Happy New Year.
I write these letters to gain perspective and broaden my awareness. I hope reading it helps you do the same.
Let me take you back to 2015 before I started my first business.
Sales was a mystery. I was prancing around, building apps, adding features to the website, getting fancy, thinking I’d monetize soon once I got it all perfect. Until early 2017, I was staring at a dwindling bank account. There’s nothing more humbling than spending money and not making it back.
I locked myself in my sister’s basement and watched some udemy class about the sales process.
I got templates.The instructor described each step of the process. From outreach to follow up, discovery call, proposal sent, to decision-maker buy-in, to closed deals. Well, there were more failed deals than closed deals but hey, that’s not the point here.
The point here is that I learned a process.
All of a sudden, the goal of growing my business was not some pie in the sky business case taught in school.
I had a system to get to my goals.
Big Goals Syndrome:
Every new year comes with new goals.
New healthcare regime.
New business idea to be executed.
New skill to be picked up.
Most of these huge new year resolutions dissolve before the end of the month.
It would be safer to call it a new month’s resolution. That’s if we made it that far.
Big goals feel good.
We initially get the adrenaline rush when we set them.
Dream big, right?
The reality is that:
Big goals are intimidating.
It’s hard to stay accountable to them day-to-day. Fall off the wagon once, and it’s hard to get back up.
Instead of setting big goals, choose systems instead. If your goal is the destination, your system is the vehicle that drives you there.
Put more attention on the vehicle and not so much on the destination.
Developing Systems To Drive Your Goals
When I wrote my first book, my publisher told me I had to write 25k+ words.
Twenty-five thousand words ke? Whoosah!
When you sit down, look at a blank screen with zero words, I’m sure you’ll do exactly what I did then: Slam the laptop shut.
How do you go from zero to a full book?
The task was too intimidating. Then I found something that worked for me. If I just sat down for 15 minutes and wrote something every day, I made more progress than thinking about the intimidating task.
Over three months, I went past the 25k+ words limit.
You have to break your goals down into small steps and a system that will keep you consistent.
When you do this, you stop focusing on the intimidating goal in the future and prioritize the daily process to get you day.
Here are a few ways I’ve approached this so far.
1. Be intentional (Have a sense of direction)
Don’t throw away goals entirely.
You still need them. If you don’t know what ‘finished’ looks like, you will never finish. So it’s good to have a sense of where you want to go. It’s like putting an address in a GPS just to get you going towards the vicinity of your destination before traffic starts to build up.
You don’t need to get the exact address, you just need to get on the road. You can adjust when you get closer.
Be intentional about 2 – 3 major things you want to achieve. Write them down.
2. Direct attention to it
When you set the intention, you have to allocate attention towards it.
I used to say time was the most valuable asset. But what’s more valuable is what you do with your time. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. So why do some people move closer towards their goals while others don’t?
Attention!
Attention is what you allocate your conscious energy towards. Everything is vying for your attention – the news, your family, your job, this newsletter, and yeah…your goals.
In every moment that you catch your attention drifting, ask yourself, is my attention focused on my intention?
If not, find a way to bring it towards it.
In essence, when you start driving, keep your eyes on the road.
This is a practice but you can make it a habit with some cues.
3. Set a daily cues (make it a habit)
Use your phone to your advantage.
Most of us are reacting to the new technology around us. Pings, dings, and rings, slicing and dicing our attention like a samurai sword. With intention, you can take an active approach so your technology works for you.
With your phone, you can set a reminder to do a task that leads towards your goal. For example, I used a habit tracking app that sent me a notification that asked:
“Did you write for at least 15 minutes today?”
When I got it, I set aside 15 minutes to write in my notebook or phone. This habit was less focused on the product of my writing. It was more about the exposure to the task that mattered.
Have cues that will remind you to do a small task for a specific amount of time and just do it
4. Detach
This might be the toughest part:
Detach from your need for immediate validation.
Most of us have been schooled through a system that rewards people for “a job well done.” It started with the need for gratification from adult parents, then the validation from teachers and their school grades, then being cool with your friends, then a pat on the back from the boss, and now immediate reactions on social media posts.
In general, I think we are all addicted to validation. I know it’s still a struggle for me.
Who’s to blame but the biological and chemical firings in our brains as roaming social creatures that just want to be accepted.
But as you practice your growth, accept yourself.
Detach your self-worth from your ability to perform. You are enough just as you are. But be open to feedback and use it as information to recalibrate your intention and adjust your attention.
But don’t go out seeking immediate validation from the outcome of your goals.
Patience will help you remain consistent.
Slow is smooth..Smooth is fast…
Your goals are achievable.
You just have to steadily go after them. It’s harder when you are staring down the tunnel at a huge goal. Develop a system that makes it easy to get to those goals consistently.
Have intentions that give you direction, be aware of your attention and direct it to smaller goals, use cues to remind you to stay on track, and detach from immediate validation.
I wish you all the best this year.
I hope it’s your best year ever.
Yours truly,
Nifemi
P.S. Write down an intention and break it down into a list of daily systems that you can use to achieve your goal.
