VISION RESET

The greatest equalizer of all human beings is time. Everyone has the same number of hours in a day.

The difference between those who perform at the highest level is that they are intentional with their time and where they give their attention.

The best way I’ve found to optimize daily life is by modifying and adapting many different tools and methods I’ve used over the years related to long-term goals and daily actions.

The thought behind this self-leadership tool is optimizing every moment so that you can live your highest God-ordained potential.

Use the 3-week roadmap to reboot Visioneering, evaluate your results and to crystallize your vision.

Use the 10-week roadmap to take huge goals and create actionable steps to complete them over a defined time.

The aviation industry has a guideline known as the 16-to-one role. This will explain that if you are 1° off your designated course, you will miss your target landing by 92 feet for every mile you fly. This amounts to 1 mile off every 60 miles to travel. This means that the longer you travel, the further off course you will be.

The same logic applies to your goals in both life and business.

By being disciplined and taking strong, consistent action in the right direction, you will get exactly where you want to be.

By planning your goals ahead of time and taking actionable steps daily, you will be able to reach your milestones at a good pace.

You will arrive exactly where you need to be on schedule without being burnt out. Therefore, creating goals and setting clear and measurable intentions is so crucial.

15-minute Miracle

The 15-minute Miracle is a tool to help you plan every minute of your day in 15-minute segments.

Use this in partnership with the Eisenhower matrix to assist you with evaluating the use of your time.

There is a sample for you in the Self Leadership Planner.

Time Management Matrix

Dwight D. Eisenhower has been known as highly productive. He was a five-star general during World War II and 34th president of the United States. His productivity led to ``1 of accomplishments in his two terms, and he became one of the most admired leaders of all time. While serving as president, he often spoke during his speeches and to those under his leadership about making the right decisions about the use of time. This inspired Stephen Covey, the author of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, to create a time management tool now known as the Eisenhower Matrix he named the Time Management Matrix. The framework serves to help with prioritization of tasks, elimination of timewasters, and achievement of goals.

Use the time management matrix to evaluate your activities. Your goal is to plan tasks assisting in the accomplishment of your progress goals during the part of the day you have the most energy and less distractions.

Use the time management matrix and 15-minute miracle to plan daily. Manage your energy throughout the day productively. Give priority to your biggest goals during the part of the day that you tend to have the most energy. Your progress goal activities should be allocated during the part of the day, where you have your best energy and fewest distractions. The Self Leadership Planner, later in this chapter, has a place to tabulate the total of each quadrant. Your prioritization of items will be quadrants 1 and 2.

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This planning tool has been created for you based upon the best practices for transforming self-leadership. This tool will help you plan your goals and reach them while also providing a framework for daily incremental progress. While one of these strategies will help you achieve your goals, the compound effect of all of them will help you get your results faster without getting sidetracked by detours.

Your Vision Reset planning tool 10-includes the development of three kinds of routines: morning routines, evening routines, and weekly routine.

?MORNING ROUTINES

Let’s delve into the morning routine and why it sets up your day right.

Have you ever heard the saying, “How do you do anything is how you do everything?” Well, how you spend the first hour of your morning can set your day up to be a work of art or unruly chaos. It is not always possible to plan how the middle of your day goes, but we can make a choice about how we begin and end each day to ensure we get our important things done.

As we work together through this self-leadership development process, we will use what we know works. We know the most successful people know how to leverage their day, so they start on a positive and productive note.

GRATITUDE

Gratitude means counting your blessings, appreciating the simple pleasures, and appreciating everything you have. By practicing a daily habit of gratitude, you will begin to see and think differently, especially during moments when you feel stuck in a rut. Regardless of where you are in life, your focus can be shifted toward the positive. When we shift our focus from the negative to the positive, it helps us to see the situation more clearly show that we stop worrying, and we open our minds to new solutions. Gratitude can be broken down into three steps: we recognize what were grateful for, we acknowledge it to be true, and then we take a moment to appreciate it.

Studies indicate that beginning your day with gratitude can rewire your brain to have a more positive outlook on life. Gratitude is a way for us to appreciate our blessings in life and lessen our feelings of constantly failing or shortchanging ourselves. For example: Today, I am grateful for…

1.?????People who support me and have taught me much about myself

2.?????Waking up today feeling happy

3.?????My work that allows me to make a living doing what I love

GOALS

The goal section is a daily space to define and articulate the goals you established in Visioneering. By expressing and reviewing these every day, you signal to your subconscious mind that your thoughts, actions, and decisions should be directed toward reaching these goals.

