5 Tips to Help Achieve and Attain Professional & Personal Goals – Even When You’re Inundated and Distracted  

Ironically, staying focused and checking things off a list – two activities that seem to go together – seem harder and harder to do these days: being a wife, mom, devoted friend, and good citizen to the community while juggling/building your career is quite overwhelming.  On top off all of that, now we have a little black device in our hands to challenge us even more these days on how to focus.

What is the one thing many of us do in the morning before we go do our morning routine? We check our phones to make sure we didn’t miss any earth-shattering information. Then, we consume, and consume, and consume information. We get in such a consumption mode of information, that we can’t get around to implementing anything from all that data.  It’s like attending college and not graduating because you haven’t taken a class towards your major.  The great thing about adulthood and your professional life, though, as opposed to college, is that with technology, we get to wake up and make a choice on what life classes we want to attend.  We just need to be disciplined to attend the right classes.

Without that discipline, the pressure to learn more can turn into such an overwhelming feeling. Especially when we start to compare ourselves to everyone else. We can get so upset thinking of all the things we haven’t done. This is a bad place to be, mentally, not to mention an inaccurate one: everyone who starts out on their journey has their own struggles.  We just typically see the success stories of others, and not always the hustle to get there.

So here is the confidence-building part: get something big checked off your list.  Metaphorically speaking, don’t get caught running around campus just taking random classes. Rather, you need an agenda, a schedule.  Getting something done and sharing it with your peers and loved ones will make you more self-assured about what you can do in this world.

So following are some tips – and things to ask yourself — to help you get to that more confident place:

Always Remember – Life Will Interrupt You
Life happens.  I have always made the mistake that I am going to get super- focused and accomplish something, then boom – something happens, life shows up.  I lose sight of the course and I get side-tracked and upset because I’m being thrown off.

Achieve and Attain: If we prepare ourselves that life will show up unexpectedly, we will be more in tune to accept it, and refocus when things settle down.

Decide Where Do You Want to Be in the Next 90 Days
Life moves fast, and information on new things is available daily – in fact more so; it’s available on a minute-by-minute basis.  Thus, you’ll find that having a short-term goal seems more attainable and less daunting.

Achieve and Attain: Start writing things down that you want to accomplish.  Is there something that sticks out or has been on your mind?  Which thing will have the biggest impact on you in the short-term?  Do that!  In our world today, so much can happen in fewer than 90 days.  (Now you know why New Year’s resolutions – the ones that are supposed to last all year — never have success!)

Make Your “Course Plan” – i.e. What Do You Want to Study?
Wake up each day, and know what you want to tackle.  Do you want to start that side business, learn a skill to make you better at your career, or build your network?  Don’t get distracted by the next shiny object and get off course.

Achieve and Attain: Visit your course plan everyday – keep a journal, either the old-fashioned way with a pen and paper, or with a mobile device.  Know what you want to study/accomplish, and commit to it.  

Research and Ask Lots of Questions
As we all know, the information is certainly out there.  So make your “course plan” your primary goal and block out anything that might take you off that course.  I’m not saying don’t learn about new things going on in the world; just don’t let that new information divert you for more than a short while.

Achieve and Attain: Asking seasoned individuals who have had success in their field is great — however, connecting with individuals who you know have recently had success is way better.  They are the ones working with the same life tools as you – and their information and resources will match up better. This is where networking comes in wonderfully.

Implement, Implement, and Implement
The moments leading up to the implementation phase can seem so scary, so taking the step to change  your course into action often feels like a brave one. I recently went to a conference where Pixar spoke about producing their films.  They stated, “We never finish a film; we just produce it.” This is where I had a lightbulb go off in my head, with the following action-oriented thought: don’t let perfection paralyze you from getting something in motion.