Giving direction to your weekly review

“If you are not checking the map, you risk never reach your destination.”
– Augusto Pinaud

It had always impress me how little people check their goals, (I am even more impressed with those that don’t even write them down or don’t even had any) the reality is that what it is the use of writing them down to review them once a year. It is exactly that reason why many of those goals are never accomplished. Think about the following: If you are traveling on a car to a place you are not familiar, you check the map constantly. Why don’t do the same with your goals?
Like many, I have goals for the next twelve to eighteen months as well as things I want to accomplish in the next five years, but I am not waiting fro 2018 to check the list and see if I am actually there, I check them constantly to make sure I am moving in the right direction.
Before I begin my weekly review, the first thing I do is review this goals, I spend some minutes to think about them, why are they important, and why I want to accomplish them. The reason is simple, I want to guarantee that the projects I am working on are the ones I should be working on, in other words, those projects are getting me closer to my goal, otherwise, why I am working on those.
The next time you do your weekly review, begin checking your goals, from there begin your revision. Simply you will be able to see which projects get you closer to your goals and which ones not. Which projects you should eliminate and which ones you should add. You can’t expect this is going to happen in other way.
Most people, hope to accomplish their goals, but forget that in order to make this possible, they need to know they are taking the right steps. How to know your steps are right? How can we know if they are going to help us get closer to our goals? For me the answer is simple, remembering which ones are they, constantly.
Think about the following, you do the weekly review, so you are on top of the important. You do the weekly review to remind yourself of all the pending things that you will forgot otherwise. But you do it without any direction and you hope that the actions that you are going to take will take you to a place that you review every three, six or more months. You want to accomplish your goals, review them constantly.
My recommendation, review them before you begin your weekly review, so when you are doing it, don’t hope to find critical stuff, but you could identify without any doubt which ones are taking you in the direction you want to go. Review the map, constantly, so you don’t forget the direction you are going and where you want to go.
Stop hoping that your weekly review will take you to your goals and begin directing it towards those.

TIP·36: If you have the cash flow, pay for those things you don't enjoy

I include this tip in my book 25 Tips for Productivity, and it is one of those things that are interesting. The principle is simple, if you have the cash flow, and someone can do a job cheaper than you, simply pay for it.
People tend to think that they are the cheapest option, and doing that they convert many tasks into really expensive ones. If you can produce $20 on an hour of work, and there is a task that can be done by other person for $10, and you choose to do it yourself, guess what it is not a $10 task any longer, you just made it a $20 one. Understand how much is an hour of your time, anything bellow that point, simply paid for it.
i.e. Also take into the equation preparation as well as cleaning time. Paint a room may feel like an hour activity, but getting the room ready may take another hour. Really that’s a two hour job. Get your rate, times two. If the quote is less that that, simply pay.