Why We Don't See Things Through…and What You Can Do About It.
Lianne-Carla Savage
Helping Organisations Engage and Inspire Through Instructional Design, Keynotes, and Edutainment Marketing Strategies | Empowering Teams to Learn, Create, and Market with Impact
“You have so much potential”
Now there's a phrase that likes to pop up again and again.
It was lovely to begin with. Way back in those early days.
Those moments of recognition when family and teachers saw the possibilities of what you can achieve when you put your mind to it.
Before long those sweet words come with a taste that gets more bitter every time they emerge.
Hope for the future gives way to disappointment and guilt as they serve as a reminder of your wasted potential as the months roll by.
Before long, it embeds itself into your mind.
Because you know you're here for more.
There’s more you want to do. More you want to achieve and experience. More you want to be.
Regardless of the hand life dealt you and the challenges that come your way - you've never given up.
You’re “built different”.
You aren't the type to quit yet your resilience is only getting you so far and - if you're anything like me - you're sick of being resilient.
You're sick of surviving and wondering how much more you'll have to survive.
You're sick of working so hard only to feel like you're spinning your wheels. Forever struggling to get ahead. The to-do list keeps on piling up and half-baked projects lie abandoned in your wake.
Whilst knowing full well if you just "did the thing" and reached the finish line you'd finally be successful.
Just do the thing - if only it were so easy.
If it was so easy to do, we’d all be fit, rich and fabulous.
One of the biggest blockers you have is comparing yourself to others.
We measure ourselves against people who have been around longer. Not only that, they have had different advantages and starting points.
And that's without considering we don’t know their full story. Their challenges, frustrations and fears. All we have is a curated highlight reel that we compare to our darkest thoughts.
Instead of comparing the incomparable - shift your focus to who you were and where you came from.
When you consider how far you've come the perspective shifts. The wins you've had - little and large - need your appreciation. Even the mistakes you made and the lessons learned from them are valuable.
...as long as you don't make them again.
Comparing yourself to “you” gives you a viable benchmark to measure your success.
Take a snapshot of where you are right now.
Income
Lifestyle
Relationships
Work
Successes
Hobbies
How satisfied you are with life?
Then look to the future and what you need to take a step forward to where you want to be.
As Dan Meredith says… “Future you will thank you”
The magic ingredient to making your desired future a reality is focusing on follow-through.
You have become brilliant at initiating yet fail to reach fruition. To escape the hamster wheel of disappointment, you must focus on follow through.
Seven Steps to Increase Your Follow-Through
Step One: Choosing the right problem to solve
To become successful at following through, remove distractions and low-priority tasks.
As the saying goes - chase two rabbits, catch none.
If you try to do all of the things all of the time you will hold yourself back. It's an inevitable truth. Unless you're Superman, the Flash or Sonic the Hedgehog - there's only so much you can get done in the time you have.
Bandwidth limits mean certain priorities get neglected or abandoned. Leading to a pile of part-finished projects gathering dust.
If they don't, you find yourself context-switching throughout the day. Ever found yourself being busy all day without achieving much? Context switching is the cause. A 1995 study by Robert Rodgers and Stephen Monsell found that task switching causes a significant loss of productivity. This is due to the brain needing time to recalibrate to the current task.
The best way to avoid this is to get clarity on what you want to achieve and which things to put aside for later.
Ignore the gurus and well-meaning people on social media enthusiastically preaching. The list of things you "should" do is never-ending and half of it contradicts itself.
Create a vision for your life based on your desires and preferences.
What does it look like? How is your week structured?
What do you do and how do you do it?
Do a life audit and determine how you rate each area of your life.
Take note of the areas that most need your attention right now. Choose 2 or 3 areas for focused improvement in the coming weeks.
Other areas can be worked on later. Put them in "maintenance mode" for now to keep them steady.
Step Two: Find a pathway that works
Once you have clarity on which areas to focus on, it's time to choose a pathway to get there.
With most things, there are often multiple routes to success.
Here's a perfect example:
Want to get more leads for your business? Options include
...and plenty more besides.
All of the above are methods that work.
But if you're a solopreneur who's getting pulled this way and that - you'll dabble with little to no success.
The reason you get pulled in multiple directions is simple. There are a lot of people pitching software, coaching and courses who need you to believe their method is #1.
They're pitching ease. They're pitching speed. They're pitching results. And they are pitching that you would be mad to do it any other way.
Whilst there's nothing wrong with them shining a light on their methods - you can't do them all. Not all at once with limited support.