The goal section that has been created is flexible, so you have the freedom to define different goals over time. Some days you will write your lifetime goals, and other times it will be weekly or monthly goals that you wish to achieve.

TODAY’S TARGETS

‘Today’s Targets’ is the section for your most important task of the day. We all have limited time and resources, so we must spend our time and energy on the right things. This is where you answer a daily question, “What can you do to make this day a win for you?”

We tend to take the path of least resistance. When we write a to-do list, it’s convenient for us to work on the easiest things first so that we can cross them off our list; however, you will find your success by mindlessly spending your days checking off a to-do list. This is about prioritized work, not keeping ourselves busy. Prioritized work beats busywork every time.

The most important tasks that will move us forward are usually not the easiest, which is why we tend to procrastinate on completing them.

Research has demonstrated that willpower is a finite resource which weakens through the day. If you start your day with easy tasks, then once it comes time to complete the most important (And usually more difficult), you will be much less likely to complete them.

I love quotes. And this one by Mark Twain especially fits for this circumstance. He said, “If it’s your job to eat the frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it is your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” I imagine this quote is where Brian Tracy got the title of his book on productivity “eat that frog.” This book explains how doing the most important and difficult task on your plate first thing in the morning makes the rest of the day seem like a cakewalk in comparison.

When prioritizing my daily targets, here are two simple questions I ask myself:

1)?????Which task will make me feel the most accomplished?

2)?????What is the value in getting this done, and what is the risk if I do not?

By prioritizing your tasks and working on the hardest one first, you are much more likely to complete them and build momentum for the day.

DAILY TIMELINE

The key to having an amazingly productive day is to leave zero, for as little as possible, white space on the planner. Have a plan for your time, write it down, and do not leave any time without a plan, or it will be, squandered. The more whitespace there is, the more you are not reaching your full potential for the day.

This does not mean working every hour of the day. It made you should be prioritizing your day and making time for important tasks.

It means you are purposing your time and allocating your time. Your white space is aligned with your priorities, not keeping you busy.

So, what should your priorities be?

This answers the question, “Who are you?”

How people spend their time certainly indicates where their priorities lie.

Once your priorities are set, the key is making time for important tasks. If you want to go to the gym, plan it in your day. If you do not, it will not get done. Want to catch up with friends on Facebook? Do it. The important thing is to put a time box around it so that you know when you need to move onto the next thing.

It’s not about working without a break all day. It’s about being intentional with your time and where you spend it.

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CHECKLIST AT A GLANCE FOR MORNING ROUTINES

*?Begin with gratitude

*Write one thing you’re grateful for and three reasons why.

*Write down your goal

A powerful way to connect your daily efforts to your desired result, whether it’s a short-term, 10-week goal or lifetime goal, keeping it top of mind is crucial.

*Write ‘Today’s Target’

Fill in ‘Today’s Targets.’ There are three top priority tasks to accomplish that day that will move the needle toward your goal.

*Plan your day

Block out your daily schedule into the timeline provided. Begin with planned appointments and then time block today’s targets.

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EVENING ROUTINES

The evening routine is about how to reflect and recharge to wake up productive.

Having a great evening routine is as important as your morning routine because mastering your evening schedule will set you up for high energy and focus tomorrow.

?WINS??

Ben Franklin was famous for his exceptional productivity and rigorous routines. He ended each carefully mapped day by asking, “What good did I do today?”

The self-leadership journal activity allocates space for documenting your WINS.

The wins space allows you to take stock of your day and unapologetically brag about how awesome you did. No exceptions her thoughts of doing better-only what you did well. Even if it was going to the gym or making that call you had been avoiding, this is a way to record all the positive movements-big and small. Making a daily habit of telling yourself the remarkable things you accomplish will grow your confidence in your abilities and improve your relationships.

LESSONS LEARNED

The goal is to use your self- leadership journal to prime your mind toward the positive.

The lessons learned section should be considered as an opportunity for reflection on what did not go as well as expected and serve as an opportunity to improve on that area in the future.

This is where you can reflect and plan different actions.

What will you do if you encounter the same obstacle again tomorrow?

