Are You Hitting Your Goals?

Are you a workaholic, or do you think multi tasking is the best way to roll?

Does your propensity to do it all really help you achieve your goals or just make you appear successful?

I didn't think my behavior was out of the ordinary but, I have a friend who has known me for most of my life.

She knows me well enough to admire me, or criticize me.

I can receive praise or admonishment and know that either way, it comes from a place of love.

One day she had invited me to her home to just chill and chat about our husbands and growing families.

I brought a few magazines and was flipping through them as we talked.

She wondered why I could not just relax and asked me if I always had to be multitasking.

Hmmm. Was I incapable of just sitting?

Maybe!

It dawned on me that even when my husband and I went on vacation, I lugged unopened mail, magazines I wanted to read and a few books along on the trip.

Relaxing to me is catching up.

Does that make me a multitasking twit, or do I just like to be busy.

Studies have shown that multitasking is hard on the brain and that we simply cannot focus on more than one thing with full concentration. Here is a great article from the Cleveland Clinic: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/science-clear-multitasking-doesnt-work/

In a nutshell, walking while listening to music is just fine.

Putting a load of laundry in at the commercial of your favorite show is just fine.

Studying for a final while scrolling your Instagram and trying not to burn the bacon...NOT fine.

Reading a magazine article while your friend confides in you that she and her husband are having troubles? Not fine.

If you have to be all things to all people all of the time,

and you are spinning plates on a stick, expect to clean

up broken plates.

I worked with a business coach for some time and she got me off of the proverbial hamster wheel, got me to stop spinning plates and focus.

Are you ready for the secret?

Do a backward timeline.

If it is May 22nd, tell yourself, I will finish this History paper by the due date of June 6th.

Then count out the days or weeks that will take, and schedule how much you can do each of those days.

You are basically chunking the tasks into the daily calendar and you will no longer be overwhelmed by getting the paper done at the last minute.

It has changed my life. Working backwards in this way has allowed me to finish two very big goals ahead of my self imposed due date and begin my next big goal.

Try seeing what true focus feels like and stay tuned....