I was talking to a friend earlier this year, and he expressed frustration over how to plan the goals he had for an online course he wanted to create. Since online courses and planning are both in my wheelhouse, he asked me for some advice on how to structure his time and tasks to reach the overall goal. Essentially, he was having trouble bringing the big goal down to a weekly or monthly process that clearly connected.
I gave him a simple structure to put in his bujo and he recently reported back that he’s made more progress in the past 3 months than he did in all of 2017. It’s not magic, it happened on purpose. Here’s how…
Pick one task that you commit to doing every week. It should be small enough to do every week without causing stress, but challenging enough that it helps you make progress. He picked writing a new article on his website.
Pick one task that you want to do every month. It should be more complex than the weekly task, but not enough that you’ll overthink it and procrastinate. He decided the first month was going to be outlining his course, the second month was adding the description of each lesson, and the third month was writing the sales page. Note that it doesn’t have to be the same task each month.
Pick one task that will take you three months to accomplish, or at least feels that way. Remember it’s in addition to the other tasks you committed to weekly and monthly. My friend decided he wanted to complete the first three lessons in his course. This task is usually something you’ve already been putting off because it feels too big or scary to take on. But deep down you know it’s something you need to do.
I’ll share an example of my own. For weeks I’ve been thinking about expanding the 5 day time tracking challenge to 30 days. That was the magic number for me to really dial in the habits I wanted to create. Once I tracked my time for 30 days I could go a little while without daily tracking but still enjoy all the benefits of understanding what I was spending my time on.
I’m writing the other 25 emails this month. My three month goal is to have it completed by the end of June, in addition to the regular weekly (videos) and monthly (blog articles) I have for you. I have time, but need to keep writing them. By the way, if you’re interested in knowing more about the 30 day challenge just enter your email in the form below!
That’s it. A regular weekly, monthly, and quarterly goal to keep you moving in the right direction. I’d love to know more of your thoughts on this, and I may do a video about this topic in the next few weeks. I’d love to hear from you 🙂
Have a great week!
Matt