POWER OF YOUR PREOCCUPATION
Last time I shared with you my thought on your priority and how it affects you. I emphasized that your priority affects what you do with your time, energy and determines your daily preoccupation. That’s when you set your priorities right, your actions shows it as you go about your daily life.
Today, I want to focus on what takes your gift of 24 hours of your daily life. I don’t want to attempt a repeat of what I said in the last gist but tell you some specific things you ought to do every day having set your priority.
Please note that setting your priority right does not really mean that you don’t do any other thing but that your priority takes your most major attention, time and energy. Your priority dictates what you do immediately and what you leave for a later time and even what you don’t ever do. I have learnt that what you spend most of your time, energy and money every day is what you eventually become or get better at.
Having set your priority right the next thing you have to do is to set daily goals and make plans that will make you spend most of your time on your priorities.
The power of your daily goals is that it gives you focus on what to go after daily while your daily plan is a blueprint on how to achieve your goal.
When you don’t have goals for your day, you are most likely to get distracted by many other things that appear good to the eye and try to catch your attention. Also, you are most likely to waste your time since you will come to point where you will spend your precious time thinking of the next thing to do after which you may not come up with something worthwhile to do. My experience is that lack of goals for your life or day results in wasteful use of time on charting and endless watching of home movies.
When you have set goals, you should develop a plan on how to go about achieving the goal. Outline what to do, when to do it and how to do it so that you will achieve your goals. I have practiced this for a very long time now and have reaped great rewards as a result. I have taught this principle to my younger sister and she has been enjoying the fruit – covering more subjects every day/week and balancing it with her chores at home. You can join us today! You can start with getting goals for the day and writing the things you will do to achieve the goals.
See, planning involves outlining what to do, when to do it and how to do it to achieve a particular goal.
So, to ensure that your daily preoccupation is towards your priority, ensure you set the right goal and make plan that will enable you achieve the goal.
I advise that you use a pen and paper to set your goals make plan that will make you reflect your priority in life. Let me explain the power of setting your goals and making plans with pen and paper. Goals and plans clearly outlined in paper give you a sense of urging and no-time-to-waste. This sense makes you work with high degree of commitment and with great diligence so that you will be able to achieve your goals for the day. Also, your achieving your goal (may be one) and ticking that this one has been achieved, it gives you a feeling of an achiever who just need a little more effort to achieve the remaining goals for the day. This feeling is energizing!
Usually, I write them and paste on the wall in front of my reading table and mark the goal that has been achieved. When I need to go out, I write them in a small jotter and always took at it to track my progress.
Another thing I like you to understand is that you have to kill some people to enable you follow your plans and achieve your goals. Who are they? Time killers!
Who are time killers? They are people that may be your friend or you just stumbled on but are expert in killing time. They are expert in spending time without producing any worthwhile result from that. They may sit with you for hours discussing but their discussion does not add value to your life neither does their presence do. Most times they discuss people (gossip), talk about wealthy and influential people usually in a way that makes it look like they are just lucky. The ones I find more irritating are pessimist who came to transfer their spirit to you. I have better thing to do with your life than discussing football and the players. The bottom-line is that time killers are not necessarily those that do bad thing but those that do not add value to your life.
On this note I advise that whoever you spend your time should be adding value to your life or you are adding to them. In fact it’s best when it’s two-way value addition. Don’t waste time in any relationship with the same or opposite sex in which all you get is late night calls, text messages and hanging out. It’s a waste of time. I must be an idiot to be involved in such time wasting relationship. For me, I must be adding serious value and/or you are adding to me; otherwise, I have no business spending my time with you.
As you go about your daily task always ask yourself: How does this make life better; what’s the impact? Is my preoccupation focused on my priority? Be preoccupied laying foundation for your future and preparing for who you want to be. That’s how to sow the right seed for your future.