You have to make a choice. And the choice must be right for you.
It doesn't matter how awesome Instagram or TikTok is for growing a business - it's not the best choice for me right now.
This is why I'm focusing my energy on this newsletter (The Profit Play) as the backbone of my content. For me, written content is the way forward.
Take your chosen focus from step one and pick a pathway that you expect will get the result you want.
Remember F.O.C.U.S. = follow one course until successful.
Step Three: Set your minimum effective dose to succeed
Minimum Effective Dose (or M.E.D.) is a term that belongs to the world of pharmacology. It means the lowest amount of medication needed to create a significant result.
It has been popularised in the peak performance world thanks to the book 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss.
When we think of making big life changes, we often look to optimal actions and perfect strategies. We forget that life isn't always straightforward and it's not so easy to be perfect.
Instead, we need to look to minimal actions and the core strategy.
Get clear on the smallest actions necessary to get results. Your M.E.D. provides an achievable commitment you can make to ensure that you can follow without fail 99% of the time.
Take your chosen path to success and break down what it will take to achieve it.
There are 3 categories elements will fall into.
It's those habits where the M.E.D. comes into play.
The things you do day after day or week after week leading you steadily towards your goal.
For weight loss, it'll be tracking your calories, getting steps in, and getting your workouts in.
For sales growth, it'll be direct outreach, sales conversations, and follow-up.
For growing your TikTok following, it'll be trend research, recording, and editing.
So, what is your goal and what actions do you need to take consistently to make it a reality?
What does the "lite" version of them look like? If you did nothing else, what are those few minimal things that are absolutely crucial?
They are your Minimum Effective Dose for that goal. Prioritise them in your calendar.
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Step Four: Get the right people around you - coaching and accountability
Going it alone is often the fast path to failure.
Firstly, you don't know what you don't know. Without the right insights, it's easy to find yourself making costly mistakes.
In the past, this was down to a lack of information.
Nowadays, information is abundant. In fact, we can find ourselves utterly overwhelmed to the point of drowning in info.
Everywhere you look there are tips, advice, ideas, and guidance of varying quality.
Some are inaccurate. Some are correct yet irrelevant. Some suit different situations and stages.
It can be quite hard to tell which is right to follow and which isn't for you right now.
Getting the right guidance can make an incredible difference.
It can help you avoid costly mistakes, break down roadblocks, and take the fastest path to results.
Look for people with a wealth of experience helping people like you get the results you want.
The other big win you get from getting support from others is accountability.
It's easy to let yourself off the hook. All you need is a reasonable excuse and a plan to make it up later and you feel ok with not following through.
A little accountability changes all that.
It might be via a coach, a mastermind group, a friend or fellow people in a program.
There are plenty of options for getting some accountability. All you need is someone who will help you hold yourself to your word.
I'm currently 3 weeks into Jay Aldertons Summer Shred. After letting myself off the hook with food and fitness for far too long it was time for a change.
I could have chosen to go it solo. Ate a little less. Move a little more. All the basic stuff we know but don't always do.
The truth is, if I'd tried to go it solo I'd find excuses. I'd slip up. I wouldn't bother tracking and just guess things and one little treat leads to another. Before long I'd rekindle a relationship with Mr Kipling.
Joining Jay's program was absolutely the right way to go. It's focused me on the part of life I need to work on. It's given me straightforward actions to follow. And, it's given a combination of community and weekly check-ins to help stay accountable.
So far I'm over half a stone lighter, eating more fresh food and getting moving every day. As an added bonus, daily walks are helping with energy, creativity and productivity.
That's the difference having the right people in your corner makes.
This month Dan and I have opened up the doors to our brand new hybrid coaching program after months of preparation, planning and research.
One of the things I’m passionate about is helping others to succeed. So I’ve been hard at work putting elements in place to support people staying on track, implementing with ease and getting results.
In the coming articles, I’ll be sharing more tips and tricks that work to increase the completion rates of your online programs.
Step Five: Make time for what's important
Want to get more done? The way you use your time matters.
We’ve all been there at the end of a busy day or week wondering where the heck the time went.
The reality is, it’s so easy to get distracted. We explored the cost of task switching earlier in this article. Now it’s time to look at what we can put in place to further eliminate it.
We all have the same 24 hours in a day. What we don’t have is the same needs, priorities and support.
You have to work with what you’ve got and make the most out of it.
