Daily Plan For Change

Not often do I come across NEW and useful information in the area of self help, but today was one of those rare exceptions.

We all know that to live a happy, healthy and productive life we have to learn to deal with REALITY day-in and day-out.

It’s fine to dream big, plan big, get motivated and have the best intentions in the world, but what happens when the reality of the day hits you?

How Do We Make Daily Change Simpler?

When we are faced with daily challenges to our design for change, how do we make progress – real, daily progress?

For most of us, we fall back into existing patterns, move from “offensive” minded to “defensive” – survival and getting through the day quickly become the goal displacing whatever big intentions we previously had for ourselves.

For example…

• We lose track of time and avoid the things we should really be doing
• We get resistance and the pain of trying seems to great, so we settle back into comfortable patterns
• Anxiety and stress get the better of us, nobody can function when they are paralyzed by fear, anxiety and stress
• Important items like eating well, exercise, getting proper sleep and managing stress slip to the bottom of the pile as we deal with the onslought of reality that hits us

In this wonderful (because of its simplicity, but also because it is highly practical) plan published in Psychology Today, you now have some very specific tools to use to combat the way you used to face the day into a new reality…

It all hinges around the numbers 2.,5, 11, 15, 20, 43

I’ll give you hint, each of these correspond to a period of time (minutes) in which you do specific things to combat the intrusions daily life throws at you in order to stay focused and on track for productivity and staying focused on your goals.

For example, 2-minutes corresponds to the maximum time a task must take in order to interrupt your plan.  If that interruption takes longer than 2-minutes, then you want to avoid it and queue it up so it is properly prioritized.  This helps you handle URGENT (but not important) interruptions to your day that take you way off track.

Another example, when you are faced with a task or thoughts that seem overwhelming, too challenging, etc… go ahead and give yourself 5 minutes and get started…with the belief in your mind that after 5-minutes you can stop, but give it your all for 5-minutes.  Obviously this is a way to overcome frequent procrastination based on the perception that the pain of a given activity is too large.

All-in-all, these types of techniques to help you focus on your plan and bring the day’s challenges into perspective are critical to actually realizing the changes and improvement in life we all want to make.

More tools for you to use, let us hear your comments on how you think you can adapt these changes into your life.