Spend Your Time Doing What Moves You Towards Your Goal

The best thing you can do for yourself is to always try to do the highest value task, the task moving you towards whatever goal you have set. If what you are doing were not moving you forward in your life then why would you want to be doing it?

Nothing every stays neutral, you are either moving forward towards your goal or you are moving backwards further away from your goal. Even if you do nothing you are still moving because of time.

You have lost the time and will never get it back. Therefore, if at that time you were not doing something to move yourself forward you end up moving further away because of this lost time. You will never again have the change to use that lost time.

Most people understand this, that you need to be working towards your goals as much as possible, however often times we find ourselves doing activities that waste our time and move us backwards.

Let me give you a case in point. The other day I listed some items for sale on Craigslist. I live between two cities so need to pick one to place the listing in, knowing the other location will show my ad too. So here is what I end up with.
Gretta, a real winner I’m sure complaining about what location I listed my stuff in. Moreover, not once but twice so far.

Think about that, it takes effort and time to write me twice to complain about the location. In addition, she is not even a buyer, she just wanted to complain.
Now let us look at this even more in depth. Her Gretta is at 6:30 in the morning, searching Craigslist, obviously not looking for anything, finding an ad with what she thought was a wrong location, then taking the time to write two messages about it.

Unless she is planning to use this as a bit in a comedy sketch, she was not moving herself forward, but rather backwards. Moreover, this is where all of us are stuck from time to time, moving backwards because we do not know what to do to move forward.

Wonderful Grumpy Gretta could have been doing so much more with her time, moving her forward and make more money in the process.

Before the next time you do anything, try to ask yourself one of two questions:

1. Is this the best thing I could be doing right now?
2. How can a take what I am doing and use it to move forward?

Is this the best thing I could be doing?

This is the best question to ask yourself and answer “Yes”. Is what you are doing the best thing, the best use of your time, at the given moment.

Alternatively, put another way, knowing what you know at a given time, is there anything else you could be doing that would move you towards your goals better.

This can be a very hard question to ask yourself and can lead to driving yourself crazy. Because you will find yourself questioning everything you do. Nevertheless, taking the two seconds to ask yourself this question is a great idea.

As an example suppose you are surfing the internet at work, looking for a new kitchen stove. Is this the best use of your time? It all depends, if you just moved into a house and do not have a stove this could be the best use of your time. On the other hand, if you have a major report due later today and it is not done, looking for a stove is probably not the best use of your time.

I suspect Grumpy Gretta would have to answer “No” to this question and should have been doing something else.

Always answering ”Yes” to this question in next to impossible, which brings up the second question.

How can a take what I am doing and use it to move forward?

When you find yourself not doing what is best for you and cannot move yourself to start doing it, then the next best action is to try to find away to make the activity you are doing one that moves you forward.

We cannot always be doing the exact right thing.

However, if you are not doing the right thing find ways to at least make what you are doing a positive.

Take our example from before with the stove, you should be working on your report but have decided not to do that for now. So what else could you be doing? Maybe answering email, finding great examples on the internet for another report, completely removing yourself for tasks to allow your brain time to think.

When asking yourself this question it is very important not to rationalize what you are doing as moving you forward. A great way to keep this from happening is to make sure you could tell somebody what you are doing and how it is moving your towards what goal, and not have them laugh at you.

By spending the couple moments it takes to think about the best use of your time, you will find you are able to get more done, and with great effect.

By: Devin Murray

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Devin Murray is a professional contractor and marketing coach, helping people get the most out of everything they do and use a planroom correctly.