Time Management

The motivation derived from Strategy 4, however, can drive you to chop away at life in a frantic attempt to produce your desired outcomes.

If your axe is dull, however, motivation alone will not produce what you're capable of when wielding a sharp axe.

By combining motivation with planning, by tempering Empowerment with the tools of Strategy 5, you'll be equipped to achieve each of your goals, with less energy and effort.

So, let's now look at how to create a sharper cutting edge for effective goal accomplishment.

In his classic, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill states the number one cause for failure in life is the inability to organise details. I agree with his findings.

Most people hope to succeed on an adlib basis. The successful in life, however, are the totally planned people. They have every "t" crossed and each "i" dotted and it is this high level of priority planning that provides them with a great deal of control over their day and therefore over their lives.

To join the ranks of high achievers you must also get grubby with the details.

"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." - Author unknown

Before a house is built, an architect creates a plan. From these blueprints, builders then follow a series of logical steps as they work methodically towards the successful completion of a beautiful house.

Likewise, you are the architect of your life. By creating a blueprint for the achievement of each of your goals, you will know precisely what to do, when to do it and the order in which each step needs to be taken.

Question: How do you eat an elephant? Answer: Bite by bite. You must take the mountains that stand before you: that excess 26 kilograms; that $50,000 you need for a deposit on a new home; the 26 motivational books you want to read - whatever your goals are - and break them down into molehills.

"The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one." - Mark Twain

Here's how to break down a physical development goal: "To lose 26kilos".

This may sound like an impossible task but when you shrink it down through time you will see that it's quite possible.

As there are 26 weeks in six months, you will need to lose roughly 1 kilogram per week. Thus, your 26-kilogram goal will become a reality in just six months by consistently maintaining a 1-kilogram-per-week weight loss plan.

If we all had unlimited time, hundreds of years in which to live, there would be no need to get too dogmatic about time maximisation.

We could drift along through life and perhaps one day we would stumble across the things we truly desire.

The inaudible, noiseless foot of time, however, marches on and waits for no one. This is why we must choose to make every day of our lives a composite lifetime.

Whatever we have accomplished at the end of each day must be something that is valuable to us, for we each give a day of our life for it.

"No goal was ever achieved when its time for accomplishment had expired." - Mel Mackenzie Brown