Predicting the Day: Follow Up II

Today is the eighth day running in which I have successfully done every item on my predictive to do list. It’s still working like a dream. If you haven’t tried it out yet, then you might find it well worth the effort. See the instructions at my posting Predicting Your Day and its follow-up.

Website Navigation Change

I’ve moved the Site Navigation bar from above the Header to below it. I hope this will make it easier to see. Also if you hover your mouse over any item it will darken.

What do you really want out of life?

A very good way of getting your mind to go deeper than usual into a problem or question is to keep coming back to it regularly over a period of time. I made extensive use of this in my book “How to Make Your Dreams Come True” (sadly now out of print). The distinguished psychologist Nathaniel Branden also used it in his Sentence Completion Programs. He recommends completing a sentence like “To me, self-responsibility means…” every day for a week with six to ten answers, without consulting what was written on previous days. At the end of the week, the answers for each day are reviewed. Usually the answers at the end of the week differ quite considerably from the answers at the beginning of the week.

We can use a similar technique to tackle the problem of goals. The problem of goals? I thought that we were always being told that we should have clear goals - goals are definitely seen as a good thing in the self-improvement world.

Yet goals can be a problem. For a start, a lot of goals are externally imposed, whether it’s by our boss or our friends or our loved ones. Mind you, they aren’t anything like as bad as the ones which we impose on ourselves. Only too often, people give themselves “exciting goals” and then give up after a burst of enthusiasm because the goal has become a burden rather than a joy. If you give yourself a goal like earning £1,000,000, it can wreak havoc in your life - especially if you haven’t really thought out why you want to earn £1,000,000.

Here’s the exercise. Start by writing out ten completions to the sentence “Something I really want out of life is…” Don’t censor yourself, and go for the full ten and no more. The next day, without looking at your previous list, do the exercise again. Repeat this for a full week and then look at the results. Is each day’s list much the same, or are they different? How much does the last day overlap with the first? Can you identify any progression in your thoughts?

You might want to keep this exercise going for longer than a week. It’s good to keep doing it until the answers settle down. Then switch to repeating the exercise once a week. That way you can keep in touch with what you really do want out of life.

Filing by Most Used

As regular readers of this blog will know, I use a simple method to find my files quickly. This consists of always putting files away on the left-hand end of my shelf of files. The result is that the most recently used files are always found towards the left end of the shelf and the ones which haven’t been used for a long time are towards the right-hand end.

This method has stood me very well over several years now. It greatly speeds up the process of both finding and putting away files. This is in line with the principle that one should avoid as much as possible having no answer to the question “What do I do with this?”

However organising files in this way does have some disadvantages. One is that I keep having to move files along the shelf. This wouldn’t matter so much if “the shelf” was just one long continuous shelf. But in fact it’s four shelves in different places across my office, and so moving files can be quite a laborious business. Another disadvantage is that retrieving files by “last used” is not as efficient as retrieving them by “most used”. Because I use quite a large number of files in any given day, my most used file may move backwards and forwards along the shelves quite a distance. It would be quicker if my most used file were always in the same place.

So how can I achieve the goal of changing to having my files in “most used” order? It occurred to me that putting a mark on a file every time I used it would quickly show which files are most used. The easiest way to count the marks would be to make the marks themselves numbers. In other words write 1 on the file the first time I put it away; then the next time cross out the 1 and put 2. That way it would be easy to put the file back in numerical order. All the most used files would end up on the right and the least used files on the left. Because a file would only move a short distance each time it was used, there would be less moving of files backwards and forwards. So the net result would be that file retrieval would be speeded up and putting files away would also be simpler.

That’s the theory anyway. I’ve armed myself with some sticky labels and am going to see whether it works in practice. The sticky labels will be going on the spines of the files so I can see the numbers clearly at all times. I’ll let you know how I get on.

You may be asking “If you’re going to put the files away in numerical order, why not file by alphabetical order like everyone else does?” The answer is partly that my most used files are still going to be put away very much in the same place each time. But more importantly one of the banes of alphabetical filing is that I have to be able to remember the name of the file. Is the file called “Bank and Credit Card statements” or “Credit Card and Bank Statements”? Did I call it “Bills, Telephone” or “Telephone, Bills”? Alphabetical filing requires more mental effort, and the more mental effort I have to put into working a system, the less likely I am to keep to it.

