A few years back I had the good fortune to listen to a teleseminar hosted by Robert G. Allen and Mark Victor Hansen. The two of them had co-written the book The One Minute Millionaire and were challenging their listeners to become Enlightened Millionaires. During the course of the teleseminar, they spoke of one of Allen's favorite topics: leverage.
The principle of leverage is that using a lever and a fulcrum with the fulcrum placed close to the object you wish to move, you can use a small amount of force to move a much larger one. The longer the length of the lever on your side of the fulcrum, the less force you will need to successfully move your object.
~ Archimedes (C. 287-212 B.C.)
Leveraging for success is the idea that there are elements that will enable you to move the immovable and achieve the things you desire. The six that Allen and Hansen mentioned in their teleseminar for entrepreneurs are a mentor, a team, a network, the infinite network, tools and skills, and systems.
The concept of having success systems has been weighing on my mind lately because I failed to put some in place before tackling my goal of writing a novel in a month. I quickly realized that it would be impossible for me to achieve my goal because there were too many distractions and deterrents that were preventing me from writing efficiently and effectively.
You might be wondering what a success system is. A success system is an organized and streamlined process that is designed to...
I wasn't totally without success systems going into the NaNoWriMo challenge, but some had been neglected for a time to the point where they were no longer effective. My system for handling the bills and paperwork was no longer in place. My filing system had become pretty much non-existent. I failed to establish a system for keeping up on washing the laundry which is a chore that I lead for our family. I didn't even have a good system in place to insure that my writing would flow smoothly from one section to another. Other systems that I failed to put into place would include regular time with my family, minimizing distractions, regular writing times, sufficient sleep and so on.
After the first week of November, I realized that there was no possible way that I could succeed without doing serious damage to myself, my family and/or my finances, and I was not willing to do that sort of damage in exchange for the sense of achieving my writing goal.
I haven't given up, though. I decided that the best thing for me is to release my expectations of reaching the 50,000 words before November 30 in order to minimize my stress level. I am still writing, but I have decided to be happy with whatever word total I reach because that will be far more than if I had never done it at all. And I will have built up good momentum that will carry me on to the finish of the novel.
The second step I am in the process of taking is to reestablish the systems I had been neglecting and get them to the point of running smoothly again so that they will take minimal time and effort to maintain. And I am establishing new systems for the areas where no systems existed before. My new goal is to complete these by the end of the week so that I can focus more fully on my writing and make massive progress without fear of distraction or damage. At that point, I believe that I can write twice as fast as I will be able to focus fully on the novel without worrying about what is happening to my world around me.
Do you have systems in place when you go for your goals?
What are some of the things that occupy your time and attention and distract you when you should be working on your goals?
Perhaps you have housework issues and you feel like you are living in a constant mess. Some people hire a housekeeper to come in and clean as they could make more money by paying someone else to do it and use that time to work on their business. If that is not a valid system for you, take a look at the areas that you are struggling with and what the causes are of the problems in those areas.
In my home, the causes are primarily three little boys who love pulling out all their toys. Growing up, my mom instituted the 5-minute pickup rule. We were taught to get everything picked up at an early age in five minutes or less. She did that regularly with us throughout the day and we eventually stopped pulling so much stuff out.
But my kids aren't the only problem. We tend to accumulate clutter because we have developed the bad habit of just setting things down wherever we happen to be at that moment. I am encouraging myself and my family to never just set something down unless you are putting it in its proper place. We have been developing short-term storage systems for things that do not have a home, such as a decorative filing box my wife bought that sits on our kitchen counter by the phone where we put the bills that I need to look at and papers that we need to read through or file away in permanent storage.
For the deep cleaning, I know my wife has spent up to an entire day giving the whole house a thorough cleaning. Who has time for that? With the encouragement of the putting things in their proper place, I recommended that she set a regular schedule where she spends 15-20 minutes in a single room and give it a quick, but thorough cleaning. She could do the living room one day, the dining room the next, the bathroom the day after that (although with three little boys who have terrible aims, this is one room that may need two days a week), then the bedroom, etc. That way everything gets a thorough cleaning on a regular basis and it doesn't take a whole day or more to catch up. It's a great system!
This is a technique anyone can use for many areas of their life like their bills, their yard work and gardening, cleaning and maintaining their car and anything else that is stressing them out because they haven't found time to get around to it because they know it is going to take a long time. If they would just figure out a system for how they would like to handle these areas and start working that system today, adding a little bit of extra time so that they could make headway on the existing mess until they are all caught up.
One major benefit that results from having success systems for dealing with your everyday cares and worries is that it frees up your mind so that you can focus on achieving your goals and dreams. You will no longer have to spend excess mental time and energy thinking about these dull and taxing tasks because they have a time and place where you can give them your full attention for a short amount of time and then you can forget it until its time comes up again in the rotation. How awesome is that!
So let's establish success systems for your life right now:
1. Write down three tasks or areas of your life that you don't particularly enjoy thinking about but you find that they are constantly weighing on your mind because you know you need to do something about them.
2. Identify and list strategies that you can put into place that will minimize your efforts in each area or keep them from recurring more often than is necessary.
3. Give them a regular time frame with a minimal amount of time for you to give these areas or tasks your full attention (preferably in the very near future if these areas are already stressing you out). This can be daily, weekly, or monthly depending on how often you think is necessary.
4. Explain your new systems to your family, coworkers, or whoever impacts these areas and ask for their help and support.
5. Go to work in these given time frames and then forget about them the rest of the time to allow yourself to focus on more enjoyable areas.
Leave me a comment to let me and other readers know what new systems you implement! Good luck!
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