Pick A Horse And Ride It: 3 Practical Tips To Get Things Done

“The presence of choice might be appealing, but in reality, it can be debilitating.”

― Sheena Iyenga, Author of “The Art of Choosing.” 

Tons of business ideas and goals frequently bombard us. We don’t know where and how to start. I want to be a Youtube Influencer, and I’ll start my cooking show; I’ll beef up my LinkedIn account;  I’ll create my clothing brand and promote it on Instagram; I’ll post photos on Pinterest, and so on an so forth. While having numerous options is a good thing, concurrently, it makes our decision-making harder.

We tend to fall into a trap referred as “The Paradox of Choice.“ According to Barry Schwartz, Psychologist and Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College,  

“Clinging tenaciously to all the choices available to us contributes to bad decisions, to anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction — even to clinical depression.”

Here are three (3) tips to gain clarity and achieve your goals:  

1.  Write and Pick. 

One way to declutter your thoughts is to create a list of all your business ideas and goals. Enumerate everything you wish to achieve and identify those that are most important to you. 

Note that writing your goals down is a crucial process. The act of writing your goals down sends a neurological message to your brain’s hippocampus where it is analyzed and sorted. From here, the brain decides which ideas will be stored in the long-term memory and which ones will be discarded. Writing your goals down improves the brain’s encoding process which aligns your mind, emotions, and body to help you achieve these goals. Studies show that those people who write down a goal or promise have a 20% more chance of realizing it.

The best way to show you this method is the story between Warren Buffett and his pilot. Buffett often travels using his private plane with his pilot. Over the years they became good friends.   

One day he asked him for some business advice. Since he is not financially well-off, he wanted to learn Buffett’s secrets to success. Buffett asked him to do an exercise.  He said, “Get a piece of paper, write down twenty-five things you want to achieve in life. Once you have that, encircle the five most important goals and come back to me.” The pilot took some time and wrote everything down. Eliminating other goals was difficult for the pilot since everything was important to him.  However, Buffett insisted that he encircles only five. 

After some hard thinking, he picked five goals and gave it to Buffett. At this point, he gave Buffett two lists. List A(Important) is where the five important goals are and List B(Things you care about), the twenty other goals. Buffett said, “Why two lists?” The pilot said he would focus on List A, and during his spare time, he would work on List B. Buffett replied, “No! Everything on List B will be your “Avoid at all cost list.” Forget about List B until you have successfully achieved List A, the five most important goals. List B is also important to you so it will be easy for you to be tempted to spend time working on them. It will have enough pull to distract you from achieving your most important goals. Spending time on secondary priorities is the reason why you have twenty half-finished projects instead of five completed projects.”  

This method is the reason why Buffett is one of the most successful investors at all time. His dedication to running Berkshire Hathaway as his top priority remains unrivaled. Right now, his net worth is USD 81.5B making him one of the wealthiest man in the world. 

2.  Make it public.

This act may be a bit difficult to do for some, but Derek Sivers, Ted Speaker and the founder of CD Baby had a unique and inspiring way to this. 

He made a public declaration of his current priorities by creating a page on his simple website that says “What I’m Doing Now?” page.

Below are his priorities :

“My main focus: I’m writing three books this year:

1.   “Your Music and People” (done)

2.   “Hell Yeah or No” (doing now)

3.   “How to Live” (rough draft is done)”

Studies show you are four times more likely to get things done when you declare your goals publicly. The Chief Executive Network (CEN), a member organization that helps chief executives improve their effectiveness, had an interesting article on the public declaration of goals.  According to the CEN, declaring your intent pushes you out of your comfort zone and past your fear. It also creates an automatic self-accountability system.

3.  Stay focused. 

Again, Derek Sivers’ “What I’m doing now?” page aced this. He declared that he would stay away from distractions and will focus on his most important goals.

"No to everything else.

I still get requests to do public speaking and interviews and such, but I’m just enjoying staying focused inward on my writing and learning, instead of shallow crowd-pleasing.

I don’t want more money or more fame. Just more focused learning and creative output.”

― Derek Sivers, Founder CD Baby

The Takeaway

  “Focus on what makes you happy, and do what gives meaning to your life.” 

― Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Focus your time and energy to what matters to you; giving the less-meaningful options less of your attention. If you want to be a superstar at something, you can’t afford to be diversifying your attention across all your interests. Focus!

Are you faced with having too many options, you can’t start? Is this ruining your productivity? How are you coping?  I'd love to hear from you. Let me know your thoughts and share it in the comments section below.

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JOVEL M. CIPRIANO

Founder/Creator at JovelCipriano.com

Jovel’s 20 years of experience in the field of IT and Entrepreneurship is the driving force behind his successes. He is a sought after authority in the fields of Entrepreneurship, E-commerce, Internet Marketing, and Export. This ex-IBMer has earned global recognitions from the WTO, APEC, and the UN. Jovel graduated from the University of the Philippines with a double degree in Computer Science and Tourism. In his spare time, Jovel enjoys adventure sports such as surfing, scuba diving, and mountaineering. He loves traveling, playing guitar, and exploring exotic local cuisines.

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