what you're seeing. What if I were like this all the time? What if this is who I am now? Is this the new me?These questions will send a jolt of holy terror through you.&nbsp; To stay focused, find something you truly love and care about so that when you receive that sudden moment of self-awareness and realize the lazy version of you has besieged you, it irks you to no end so that you’ll do anything to not be that way.

Become dissatisfied with the lazy version of yourself

Focus begins with being organized. Being organized means knowing each projects’ next steps. Having the next steps is the clearest path to staying focused. For as long as you have your next steps, you can operate at a high level of productivity.

Fall in love… with a to-do app

Time = productivityTime * flow = 10x productivityFlow packs multiple hours of work into one hour. It’s hyper-efficient. Plan for huge blocks of time and schedule calls and meetings around them.

Move things out of the way of your flow

Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love — is the sum of what you focus on.

Say no.&nbsp;It’s the defense against doing too much and it assumes that if you do fewer things, you will do those fewer things better than if you did many things.Extend this popular advice to saying no to more “good” things.It’s easy to say no to things we don’t see the purpose of or things we don’t want to do. But it’s difficult to let go of things we want to do. It will hurt. It won’t feel good. People will judge you for being selfish. But that’s the tough truth of “saying no” — it frees you up to focus on finishing one thing.

Say no to more “good” things

If you’re struggling to stay focused on a project (i.e., a website, an app, a book, a work of art, a side project), set up a one-page website with an email capture widget. In a few sentences and photos, describe your goal on the landing page.Then say something like this:<blockquote>“If you’re interested in receiving the launch announcement (absolutely no spam), add your name and email to the list and I’ll let you know when it’s live.”</blockquote>As people sign up, you now have people depending on you to get it done.

Make an email list so people depend on you

It’s the time of year when people reflect on what happened in 2018 and imagine the possibilities of the next 12 months. Thanks to FOMO, FOBO, or whatever you want to call the endless options and…

CAL NEWPORT

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