The Real Reason You Write Down Goals
It is a lot easier to clean the sink than to have a difficult money conversation. Speaking of money, it's a lot easier to chase the outstanding 50 bucks than to get the project that is 100k over budget back on track and recover some of the billable hours.
It's a lot easier to be distracted.
Sometimes, we can remove some of the distractions through deadlines and a certain amount of stress. If it is very clear that you don't have time to do it all, you slowly let go of one thing after another and focus on the essentials.
You stop worrying about the right order to retweet things in and get going on acquiring more speakers for your event. You stop fiddling with the website and make a schedule instead.
When you only have time for the essentials, that’s exactly what you deal with.
However, you can't rely on stress-induced urgency forever.
Also, it is very hard to make yourself believe in a deadline when it is self-inflicted.
At least for me, "set yourself a deadline" doesn't trigger the same response as an external deadline.
So, the only thing left is learning how to focus and, as distraction is inevitable, how to remind yourself of what to focus on.
That's where daily goal-writing, whiteboards, vision boards, notecards and other "self-helpey" tools come in.
Writing down your goals isn't about magical manifestation, it's about helping your brain re-focus on what is important. You need this reminder because if you don't re-centre on what your big things are, you will eventually succumb to the reactiveness of everyday life.
You will chase the minor things again because the big things are so far away and the small things are annoying you right now.
Instant relief is a form of instant gratification that we often overlook.
Perhaps, focus doesn't start with more intense concentration, but with the ability to put aside minor discomforts in order to deal with bigger problems that haven't broken into pain yet.
That, and a notecard that says: THIS IS THE THING YOU WANTED TO DO