Update on Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 16:35 by Mark Forster

After trying this method out for a while, I decided that it was much more cumbersome than my previous method. So with a sigh of relief I have abandoned the trial and gone back to filing by “last used”.

Dates for Your Diary

I will be running the following seminars in the Autumn:

Thursday 23 October. “Do It Tomorrow” Introduction (half day: afternoon). Price:  £100 + VAT

Friday 7 November. “Do It Tomorrow” Advanced (whole day). Price £225 + VAT

Location: Horsham, West Sussex

Further details will be available soon. Registration will open 10 September.

I will schedule further seminars if there is sufficient demand

Predicting Your Day: Follow Up

How am I getting on with the Predictive To Do list which I wrote about on Saturday?

The answer is amazingly well.

Today is the fourth day in which I have used this form of to do list, and on the first three days I completed every item on the list with great ease. Today at 3 p.m. I have only a few small items left.

You’ll recall that the to do list is written in answer to the question “What do I actually think that I will do today?” What I realised very quickly was that asking the question changes the reality. In other words, if I write down the answers to the question, then I will have a very different day from what would happen if I just allowed the day to happen.

You might think that asking a question like this would result in very little getting done. But in fact the opposite has been the case. I have got more done than normal - including some very serious pieces of work which I had been putting off.

What’s more, I’ve done all this without looking at the to do list. Once I’ve written the list, I’ve just got on with what’s in my head. Since the list reflects what I expect to do, by and large that’s what I’ve done - virtually automatically. I’ve found it useful to check the list at lunchtime, just to remind myself what’s left, and also towards the end of the working day.

I’m also becoming aware that the principle behind this list can be used in a whole variety of ways. But more on that later.

Follow up to this post

Expand Your Ideas the Easy Way

I am re-issuing some old articles as blog entries partly in order to get a new audience for them, and partly in order to get all my articles in one place. This is the third.

A very powerful way of developing ideas is by continuous revision. You can start with a single vague sentence and then by a process of revising it over and over again develop it until it is a fully fledged concept.

What I am going to do now is to give you an example of how a simple thought can be expanded over a period of days. I’ll show where I get to each day, but of course when doing it for real you don’t need to keep a record of each day. I’m showing the days separately only in order to illustrate how the process works.

So all I need is an idea to develop. Hmmmm … . what would be a good one?  Ummm….. er….. um…..

————————————————————————————————————————

Day One

I can’t think of any ideas!
————————————————————————————————————————

Day Two

I can’t think of any ideas, but there are many ways in which one can get ideas flowing, such as using a Wish List, random words, thinking about completely unrelated situations, continuous revision, sitting down with a pad of paper for an hour (or whatever). I forgot about sentence completion. The thing is there are lots of these methods around. I could research them on the internet.
————————————————————————————————————————

Day Three

When I get stuck for ideas there are many ways in which I can get ideas flowing. I could use a wish list, random words, thinking about completely unrelated situations and then forcing connections, continuous revision, sitting down with a pad of paper for a specified period of time, and sentence completion.

A good way of keeping track of an idea is to schedule it as a task in Outlook, and use the text box as the place for continuous revision. I can also use the text box as a place to store any relevant links to documents, e-mails, web pages, etc. With Outlook I can then schedule the idea to be placed on my task list daily or whatever other interval I prefer. Other programs provide similar facilities.
————————————————————————————————————————

Day Four

When I get stuck for ideas there are many ways in which I can get ideas flowing. These include:

a wish list
Writing down as many wishes as possible about an issue is a good way to expand my thinking, e.g. “I wish I had thousands of ideas”, “I wish I was more original”, “I wish I could keep the ideas I have”, “I wish I had a genie who would make my every wish come true”, etc. etc.

random words
De Bono recommends taking a random word out of a dictionary and then forcing connections with the problem or issue.

thinking about completely unrelated situations and then forcing connections
for instance I could imagine a story, write down some keywords about it, and then force connections with my issue

continuous revision
This is an example!

sitting down with a pad of paper for a specified period of time
One of my favourite methods. Sit quietly and write down any ideas that come without trying to force them. Earl Nightingale used to recommend doing this for an hour a day. I’m not sure I can afford the time to do that. But perhaps the truth is that I can’t afford not to find the time.

sentence completion
Nathaniel Branden uses this a lot. Start with a sentence stem, e.g. “If I take full responsibility for my choices and actions …”, then fill in as many endings to the sentence as I can.

