The Action Gap: Bridging Your Efforts to Your Ambitions
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[00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the Productivity Genius Podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Fifield. And in this episode, we're looking at why you aren't taking lots of action each week towards your big goal. It's actually really simple and it makes a lot of sense. So before we begin, well, actually one thing real quick, this is supposed to be the neuroplasticity episode.
I mentioned that in the previous episode. That's coming, but I want to do a little bit more research to really do a spectacular job with that. But right now, let's look at why you aren't investing the hours that you wish you were in trying to achieve your big goal. First, get real clear on what is the goal.
I don't think I need to do a lot of of prompting with you to figure that out. if you are listening to this podcast, you are a highly motivated person. I'm sure you have a goal in mind. Also, from talking to so many of you, I know that you aren't investing the number of hours you wish you were towards that goal each week.
So let's do a little exercise together real quick. You've got the goal. That was kind of [00:01:00] step one of the exercise. Step two is imagine I have a crystal ball. And I tell you, one year from today, and if a different timeframe makes sense, then think of it that way. But let's go, just go for my example with one year, one year from today, you've achieved your goal.
I have this crystal ball and I'm so excited to share with you, you did it. You worked this year, you figured it out and you achieved it. I know this for a fact.
if you knew for a fact that you would achieve that goal in a year, how many hours per week would you be willing to find and carve out in order to do the work required to meet that goal? Knowing that it totally works out, that your work, that you're investing is totally worth it because you hit the goal.
How many hours would you be willing to find?
How many hoops would you be willing to jump through in order to create that space? Maybe [00:02:00] you'd be getting up earlier. Maybe you'd be staying up later. Maybe you'd work through your lunch. Maybe you'd ask your boss for, a reduced schedule. Maybe you would quit your job and go all in on it. Maybe you would hire some things out.
Maybe you would cut back on things. If you knew It was gonna work out and you would reach your goal. How many hours would you be willing to find in your week to work towards it? Just make that decision. It doesn't have to be super exact. Just, okay, I know it works out. And like, don't get too caught up in the, well, where can I find each and every hour?
Like, there's a lot of hours in a week, right? How many hours, just off the top of your head, do you think you'd be willing to create? so you've picked your goal, you've picked the number of hours you'd be willing to carve out. Now, step three, how many hours are you currently working each week? So how different are those two numbers?
All right, so just take notice of that. [00:03:00] And now step four, think about this. If you were to work that many hours, the number of hours you chose that you would be willing to invest, how much more likely would you be to reach that goal as opposed to the number of hours you're working right now, right? If you knew it worked out, you likely picked a number of hours that would make it way more likely that you actually would achieve the goal.
And I just think that's so interesting to see. If we knew if someone could tell us. that we for sure reach our goal, we'd be willing to put in a lot more hours than we're probably putting in right now. And if we put in that many hours, of course, we're going to be more likely to achieve it.
So if you fully believed you were going to reach the goal, you'd be willing to put in a lot more hours, but because you're not sure if you're going to reach the goal, you're putting in much less hours, which of course is going to make it much less likely that you actually achieve it.
Now, this makes [00:04:00] sense, there's nothing wrong with us when we think this way. It's just that the things that are going on in our day to day life just seem so much more real and important than this imaginary goal that we don't even know is actually going to come true. So we could invest all of these hours and it could be a complete waste.
In fact, most likely your track record so far in some of those types of goals have been a waste of time because maybe you in the past have started working towards a goal and then given up. And now you tell yourself those hours were wasted. You know that you have a heck of a lot of stuff to do. And so the things that are clearly a Real in your life.
Like maybe you have a full time job right now. Maybe you have a boss. Maybe you have kids and a husband and activities and laundry and dinners and cleaning and all of these things that pull on your attention and compete for your time. They all seem so real and necessary and much more so [00:05:00] real and necessary than this imaginary,
maybe a little improbable, uh, goal. And so the things that seem more real to us are more likely to get our attention. Maybe you do what a lot of people do and you say, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to get all of these things done and if I can get them all done, then I'll invest some time to work on the things for my goal.
