Lining Up Your Priorities!
There are so many different perspectives out there today about how to manage your focus and goals. But what may be the “right” thing for one person, might be the complete and total destruction of a business to the next person.
My opinion is this: Ideas are great. Planning is even better for successful execution.
Having a full grasp on your vision and your goals, including all the possible ways they can go wrong, is quite possibly the best option. I’m a firm believer that you should never fully focus on only one goal. Now, the size of these goals definitely comes into play, as you likely can’t achieve multiple very high-achieving goals all at once.
BUT, you can do this: you can have as many large-scale goals as you want. During the time that you’re mapping them out, you can break them into smaller goals, and then into even smaller ones. This makes tackling multiple large-scale goals more feasible, as you’re picking away at them one small goal at a time. This method of goal setting and planning allows you to feel as though you’re tackling the world (which you are!) in a more productive manner, and making it way less likely to get overwhelmed and throw everything out the window.
I’ll run you through an example I went through: I decided that I was finally going to rebrand my business and choose an actual business name (rather than just my own).
I decided I wanted to have this all done by a certain date, which gave me approx 2-3 months to execute. It was finally time to get my shit together and make everything cohesive! Had I just left my goal at “rebrand” with a deadline, I would have likely forgotten multiple things that I wanted to do, as well as just sit there not knowing where to begin.
A few of the steps I needed to complete were as follows:
- Select a new business name (then proceed to register it and change it from my current one)
- Select designer to do the business rebrand & begin that process
- Figure out my niche and the associated wording for the website
- Redesign website & add testimonials
- Revise packages, services offered, pricing
- Create a social media strategy and begin scheduling
- Revise current contracts to reflect new name (once registered) and pricing
And the list goes on.
For about half of my list, the first domino in play was to change my business name. From there, I could knock off about half the list in a day or two- but that needed to happen first.
But while this is all going on and taking a lot of space up in my brain, I’m still running a business. I still have clients that are relying on me each day to show up and give them my all. Were there days where I couldn’t focus on my own business? Absolutely. But because I had my big goal broken down into little ones, I was still able to move things ahead, helping achieve another bigger goal of mine – grow my business.
If your clients aren’t happy with you or you aren’t going above and beyond for them, they aren’t going to stick around. So then what is the point of rebranding a business that is failing?!
On top of all of this, I also had a 1-year-old to raise, just to add to all of the excitement! I have named her one of my goals, as I wanted to continue working from home so that she didn’t have to go to daycare, and that we can have great adventure time each day.
So at the end of the day, if I were to only focus on one goal at a time, I would get nowhere. But tackling smaller parts of various goals each and every day helps move forward all of my larger goals simultaneously, without feeling overwhelmed (most of the time, anyway!) and the feeling that everything is going to come crashing down.
While I now view multitasking as a con rather than a pro, I do believe that working towards multiple goals at the same time is achievable. What makes it more likely to accomplish is whether these goals complement each other or perhaps have some overlaying commonalities that streamline their execution. Or, perhaps your current goals are all working towards the execution of one major goal.
Whatever your goals, whatever your dreams, I hope that they are helping you become the best version of yourself and helping you design your best life.