A good way of keeping track of ideas is to schedule them as a task in Outlook. Each task has a text box which can be used as the place for continuous revision. The text box can also store relevant links to documents, e-mails, web pages, etc. Outlook also gives the facility to schedule the idea to be brought forward daily or at whatever other interval I prefer. Other programs provide similar facilities.

————————————————————————————————————————

And so on …

As I revise the idea daily, so the concept becomes clearer in my mind and more practical and detailed.

Ok, I’ll admit I cheated with the above example. I didn’t write it over a period of four days. All I did was copy and paste each “day” as I finished it and immediately revised and expanded it. However this was much easier than trying to write the idea out in full from beginning to end. And I really didn’t have any ideas when I started!

It doesn’t matter what the interval is between revisions. The method will work with any interval (or none) as long as the revisions are regular enough to keep your mind engaged on the subject.

What Needs To Be Done Now?

In an earlier post  I wrote about the question “What can be done now?” and suggested that it was the best way to keep up with projects.

However another question “What needs to be done now?” is very useful, especially when faced with an unexpected emergency or a situation for which it would have difficult to plan.

Take for instance the classic work disaster scenario which I am sure all of us have experienced at one time or another. You have a presentation to make in the afternoon and have left enough time in the morning to finalise the arrangements. But early in the morning a major crisis occurs with one of your clients and you suddenly realise that instead of having plenty of time to get ready for the presentation, you now have hardly any.

Repeatedly asking yourself the question “What needs to be done now?” or “What needs to be done next?” can help to defuse the situation. You answers to the question might be something like this:

    * * Write a list of essential preparations for the presentation
    * * Decide which you could ask other people to do, and which you will need to do yourself.
    * * Ask the other people
    * * Do the most important thing on the list, and so on.

When you look at a list like this it may all seem totally obvious, but that is the whole point. When we suddenly come under pressure, we have a tendency to panic and start reacting to one thing after another in a mindless sort of way. “Running around like a headless chicken” is the way it is usually described. By asking a question which engages the rational mind we can bring the situation back under control. Remember it is usually not so much the situation but the way we react to the situation which causes the problem.

Another example of a situation when this question is ideal is when you have been asked to help at a function in vague terms which don’t give you much idea of what is involved. Say that you have been asked to come and help at a charity function. You have no idea what that help is going to entail, though you suspect that putting up tents and carrying chairs is going to be a large part of it! Asking the question repeatedly of yourself and others can keep you well on top of the situation.

In fact it is a very good question to ask whenever you don’t have a plan. If you’ve got fed up with your To Do list or Will Do list and want to work for a while in greater freedom, then this is the question to be asking yourself as you go through the day.

Note that the question is couched in impersonal terms. Asking “What needs to be done now?” produces less resistance in your mind than “What do I need to do now?”

So ask yourself: “What needs to be done right now?”

Procrastination

Does this seem familiar somehow?

Predicting your day

I’m trying out a “brilliant idea” which struck me yesterday. For a few days I had been experimenting with the idea of writing out a to do list for the day and then putting it away in a drawer (real or virtual) and only looking at it at the end of the day. The idea was that it would mobilise the unconscious mind to get on with the tasks without the necessity to be constantly referring to the list.

The only trouble with that idea was that it didn’t work. On Friday I managed to spend the whole day without doing a single item on the list. I did plenty of other things but the “hidden list” seemed to repel me rather than attract me to its contents.

So on Saturday morning I was pondering whether to continue with the experiment, when inspiration hit me. Instead of writing out what I felt I ought to do on Saturday, I would write out a list of what I actually thought I would do that day. I then put that list away in a virtual drawer, and found that it had precisely the effect on me that I hoped the original “hidden list” would have on me but didn’t. I found myself doing the things that I had predicted. At the end of the day I had done every single item on the list without referring to it once.