But how often does that happen? How often can you work so hard that you feel completely caught up? It usually does not work that way, right? then how do we do this? How do we create the time in our week to dedicate, to allocate, to reaching that goal? I'm sure there's multiple ways, but there's a couple of ways that I'd like to think about it.
One way we could do it is we could really work on our beliefs. And I think that that is a great thing to do. I do this sometimes when I first wake up, if I don't want to jump right out of bed, I don't force myself to get immediately out of bed. I'll lay there and I'll spend a couple minutes just thinking about my future self, who's achieved goals, imagining [00:06:00] all the things about how her life will be different, how she thinks differently, how she behaves differently.
So one thing you can do is work on your beliefs, right? You can also journal on it. It'd be a great activity to journal on. I would totally do that. Like if you listen to the times I'm doing it, it's time that's not taking away from anything else. I think it's really time well spent.
But I think that is the slow route. I think we can speed that process up and work in conjunction with another thing. So the other thing I would suggest you do is Go back to the activity we did at the beginning. Think about how many hours did I say I'd be willing to invest if I knew for sure it would work out?
And then we want to work towards creating that many hours in our week to dedicate towards that goal. Now you're already doing a great job of starting on that journey because you're listening to this podcast where that is my goal. To get you more hours to invest in the things that you want to be investing your time in.
But [00:07:00] one simple thing that you can start doing right now or tomorrow morning and do it every day is to invest the first X number of minutes or hours in your day working on that goal.
I 10 minutes a day, a year from now, you will be at a completely different place. And if you miss a day, just don't miss a second day, just say, I don't miss two in a row, but just each day, I'm going to give 10 minutes. That 10 minutes might just be making your next step plan. It might be actually taking some action, might be clarifying things, but each day, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, half hour, an hour and a half, you might want to work your way up to a certain amount of time, but start small, whatever is the, you Time that you think, okay, that's not going to derail my entire day if I invest this much time and then invest it because when you see yourself taking daily [00:08:00] action towards that goal, it's also going to work on your belief when you see yourself showing up every day and acting in a way that is working towards your goal, you start to see yourself differently and you start to view that goal differently.
While you are literally taking actions and seeing results, you're also changing your beliefs about yourself, the type of person you are, and the likelihood that you're going to meet that goal.
I strongly suggest that you choose the time before anything else happens for the day. Before you do anything else, do something towards that goal.
now this may be a big challenge, but I'd love for you to give this a try. Your brain is not going to want to do this first thing in the morning, but it is such a freaking amazing way to start your day.
Ten minutes. You can totally spare ten minutes. That's ten minutes is not going to make that gigantic of a. difference in the rest of your day and what you get done. Just take 10 [00:09:00] minutes at the start of your day, set a timer, 15 minutes, whatever the time is, but give that to yourself each day to start making some progress.
Once you start doing that regularly, you're eventually going to be able to create more and more space for it because you will start believing in that goal more and more. So it will be easier and easier to create more space for it.
Now, let's say your day starts out, somebody's at your desk, first thing, you didn't get your 10 minutes in before your day started. Then I would say either take that and move it someplace else in your day, like in the middle of your day, maybe after that first thing, okay, now before I start the rest of my day, let me fit that 10 minutes in, that 15 minutes, that half hour, whatever it is, or let me tack it onto the end of my day before I go home or before I, shut down for the day.
Okay, I'm gonna. Do that 10 minutes, but don't end your day without doing that 10 minutes. The way that I do this is I get up a little bit earlier now to start my work before my actual work day begins, and I'm making [00:10:00] massive progress. Can you rearrange your morning schedule so you either leave the house 10 minutes later and you fit your 10 minutes in there, or you arrive at your desk 10 minutes earlier and you insert that 10 minutes of work there.
Create a habit of making a little bit of progress each day towards your goal. Not only will this make it more likely, of course, that you achieve it. But it will also help you believe that you are going to achieve it, Which will also increase the likeliness of you achieving the goal.
I know if you carve out a piece of your day, every day, no matter how small that time frame is, if you do that every day, one year from now, you will have made dramatic changes. And I can't wait to hear about the goals you achieve. that's what I have for you today. And I hope you have an amazing week.
