= Programmer + Writer + Life Enthusiast + Rule Breaker
Think you can wait for great things to happen in your life? You can wait, but nothing’s going to happen, and you’re not going to be able to accomplish anything. Nothing, that is, without the will to do it.
If you want change, you have to take specific action to bring about that change. Whatever you need to do to make it happen — build, create, persuade — you’ve got to do it.
No one’s going to do it for you.
You have to start now.
Take a disciplined approach to your daily tasks to improve your skills and get where you want to go. I know I just finished writing about being happy in your day to day life, so at first glance this might seem like a contradiction. It’s not.
Some people view “daily discipline” as some despised task that must be done to get from point A to point B (the goal). If you don’t enjoy the act of doing whatever it is that will get you where you want to go, why do it? I’m not talking about discipline as some trying event you must go through to prove your worth of the goal. I’m talking about practice without fail.
Let me give you two examples from my own life. Ev Bogue recently said in an interview, “If I’m not experience telling, I’m bullshitting.” I like that. So in that same spirit, here are two examples from my personal experience…things I do daily to get me where I want to be.
I lift weights. Since I was a teenager, I’ve always loved lifting. It centers me. It clears my thoughts, my emotions, everything. It’s just me, the steel, and my movement of it. Even when things have gotten rough or busy or stressed in my life, and I take months off from exercise, I always come back to it. It’s my zen.
That being said, I often have some specific short-term goals along with the long-term goal of being as fit and healthy as I can be. I might want to lose a few extra pounds I put on from eating too much junk food, or I might want to increase my muscular endurance. Whatever the goal, I have to attend to it with this daily practice to get there.
If I slack off, I won’t get there. Even on days when I don’t feel so good – sleepy, lethargic, stressed out – I still make myself lift. I know that once I start pushing the weight, everything will work itself out. I will become centered in the act. Even on my rest days (if you lift, you must have 1 – 3 days of rest each week), there’s the subconscious focus on the goal.
My second example is my writing. I don’t profess that I’m an awesome writer now. I’m sure many professional writers would look at my work and say, “…looks like the village idiot wrote that.” To be honest, that doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that I get better with every sentence I write, rewrite, cut, and improve.
If you look at my writing now and compare it to my writing around 2007, it’s like I’m a different person. I like to write (the entire process of thought to publication), and I want to make a full-time living off of the skill. I’m not there yet, but the goal and the enjoyment of the task drives me to improve every day. And so I’ll get there, to the goal.
Even if I don’t publish a blog post, I’m always writing something. I usually have a book project I’m working on, or some other type of article, or I’m just brainstorming ideas. Each day, I write and improve my craft. Even on my day off from writing (writing can’t be that different from lifting, so I take a day off), my mind is working its creative juices through play and extra sleep.
I do what I do as a daily discipline to improve myself, my skills, and my life overall. If you have some place you want to go in your life – whether it’s a lifestyle design idea, a career goal, or some skill you want to perfect – practice daily. Daily discipline is the key to reaching your goals.
OK, so I took a few days off for the holiday (the 4th…in America). We had a little fireworks “incident” where things were exploding way too close to everyone and the house. But it all worked out fine and was good fun. Anyway, abrupt topic change:
You need to set detailed goals for your online business. I’ve read many blogs and seen many people who do business online just wander around the Internet aimlessly. They all seem to have some kind of a Field of Dreams “if you build it, they will come” mindset. No goals…no ambition…and in the end, no results.
If you want results in your online ventures, you need a plan. Part of any good plan is a destination — a goal. Let’s say that your goal is to be making a six figure income from your online business. That’s a good goal (if you’re an individual…small companies will need much more), but by itself it’s just a pipe dream. It’s not going to happen.
You have to have a plan and set up real actions to make it to that end goal. How do you do that?
It’s simple, really. You need to set up goals in workable increments, create some type of action plan for each goal, and set a due date for each increment. For example, take some easy goals — things that you can do pretty fast — and give yourself a month to accomplish them. Then take a few more complex tasks, and give yourself three months to finish them. Continue on until you reach a point where you will be at your end goal. Then set another, higher-reaching goal (of course).
Here is one example. These are my 30 day goals I set up when I decided to sell my writing services:
I set those goals, created some action plans, and set a due date one month from the day I typed them up. I recommend starting easy, like the above goals, and then grow in complexity. Notice that I didn’t set any monetary goals at this point? I didn’t think there was a point to even trying to make money in the first 30 days, since I was going to be spending most of my time doing setup work. The monetary goals come up later in my goal document.
That’s right…you need a document. You need to write all of these goals down so you can reference them later. Set a calendar popup on your phone or computer, or post a note on your fridge, to remind you to review your goals. Check on your document before your goals are due (for each due date), and make sure you’re on course.
Place this goal document somewhere that is both easy to remember, and easy to see. This can be printed out and taped above your computer, or simply in a document saved to your computer desktop. Use whatever works for you. Just make sure you review it often. Goals don’t do you any good if you aren’t measuring your progress against them.
Why all the trouble?
It’s all about being held accountable. Since you are most likely doing this alone (many entrepreneurs start out a venture alone), you won’t have a boss to hold you accountable. You have to do that yourself — which is another way the goals will come in handy. If you’re slacking off and not making the progress you want, you’ll know it. If three months have gone by and you’ve only completed two of your one-month goals, you’ll know to kick yourself in the ass.
This is really simple, so I’m not going to write several pages on the topic. Let’s review.
1. Setting incremental goals, with due dates, will give you specific actions to take to grow your online business.
2. Having goals you need to reach by a certain date will both keep you accountable to yourself, and give you a measuring stick for your progress.
Now get out there, right now, and start formulating goals for your online business.