I’m doing the same thing today. And as you can see “Write a blog entry” is one of the things on the list. I also managed to get moving on a whole heap of papers which badly needed sorting.

I’ll be very interested to see how this works out. As always, comments are welcome - particularly from people who would like to try it themselves, or have done something similar in the past.

Follow-up to this posting

"I'll Just Get the File Out”: Conquer Procrastination for Ever

I am re-issuing some old articles as blog entries partly in order to get a new audience for them, and partly in order to get all my articles in one place. This is the second.

I’d be willing to bet that you, along with every other person reading this article, has at least one important project that would make an enormous difference to your life — if only you could get round to doing it!

In fact if you are procrastinating over only one important project you are a quite exceptional person. Most of us could produce a whole list of things we are procrastinating about. Not only do we procrastinate about things we’d really much prefer not to have to do at all (such as getting our tax returns in on time), but we even manage to procrastinate about things we are fully committed to and enjoy doing. Most authors love writing or they wouldn’t be authors, but “writer’s block” is so common that the phrase has become proverbial.

Strangely enough, for all the havoc that it wreaks in people’s lives, procrastination is extremely easy to overcome. All you have to do is to use the “I’ll just get the file out” technique and you will find that it will vanish out of your life.

Here’s how it works. When the inner voice of conscience tells you that you really must get moving on that important report, if you are like most people your usual reaction will be to find something else to do (such as tidying your pencils, making a cup of coffee, going and chatting to your friends, etc. etc.).

Instead say “I’ll just get the file out”. Once you’ve got the file out you have a choice: you can either put the file away again, or you can do some work on the report. It’s up to you. Nine times out of ten you will probably do at least some work on the report. And if you do the same thing the following day and then the following, the report will be completed before you know it.

This technique can be applied to virtually anything that you find yourself resisting. Yesterday afternoon (a Sunday) I felt that all I wanted to do was to veg out in front of the TV. But I had a whole load of tasks which I’d promised myself I’d do that afternoon, which included washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, going for a walk and writing some more of my book. I got myself moving by saying “I’ll just fill the washing up bowl with hot water”. Magically I found the washing up was done. Then I said “I’ll just get the lawnmower out of the shed”. Again magically I found the lawn had been mown. Then I said “I’ll just walk to the end of the front drive”. Fifty minutes later I got back from a long, fast walk through the woods and fields. And finally I said “I’ll just open the Word file for my book”. A thousand words later I felt very virtuous indeed!

There will be days when I say “I’ll just open the Word file for my book” and that will be all I do. But that doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I did something. And that will keep the project alive and developing.

Hey, how did this article get written? All I said was “I’ll just write the headline for the next article”!

It’s Like Walking Across a Muddy Field: how to get rid of backlogs

I am re-issuing some old articles as blog entries partly in order to get a new audience for them, and partly in order to get all my articles in one place. This is the first.

There are basically two types of task which we are faced with during a typical day. First there is the type of task which either gets done or doesn’t get done. You either renew the car insurance or you don’t. You either paint the bedroom or you don’t. You either buy a new dress or you don’t. You either send your great aunt a birthday card or you don’t. The consequences of doing or not doing this type of task may range from the trivial to the momentous, but essentially they are one-offs.

Then there is the type of task which produces a backlog if it is not attended to. Dealing with paper is the classic example of this type of task. Have you ever noticed how paper has the strange tendency to breed if given the chance? Leave two bits of paper together overnight and miraculously when you come down in the morning you have a six-inch pile of papers in various stages of inaction. Leave the pile on its own for another 24 hours and you have an office full of piles of paper.

The modern age has produced an even worse backlog producer — the email. Leave your inbox for 24 hours and you will have hundreds of these little monsters clamouring for your attention. I have had clients who complain that they have literally thousands of emails they haven’t even got round to reading.

Other well-known backlog producers are phone calls, filing, and updating client records. There may be others that are peculiar to your life.