Over time you will begin to naturally see the opportunities for improvement as you go about your day. This will pattern a new behavior for how you consider problems and actionable solutions where you wouldn’t have been able to before.

Consider reviewing the “Lessons Learned Lists” through the weeks and months to see how much you have grown and learned.

EVENING GRATITUDE

Take a few minutes before you sleep to write down three things you are grateful for from that day. Much the same as the morning gratitude, this is about book ending your day with positive thoughts. Don’t be surprised if this small act improves your quality of sleep.

Grateful thoughts will help you sleep. When positive thoughts consume your mind, there is not much room for negative ones, so it’s easier to drift off. By taking a few minutes for gratitude and focusing on the positive, you are keeping the worry and negative thoughts at bay. Writing a list of what you are grateful for will give you a more refreshing and longer sleep.

10-week + 3-week Vision Reset = 13-WEEK ROADMAP

After you have set your result goal, it is time to plan and execute your 10-week progress goals. At the end of the 10-weeks take 3 weeks to evaluate your progress and do a Vision Reset.

The 3-week “Vision Reset” is about prioritizing your growth and crystallizing your vision. This ensures you are spending energy in the right direction. It gives you the opportunity to clarify your goals and time to evaluate your strategies.

The 10-week roadmap is about how to make achieving your goals inevitable.

Having long term goals without short term incremental goals aligned with those goals tend to set us up for failure. This self-leadership journey is about creating progress toward your goal in only 10 weeks. After every 10 weeks, it is important to spend the 3-week time frame, analyzing and evaluating your results. Then revisit Visioneering exercises and content making modifications to your vision and goals as necessary as new learning occurs.

Visioneering gives us a big target and long-term goals, but in the 10 weeks, you will focus on accomplishments aligned with long-term goals. This can be sub-goals leading to your big goals.

These 10-week accomplishments can be used to hold you accountable for your long-term goals while putting your long goals in manageable chunks where you can see an end in sight. The purpose of each short-term goal is to motivate you to act each day rather than procrastinating.

The self-leadership program has a 3-week roadmap into rebooting the Visioneering process and a 10-week roadmap with templates which can be used to break down several goals, such as business, personal, and health.

Goalsetting is one of the easiest ways to increase motivation and enhance performance.

The activities in your day must be aligned with the accomplishment of your goals.

The 10-week roadmap is a goalsetting system that allows this concept of specific and time-based goals.

This concept is implemented by some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world who know that the key to success is through setting short-term goals, and then executing and measuring their progress.

The 10-week goalsetting roadmap helps you set S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based) goals that can be broken down into actions you will take on a daily or weekly basis.

The self-leadership journal tool should serve as your daily reminder of the focused vision to track your results.

There are three stages to creating your 10-week roadmap:

RESULT GOAL

?PROGRESS MILESTONES

?ACTIONS + TASKS (Pacing 20-Mile March Milestones)

?The resulting stage is setting a high-level target you wish to hit. The result could be a revenue goal, customer acquisition number, percent of students mastering standards in the classroom, weight loss goal, etc. This is the goal you want to hit at the finish line. If you are climbing Mount Everest, you can consider reaching the summit as a result. An example of a result goal: “I want to hit $500,000 with my product launch.”

Your result goals should always be a high-level target. This is where people stumble with goalsetting because after they set a big goal, there are no clearly defined steps on how to achieve it. This is the main cause of why people fail at New Year’s resolutions: they don’t have a plan of work in place for exactly how to get there.

PROGRESS MILESTONES (personal tracking objectives)

Progress milestones are clear intractable objectives to measure your advancement. These milestones are linked to whatever your result goal is. For example, if your goal is customer acquisition, a progress milestone might be “I will improve my sales conversions by 15%”. If you are an author completing a new book, your progress milestone might be, “I will submit the manuscript to the editor by the beginning of week 10”.

Picture the progress milestones being the base camps that you need to hit while climbing Everest to reach the summit. Once you define the desired outcome, you will break this down into progress milestones. Progress milestones are the goals you need to hit to reach the desired result.

Actions + Tasks (your 20-mile march)

The action stage of the 10-week roadmap includes all the daily activities or tasks that you must complete to hit the progress milestones you previously set. Using the Everest metaphor again, consider the steps your own daily 20-mile march that helps you hit the base camps on the route to the summit, a.k.a. your desired result. An example of action task might be, send 50 perspective emails per day if your progress goal was about improving sales conversion. For an author with a goal to finish a new book, it might be, write 10 pages a day.

