Five Fixes For When You Get Off Track

You’ve got goals. You’ve got a plan to implement your goals. So, it should be smooth sailing from here on out, right?

That would be great, but it’s rarely the case that someone goes from outlining a plan to execution without any hiccups or road bumps. And in many cases, the person seems to lose their focus.

That’s why you’ll want to check out the following Focus FAQs, where I’ve provided five answers to keep you on track. Check them out…

Question #1: I keep getting distracted and chasing shiny objections. What should I do to avoid this?

· The first thing to do is check if you’ve set goals that are personally meaningful to you. If not, just about everything else will look more interesting than the goal you’re working on, so you’ll find yourself easily distracted. If this is the case, you may need to refine your goals.

· The second way to avoid this problem is by critically reviewing every new thing that comes across your desk and catches your eye. Ask yourself, “Does this item support my goal?” If the answer is no, skip it. If the answer is yes, then you can pursue it – but only if it supports your goal in a significant, directly relevant way.

Question #2: I’m stuck. What should I do to get unstuck?

This is a common problem when you’re not an expert at the task you’re trying to complete.

For example, plenty of people lack technical skills and knowledge, so required tasks such as setting up a website can be very daunting.

Fortunately, there’s a simple way to get unstuck: outsource. This is a much

better solution than trying to acquire the skills to complete a task as that could take a long time and create a lot of frustration. Instead, you can outsource it, forget about it, and focus on what you can do instead.

NOTE: Where to find freelancers? Check freelancing sites such as Upwork.com, Fiverr.com, PeoplePerHour.com, Guru.com and similar. You can also reach out to your network and ask them to recommend specific professionals with whom you can work to quickly solve your problem.

Question #3: I’m having trouble moving through my to-do list because I’m a perfectionist and want every task completed “just so.” How do I overcome this?

If it’s a task that a professional could do better than you can, then outsourcing is one possibility here. However, perfectionism often doesn’t spring from an inability to create the “perfect” result.

Rather, it springs from some type of fear of completing it.

Because if you complete it, then you’re going to find out if you’ll succeed or fail, and a lot of people are too scared to find out after investing so much time and money on their dream.

Just recognizing that perfectionism is rooted in fear is often enough to help you move through it, especially if you can determine what your specific fear is (fear of success, fear of failure, fear of change, fear of the unknown, etc.).

The second way to help you get through it is to realize that, in most cases, you can do a good job and then “perfect” it later after you put it out into the world.

Example: If you’re working on a product, then create it to the best of your ability. Once it’s done, get beta users to give you feedback. Now you’ve got real-world users helping you improve your product, rather than you endlessly tweaking in ways that aren’t necessarily beneficial.

Question #4: I find that I’m procrastinating and not getting through my daily to-do lists. Sometimes I engage in “busywork” so I feel busy, but I’m really just procrastinating. How do I overcome this?

Like perfectionism, procrastination is common – and it also tends to be rooted in some sort of fear. The simple act of examining and identifying your fear can be enough to help you move past it.

A second potential issue is that you’re simply feeling unmotivated to work on the task at hand. This is a time for you to revisit your goals and why you chose those specific goals. Why are they personally meaningful to you? How will you feel when you achieve them? Meditating on your goals and related feelings for a bit can help you regain your motivation.

If you’re still having issues, then you may want to get an accountability partner. This is someone who talks to you at the beginning of each day and asks what you intend to accomplish that day. Then they talk to you at the end of the day to be sure you accomplished what you set out to accomplish.

Question #5: This is taking longer than I thought – what now?

For this issue, you’ll need to determine WHY it’s taking longer than anticipated and then remedy the problem.

For example, if the problem is that your plan really isn’t working like you thought it would, you’ll want to talk to some experts to see where you went wrong. Then change course as soon as possible rather than engaging in the sunk-cost fallacy. (People who spend a lot of time and money working on something that’s not panning out will often keep spending time and money because they don’t want to lose their investment. You’ll waste less time and money by changing course before you completely hit a dead end.)

In other cases, the problem is related to those we’ve already talked about, such as lack of motivation, fear, and not knowing how to do something. Those problems can be remedied by being held accountable, recognizing the fear for what it is and “just doing it anyway,” and outsourcing.

Conclusion

Consider it almost inevitable that you’re going to feel unfocused at points. However, what’s not inevitable is letting this throw you completely off track. That’s why you’ll want to learn to recognize the various ways you become stuck and take the above advice to fix the issues.

All the best...

Donald Gaw

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