Why can’t I make forward progress?!
I know what I want to do, but when I try to get there it just doesn’t work!
This morning I took time to write out a morning routine. I put it on paper, well digital paper, but it was no longer a thought in my head, but a plan on paper.
Do you know what is necessary for a good morning routine?
A good evening routine.
And this is why I think our moments of motivation fail, because there are steps that we didn’t think about that slow us down and eventually derail us.
It’s crazy how one extra step between us and our goal can derail us.
Honestly I almost got derailed from writing this, because I can hear Jess talking on the phone right now and it’s a distraction. I had to open 3 browser windows that wasn’t blocking the flash player to get a white noise generator out. That was a bunch of steps between me and my goal, and those little tiny steps sometimes are what trip us up and keep us from success.
So my morning routine, having a plan, having it written, seeing on paper the things I want to accomplish in the morning. So much mental energy is used up in trying to choose or make the decision on what to do. If I already have it mapped out for me then thats one less step that I have make to get to the destination I want to be, putting me one step closer to success.
It’s also good to see those plans on paper, because it allows me to move things around, it doesn’t make sense for this thing to come before this thing, and I can move it. Where as if I was just trying to do those actions in a state of groggy, I might just feel the resistance and go back to bed. Putting things on paper helped me optimize, and have an order for things. I love order.
The difference between chaos and order is a well executed plan.
Having a plan and writing things down also helped me realize that there are sometimes other steps to success. Planning for reality. Putting things in strategic places the night before so there are less steps between me and executing what I want. Filling up the water kettle, grinding coffee and putting it in the french press the night before. Two steps completed in advance, so that in the morning, I can simply press one button to heat up the water, and pour it over the coffee grounds, instead of having to take the time to fill the kettle, and grind the coffee. Plan ahead, and reduce the number of steps between you and success by executing as much as you can before. Mise en place.
Writing things down also helped me realize some of things I want to do aren’t specific enough. Read. Read what? Now I’ve got to make a choice again, and I might get derailed. This sounds dumb, but I can really get derailed in the decision making, I get paralyzed by trying to make the best choice, and the longer I stay in a position of inaction, and indecision, the greater my chances are of staying there.
Interruptions suck. I just had to switch from white noise to brown noise so I could focus and in the mean time I got a private message on facebook, in fact, its dinging right now with someone trying to contact me and it totally broke my momentum.
So reading… do I have a list of books that I want to read for 2018? Am I setting up my computer the night before so that I’m not logging on and being inundated with facebook notifcations that are a great distraction from what I want to do?
Simple things like, opening my book up the night before on the kindle app, to where I want to start reading.
Get specific with your plan. Table top it, run it through in your mind. What’s to vague? What can you prepare the night before, get ready, get in place, so that your day can be a success.
Not much good happens on accident, the older I get the more I realize stumbling onto things is dumb luck, and for me to go in the direction I really want to go requires an intentional plan.
Lets go!