These are the items that will go into your daily self-leadership program journal entries so that you can ensure you are completing everything you need to accomplish each day. By knowing the needed daily action steps, you will also have a clear idea of what you can delegate or outsource to other people. This allows you to focus your time on your highest leverage activity.

Format for 10-week Progress Milestones

The format order is result goal, progress goals, then actions/tasks.

Result Goal:

Directions: Write your clearly defined desired outcome aligned to your vision.

Progress Goals:

Directions: Break your result goal down into small incremental goals and write them in this section.

1.?????__________________________________________

2.?????__________________________________________

3.?????__________________________________________

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Actions + Tasks:

Directions: Write all actions and tasks you need to complete to accomplish each progress goal in this section.

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Actions + Tasks based on Progress Goal #1

1.?????__________________________________________

2.?????__________________________________________

3.?????__________________________________________

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Actions + Tasks based on Progress Goal #2

1.?????__________________________________________

2.?????__________________________________________

3.?????__________________________________________

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Actions + Tasks based on Progress Goal #3

1.?????__________________________________________

2.?????__________________________________________

3.?????__________________________________________

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Daily Planning Structure:

At the end of each day, you’re your self-leadership journal on the next pages to plan your action steps for the next day. (See the resource section for access to free journal downloads.)

1)?????Write your Results Goal

2)?????Write your Progress Goals

3)?????Write your Actions and Tasks for each Progress Goal

4)?????Record your Actions and Tasks on your 15-minute Miracle planning tool and tabulate the quadrants

5)?????Do prayer time and Evening Gratitude

6)?????Sleep well

7)??????Do morning devotion and gratitude

8)?????Review the planning of your day and adjust as necessary

9)?????Go for it!

10)?Do it again every day for 10-weeks.

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During your 3-week Vision Reset, keep the same habits but study areas of Visioneering that need strengthening. At the end of your 3 weeks, you will have further solidified your vision, your result goal, and progress goals for the next 10 weeks.

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Format for 3-week Vision Reset

Reflection Questions:

Directions: Answer these questions and use them to evaluate your results.

1.?????On a scale of 1-10 how fulfilled were you over this 10-week time frame and why?

2.?????What were your 3 biggest wins over these 10 weeks?

3.?????Review your result goal and your progress goals. Did you spend your time on the right things? What areas of improvement would you like to make in your next 10 weeks?

4.?????What was the biggest lesson you learned during these 10 weeks?

5.?????Have you accomplished your RESULT GOAL? If not, what PROGRESS GOALS will you establish for your next 10 weeks?

Vision Reset:

Directions: Reread Visioneering and study areas that need strengthening. Spend time daily doing the exercises in the chapter “Know Your Vision” and update or revise elements of your vision as needed. At the end of your 3 weeks, you will have further solidified your vision, your result goal, and progress goals for the next 10 weeks.

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Sharpen Your Saw

Stephen Covey said, “We must never be too busy sawing to take time to sharpen the saw.”?During these 3 weeks, take time to renew and refresh. Do things you love to do. Tap into new and creative ways to expand your life spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Most importantly, honor your progress.

Vision Reset Planner

?This is a model of the daily planning tool. It can be replicated for each day of the week.

Day: ???S?????????M????????T?????????W????????T?????????F?????????S

Actions/Tasks Planning:

15 MINUTE MIRACLE

? Time

Activity

Quad

? ?

URGENT IMPORTANT QUAD 1 TOTAL:??????

?NOT URGENT IMPORTANT QUAD 2?TOTAL:

?URGENT NOT IMPORTANT QUAD 3 TOTAL:

?NOT URGENT NOT IMPORTANT QUAD 4 TOTAL:

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This morning I am grateful for…

?My Result Goal:

?My Progress Goals:

?Today’s Targets: ????????????????????????????????????????????

(What will make today a win?)

Reflection/Lessons Learned: ?????????????

(Opportunities for improvement.)

Wins ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

(Celebration/brag zone)

Tonight, I am grateful for...

Note: This article entitled, VISION RESET, is a companion to the book Visioneering: Mastermind Resource for Engineering Vision in Business and Life by Lisa K. Helton is available in paperback and via eBook on Amazon.com