Have you been struggling to follow through with your goals because of distractions? If your answer is yes, you’re in the right place. I have some tips to share with you, that I believe will help you to minimize and even eliminate many of the distractions that may be holding you back from pursuing and slaying your goals!
Before we jump into the information, I want you to know that I understand what it is like to have many things to do and not enough time to do it in. I’ve experienced that during my days as a busy college kid, juggling classes, study-time, extracurricular activities (band practice, games, etc.), free-time with family and friends, church and work!
Post-college, I’ve been on a personal mission to attain a healthy life-balance.. Having quality time for everything that matters most to me. It’s not easy, especially when things are constantly changing and evolving around us.. One minute you’re juggling your day to day life when life happens… Your car breaks down, you get sick or Covid-19 happens… Things happen, and it can be tough to manage everything. And, unfortunately as a result, sometimes our goals can get put on the back burner.
My mission is to empower you with tools and strategies to help your pursue and slay your goals!
Time is valuable. So with that in mind, let’s get straight to the info you came here for shall we?
Here are 3 Keys to Minimizing Distractions So You Can Pursue & Slay Your Goals
📌 Be Intentional with your time, energy, money, etc.
📌 Identify the distractions
📌 Identify what you can do to minimize, eliminate OR work with those distractions
To be intentional with your time you need to MANAGE your time.
Start Here: Identify what truly matters to you. Ask yourself, what are your goals, your priorities, the top things you want to focus and invest your time, money, energy into?
Now, I’m going to share with you some helpful tools to help you manage your time. I’ll warn you though, if you’re not a planner-junkie like me, these tips may seem.. unnecessary! However, if you struggle with time-management… These are a game-changer.
Note: You don’t need to use all of these. But, do consider utilizing the one’s that work best for you.
To-Do List – A to-do list is a great way to organize and keep track of your top priorities. If you decide to use to-do lists, I encourage using multiple to-do lists. For example: one for business, personal/home-life, shopping list, etc. Now, you don’t need a to-do list for every area of your life. But, I find it helpful to have a to-do list for any areas of your life where you feel you struggle most to keep up important tasks.
Using a pen and paper to keep a to-do list a great but if you’re anything like me, you may have a lot to keep up with and the one thing you rarely lose track of is your cell-phone. So, if you’ve got a smart phone, flirt with a few different apps until you find the digital to-do list that is the best suitor for you!
Here are my top recommendations:
- Kanban Notion
- Todoist
- Google Keep
- Any.do
- Evernote
Calendar/Planner – Use a calendar/planner that allows you to plan your day, week, month throughout the year. There are different kinds of planners you can use. We will break those down at a different time, but what I recommend is to research the different types of journals (i.e. bullet journal, etc.) and decide which one is the best fit for you. Also, remember that you can decide between having a physical/paper planner, digital or both.
Time-blocking – Use an hourly planner and divide your days into chunks aka time-blocks. Each block of time is dedicated to a specific task(s).
Bonus Tip: Schedule tasks that you are most, not looking forward to tackling at the start of your day rather than the end of your day. Get it done and out of the way and leave the tasks that you most look forward to completing towards the end part of your day so that you have something to look forward too. Just an extra way to motivate yourself throughout your day.
P.S. Don’t forget to schedule time DAILY for R&R. If you can schedule 5 – 15 minute breaks after each time-block, this can help reduce or eliminate stress, overwhelm and burn-out.
Pomodoro Method – This method is great if you are an over-thinker, perfectionist or just struggle with managing your time. It is also really helpful if you work so hard or get caught up with your workflow that you don’t consistently take your breaks. Use this method to help manage your time, focus on quality over quantity and reduce overwhelm.
Here is the breakdown for the Pomodoro Method:
Identify Task
Set a Timer.
Work on the task.
When the timer goes off, take a break (short).
Reset timer, and resume task or move on to the next task.
When timer goes off, take a longer break.
Set the timer to fit your daily schedule as needed. I highly recommend using this method alongside the time-blocking method.
My Top Pomodoro App Recommendations:
- Focus To-Do
- Pomo Focus
- Pomotodo
These apps allows you to set the allotted time you want to work on a task and when the timer goes off… you take a break and then either continue or move on to the next scheduled task.
After that time-block is complete, that’s it for that task. Being intentional goes hand in hand with self-discipline. You’ve got to be disciplined to work during the allotted time, take your breaks and then move on to the next task of the day.
Kanban Boards – I fell in love with Kanban boards this year! I haven’t been using them for long, but it has really been a gamechanger for me. I’m gonna tell you why I use this method. And, if this resonates with you, then download the app quick!
Kanban boards allow you to see your to-do list in a visual form. The boards is made up of 3 sections: Do (To-Do), Doing and Done. If you search Kanban on YouTube, you’ll see examples of how you can create a Kanban board using just your blank wall and sticky notes, you can use a whiteboard or a corkboard. If you enjoy visual interaction, being hands on and creative you may enjoy creating a physical Kanban display board. Or, you may prefer to go the digital route (if not both).
Here are my favorite digital Kanban board Apps:
- Trello
- Notion
- ClickUp
- Monday.com
- My Kanban
Bonus Tip:
When you set goals, you should identify specific action steps that you can take daily, weekly and monthly. As you take action, remember to approach it with a quality over quantity mentality.
If you use time-blocking in your scheduling, the time that you have blocked out for a certain activity – focus on being effective during that time with the tasks at hand RATHER THAN focusing on how much you can get done during that period of time.
This helps with managing your time, because it decreases the chances of you having to go back and correct or re-do that task because you were rushing during that time-block.
Stress, overwhelm, anxiety and burn-out… These can be distractions as well, because they can cause you to not be able to to work on a task or to be effective while working on a task.
That is why it is essential to manage your time well, because it helps decrease stress, overwhelm, anxiety and decrease risk of burn-out. It is one form of stress management etc.
Bonus Tip #2
Schedule time to meditate, practice mindfulness, to exercise, to sit down and eat your meals, to spend time with loved ones (including your pets) etc.
Balance is key and if you can manage your time well, then you can find balance ⚖️
The solution to minimize or eliminate distractions is to be intentional with managing your time.
To do that, you must identify what you want to focus on and then you may find it helpful to use planners, to-do lists, time-blocking and timers etc to help you zero in on your focus points and execute.
It’s up to you to schedule time for what matters most at times when external distractions (i.e. phones, social media, noisy neighbors etc.) are low or non-existent.
Now, I use each of the recommendations that I have shared with you today and have spent time researching the benefits of them as well. So, I do believe that these can be game-changing for you as you work to creating a healthy life-balance, where you are managing your time and taking strategic action to achieve your goals. The key is to find what works best for you and then to do it consistently.
If you have found this information helpful, please like, share and subscribe.
I also invite you to check out the Set Goals & Slay E-Course: The Strategy You Need to Set Goals & Slay. This E-course comes with an abundance of worksheets and an E-book to help you create a winning strategy to slay your personal goals. CLICK HERE for more information.
Have an amazing and blessed week Set Goals & Slay Family!
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