Productivity tip #4: Break ‘em down

How is it that everybody drop their new year resolution by February? Because our resolutions are usually too vague and abstract to remain sustainable. If you want to reach the top of the mountain – you’ve got to forget about the top of the mountain and focus on the next step you need to take. Every journey, long or short, starts with one small step – and the entire journey is made of a continuity of small steps.

Break your goals down to small achievable chunks

In my work I try to break my goals down to small tasks/actions that are concrete, practical, and somehow defined in time. Something like “today I need to do this small thing and that other task”. For example if you’re goal is to “get fit”, an actionable task can be to “go to the gym today at 5pm”. But in fact, even that’s not concrete enough. It’s hard to motivate yourself to just “go to the gym”. But if you have a very specific workout planned for the day – such as 4 series of pushups (40 pushups in the first series, 30 second break, 20 pushups, 30 second break, 15 pushups, 30 second break, and 12 pushups), 3 series of pull ups, and jogging twice around the lake in the park. That’s an actionable task you can accomplish and get done. And so on.

Since you also need to commit to every task you create like this, it helps to write them down somewhere somehow. Athletes often have a weekly workout agenda printed out on a schedule.

Try to apply this concept to your business. Every day.

Other posts in this series:

• Prioritize and differentiate
• Don’t work when you’re not productive
• Get off email, Twitter, and Facebook
• How this productivity tip series started