Category: Personal Skills

Posted in Personal Skills

Mini-Goals: Small Ways to Stay Productive Throughout the Day

Posted on by tracydee

Today, I’m focusing on mini-goals. I’m working toward a larger goal of graduating this semester. To do so, I must meet certain tasks and stay within my timeline to get there.

Setting mini-goals to stay productive throughout the day may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t make the time. Whether you need to get out of bed and start your day earlier than usual or quit procrastinating on a report that’s due tomorrow, there are many ways to set mini-goals to achieve more throughout the day.

Here are my tips for tackling mini-goals:

  1. Each day, take your big task list and write down what you can REALISTICALLY accomplish during your work hours. I capitalized realistically because I used to make my to-do list as long as humanly possible because that obviously made me more accomplished somehow. Now, I take time each morning to carefully select what I believe I can accomplish in a day. This helps eliminate some of those feelings of inadequacy at the end of the day if you didn’t get to everything on your list.

  2. After that, I work in small time chunks and I set goals either with myself or my work partners. It might be something small like send off two emails or review 10 rows on a spreadsheet. A big goal that keeps us motivated should be something just out of our reach, but mini-goals are things that keep us moving forward and not stagnant. Sometimes, I’ll set time limits as well and work within those parameters before moving on to another task.
  3. Constant reflection. This one I’m going to credit to my therapist. We are working on fact-based thinking. Anytime my mind starts to wander or worry about things I cannot control, I will bring it back to the present goal with facts and logic. I’ll keep you posted, but I’m excited at the personal development prospects that this tip has in store.
mini-goals
Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

What are your tips for staying focused on your mini-goals and progress?

Posted in Personal Skills

Overcoming Lack of Motivation

Posted on by tracydee

I have another post I was going to write about using Google Slides because I just made a new YouTube video (check it out here), but I’m trying to work on something much bigger and I’m just not motivated. So instead, I’m going to procrastinate a little bit longer by sharing some ways I’ve overcome lack of motivation in the past and how I’m going to use that to my benefit today.

There is a pretty important finish line waiting for me to cross in a couple of months and the closer I get to graduation, the harder it seems to motivate myself to complete everything needed to get there. Plus, it’s challenging right now being stuck at home and not feeling as inspired. That’s why the nature breaks are so important. I’ve stepped outside about 8 times already today and it’s still early afternoon.

Here are some tips that worked for me in the past that I plan to implement today to keep me going toward my goals:

1. Keep my eye on the prize and identify my why.

Even though the tasks I have to do seem unimportant or boring in the moment, they are part of something bigger. Something that will take me one step closer to graduating and finally achieving a huge milestone in my life and my career. I’m going to take 10-20 minutes to list all my reasons WHY I’m doing this now and how this will benefit me in the future. Now, if you do this exercise, and you find that it’s hard to list anything or you can’t think of any benefits, then perhaps that’s a bigger question of whether that goal is really meant for you.

2. Plan for success.

When I was training for a half marathon, I knew that I wouldn’t continue if I didn’t have a plan. I mapped out 16 weeks in my calendar, wrote down how much I wanted to run each day and set a pace goal. I didn’t always make it exactly, but it was there as a guide and always kept me moving in the right direction. I also slept in my workout clothes so that when that 4:45am alarm went off, I was already halfway ready to get out there and run. Today, I am going to plan out the remaining tasks I have to reach until my deadline and prioritize the ones that need to get completed first.

3. Work in bursts and take breaks as needed.

Taking breaks may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes we just need to step away from something to gain clarity or motivation to keep working on it. A time limit helps direct our focus on a specific task related to a larger goal and gives us a break to look forward to. One method is the Pomodoro technique, which breaks tasks into 25-minute chunks of work followed by a 5-minute break. There are many online timers you can use for this technique. Another way to stay motivated and focused is through a program called Focusmate. This website pairs you up with another person LIVE on video who is also working on a task for 50-minutes. You complete your individual tasks knowing someone else is working alongside you.

If you’d like me to write a longer post about any of the topics above, feel free to leave a comment below. Let’s continue to learn and grow together to become the best versions of ourselves!