Creating Structures That Give You Freedom
“The coaches I know who are failing have no system set up for success. They pretend they don’t know about routines or systems. It’s all about their mood and feelings. That’s what governs their actions. They have the professionalism of a toddler. They take their emotional temperature throughout the day to determine what they will or will not do. If you see yourself in this sad portrait, it may be time to throw your thermometer away and turn pro.”
What, me resist structure?
I've always been a bit resistant to too much structure in my life.
Ok, I just need to pause here for a minute to give my friends, my ex's, and my coach time to stop laughing...
Yes, perhaps that IS an understatement 😏
I don't like to commit too early, I never set an alarm, and I am very resistant to structure in my work. I like to go with the flow and see where things will take me based on how I'm feeling in the moment.
All you business owners and entrepreneurs out there know, this does NOT work well when you're running a business.
As James Clear says in Atomic Habits, “When a habit is truly important to you, you have to be willing to stick with it in any mood. Professionals take action, even when the mood isn't right. They might not enjoy it, but they find a way to put the reps in.”
I've tried different things to keep me focused and consistent in my work habits, such as scheduling specific types of activities in my calendar and to committing those times, getting an accountability partner, etc. None of what I tried has really worked.
There are hundreds of books out there on the subject of time management and efficiency and “getting things done” and many are really good, but you have to find the methods that work for YOU and that means trying out different things and incorporating what works best.
As I said, I’ve tried lots of different things that didn’t work, so I want to share with you the 3 things I added recently to my routine that has worked incredibly well.
Clear Targets
The first one is that I defined a set of measurable tasks or key performance indicators (KPIs) for each week, month, and for the rest of the year. They are realistic and achievable and will make a huge impact on my business when they're done regularly. These are tasks I know I need to be doing regularly and consistently that I’ve not been able to be consistent with in the past.
This idea is not new - I’d been doing this to some extent before. What was really new was defining it in detail down to the weekly actions and, more importantly, really committing to this new plan.
Visual Cues
I then implemented something I learned from the book Atomic Habits which was to create a visual representation of my progress that I track as I go through the day and the week. I did this in the form of a table of the KPIs for the rest of the year which I fill in at the end of each week. I also use a table of the KPIs for each week which I fill in each day and track the counts of tasks as the day progresses.
These charts I keep in front of me so I can see what I’ve accomplished and notice what needs the most attention.
Because I can see the progress, it keeps me motivated not to miss any of the targets daily, weekly, and monthly. As I meet the targets week after week, it is even more motivating since I don't want to ruin a "streak".
The Promise
I've had an accountability partner for about a year now and that has been great, but it hasn't kept me very accountable. Great discussions and really helped to define weekly tasks, but I often didn't fully commit to the tasks and therefore didn't complete them. For instance, I set a goal every week to publish a new blog post and before I knew it, 3 months had gone by without one.
My accountability partner kept asking me what I needed from her - what can I do to help you be more accountable?
For a long time I didn’t have a good answer and then my coach reminded me of The Promise which is a super powerful way to be accountable to another person. In short, you promise, “I will do <action> by <date>” and to stay in integrity, you must honor that promise by letting the other person know if you’re not going to be able to achieve the results as soon as you know it.
So I made a promise to my accountability partner to complete those KPIs each week and that’s made all the difference in giving me exactly what I needed to be more accountable.
Results?
Combining creating those KPIs, creating the visual representation of my progress, and making the promise to my accountability partner has been a complete game-changer for me.
I'm on my 6th week of this process right now and I’ve missed my weekly targets only once (and not by much).
Oh, and I’ve published six articles here in the last seven weeks.
That’s never happened before.
Maintaining the flow
It’s not easy - there's huge resistance to this new process! I feel the resistance every day. Some days I wake up and think, “I want to do something else. I don't want to do this structured thing that I'm supposed to be doing. But okay, that's what I've committed to. And I've made that promise.” So I get to work.
The interesting thing is, as the weeks have gone by, I get the tasks done earlier and earlier in the week – I’m getting more efficient. This allows me to do other things with the rest of my time. I can work on other things or I can take time off and go to the lake with my wife and my daughter for the afternoon (as I did a few weeks ago when the weather was good). I can relax more at the end of the week because I put this structure in place and was proactive about getting the work done.
AND because I’m getting over much of my resistance to the structure.
What will keep this going is that I'm getting those big rewards for implementing this new process. There is a virtuous feedback loop of, “Yeah, you follow this structure and these are the goodies you get in return. Feels good. Do it again.”
It’s a wonderful feedback loop.
What about you?
I'm guessing I'm not the only one out there that doesn't like structure has a hard time getting disciplined around time and task, right?
What’s worked for you in the past?
What’s working for you now?
Do you want to learn more about what I created and how to do it yourself?
If you want to know more, I'd love to share it with you.
I’ll be talking about this more in my new workshop on July 20th. Please take a look. It’s free and folks tell me they’ve gotten a lot out of these workshops in the past.