It’s important to remember Parkinson’s Law. “Work can be stretched like rubber to fill the time available for it.” - Cyril Northcote Parkinson
When we give ourselves lots of time and long deadlines, we don’t tend to benefit from it.
Shorter deadlines make tasks more pressing. We work on them with more effort at a faster pace and achieve more in a shorter timeframe.
That said, it’s unwise to be going full tilt on a permanent basis and life has a habit of throwing a wrench in the works.
Plan your week with short deadlines and a little flex time and you’ll find your productivity is up without losing your sanity.
I've been using an awesome calendar management tool called Reclaim. It connects to your calendar and syncs with meetings and things you have blocked out.
Then you add your "habits" so that it can automatically schedule those for you. Anything you want to do daily, weekly, or a few times a week can be added as a habit.
Once it's in there, you can set its importance level, the days you want to do it and the ideal time to get it done. Finally, you can start loading up your tasks with deadlines and expected time to complete.
Then the magic happens.
The system plans out your days, reshuffling and rescheduling those flexible tasks. This way you make the most of your time and get done the things you need to do.
You maintain full control so you can drag and drop to lock certain things in at certain times.
If you have plenty of time and flexibility it'll add things in with a grey outline. When you're coming closer to a deadline, the background will change. This is when it reserves the time slot in your calendar to ensure you get it done.
For me, this has been the best tool I've ever found. I'm someone who needs a degree of flexibility in my time and a warning sign if I load myself up with a lot of tasks on a short deadline.
Try it out at reclaim.ai and let me know how you get on.
Step Six: Have something to lose
The human brain is a very special thing. It’s evolved over centuries to have lots of special quirks designed for our survival. The usefulness of which can vary in the modern day.
We often think that hope and goals motivate us. To a degree they do.
Yet, several studies have led us to understand that losses motivate effort more than gains .
Loss aversion is like our brain's way of being extra cautious with what we've got.
It's this idea that losing something feels way worse than gaining that same thing.
Imagine you’re walking from the kitchen with a delicious plate of food and you trip up and the food flies off the plate and onto the floor. Dropping your plate brings up a stronger feeling than the nice feeling of someone bringing you the exact same plate of food.
Now we recognise this quirk of the brain - let’s use it to our advantage.
You can use the fear of loss to help you stay on track and keep pressing on.
Having “skin in the game” can work well. In the online coaching world it’s often said that when people don’t pay, they don’t pay attention.
Investing, even if it’s only a very small sum shifts your mindset and attitude.
Equally, you may choose to set a financial penalty for failing to complete your tasks.
It doesn’t have to be money. I’m currently sitting on a 291-day streak on Duolingo for a language I’ll likely never use.
It started with my daughter having a school friend whose family speaks the language and deciding to join her in learning it.
Now I can’t let that streak go. If it resets I’ll be so frustrated with myself so even if it’s 11 pm at night and I’m watching Netflix or playing on the Playstation it MUST get done.
Similarly, you can set yourself a punishment in the form of losing out. Maybe you don’t get to finish your series until you’ve completed a certain project or miss dessert if you don’t get your gym sessions in.
Place the things you want on the other side of the things you need to get done.
Step Seven: Celebrate your wins along the way
The final step is to celebrate your wins and this isn’t something that only should be done at the end of your journey.
In fact, this is something you’ll want to do on a regular basis.
Recognise the progress you’re making.
Reinforce the fact you are doing the work and staying on track.
Use it as proof to shift your beliefs in yourself because your actions follow your beliefs.
The more you follow through on your goals and plans - and acknowledge them - the more you will see yourself as the sort of person who follows through.
You literally rewire your brain through a mechanism called “Neuroplasticity”
You replace your doubts with confidence because you have more and more proof of how awesome you are.
As you replace your self-image, you flip the script on your cognitive biases.
Instead of being the person who struggles, you are the person who succeeds.
Instead of being the person who lets themselves off the hook, you are the person who sees things through.
Instead of the person who has ten projects getting nowhere, you have a well-oiled machine that is taking you on the fast track to your goals.
Success leads to success and you become biased in favour of successful actions.
That’s how you win the game.
Follow the seven steps above and watch what happens
It doesn’t have to be so hard to shift your trajectory. You simply need to give yourself the best chance of success.
Choose your focus.
Pick a pathway to your goal.
Commit to a minimum effective dose
Get support.
Manage your time.
Get skin in the game
And celebrate the wins you’ll undoubtedly achieve.
Need a little help? Drop me a message and we can have a chat about the hybrid coaching offered and when you can expect the next space to become available.