The real problem with backlogs is that they take you out of the present. Instead of dealing with today’s work, you are constantly trying to catch up. It’s the difference between walking along a well-defined path and walking across a muddy field. On the path you can walk freely, but in the field your boots get caked in mud and you have to put out more and more effort while going slower and slower.

Backlogs can make people feel hopeless. It may seem impossible to catch up. And even if you do catch up you may only find yourself almost immediately slipping back again.

So how can you deal with them once and for all?

STEP ONE — DRAW A LINE. Say to yourself “Everything that comes in from now on I will deal with immediately. And I will tackle the backlog bit by bit.” Ring fence the backlogs so that they don’t get any bigger.

STEP TWO — CLEAR INCOMING MATERIAL DAILY. The best way to deal with incoming paper, emails, phone calls, etc. is to have a check list which you go through several times a day. So I have a list which comprises about five items and I go through it checking each one off. I do this three times a day — first thing, after lunch and early evening. Because this keeps me right on top of all incoming material, I can sometimes get through the list in as little as ten minutes. More often it takes me an hour or more — but I don’t have any backlogs. The rest of my time is free to get on with creative work.

STEP THREE — REDUCE THE INCOMING VOLUME. One of the reasons backlogs build up in the first place is because we attract far too much inessential stuff. Chuck junk mail in the trash without even opening it. Cancel subscriptions for newsletters you don’t read (you DO read mine!). Don’t write off for things you don’t need. Keep asking yourself “Why am I receiving this?”.

STEP FOUR — GET RID OF THE BACKLOGS BIT BY BIT. If you do steps one and two correctly, your backlogs can now only get smaller. Don’t try to get rid of the lot in one go. Keep chipping away at them. With emails, try clearing one day at a time, starting with the oldest. With paper, try clearing it one subject at a time — such as all bank statements, then all bills, then all client letters and so forth.

Related article:

Back from Holiday

MindManager

Although I’m conscious of the limitations of Mind Maps, I’ve always kept a mind mapping program on my computer as a way of keeping a record of my developing thoughts on any subject which I want to think about over a long period of time. All three of my books started life in this way.

The program I’ve used up to now has been FreeMind, which contains all the basic functionality and has the great advantage of being a free program.

Lately though I’ve been trying out MindManager, which has a lot more bells and whistles but has the disadvantage of being quite expensive. I’m still undecided whether to buy the program, but I must say I do like a lot of its features and find it overall easier to use than FreeMind - at least once I got past the initial steep learning curve.

There’s one feature I particularly like and that is the Brainstorming function. This is brilliant for carrying out timed thinking sessions of the type I wrote about in my article Hard Thinking and elsewhere. They even include the timer!

The great advantage of doing this sort of session on a mind mapping program is that, when you’ve finished writing down your thoughts in random order, you can then order them, group them, prioritise them, edit them and extract tasks from them easily.

Joesgoals.com

In my posting Chaining: A Way to Keep Going I mentioned a useful website for keeping track of things you want to do every day: 

         Joesgoals.com

I’ve been using it quite a bit recently, and one thing it is absolutely brilliant at is keeping track of whether I succeed in finishing my Will Do list every day. As those of you who’ve read Do It Tomorrow know, I strongly recommend carrying out a diagnostic procedure if you fail to complete your Will Do list for more than a few days. The number of days depends on your particular circumstances, but I use 3 days myself. If you are using more than 5 days, you are fooling yourself!

Joesgoals allows you to have negative goals (i.e. things you don’t want to do) as well as positive goals. The chain then refers to the number of days you have refrained from doing the undesired behaviour (like smoking, eating chocolate cake, etc.). I put my Will Do list in as a negative goal - Not Complete Will Do List - so that the program shows up immediately if I’ve not completed the list for three days. I get a row of three red crosses!

Never underestimate the power of these types of visual reminders. I regard getting even one cross as a major disaster, and would do almost anything to avoid three in a row. Yes, I might even exercise discrimination in what I put on the list in the first place!

Being busy is a form of laziness - lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. (Tim Ferris, The 4-Hour Working Week)

More on Parkinson & Pareto

I’m continuing reading The 4-Hour Work Week and came across this quotation which I absolutely love, so I thought I’d share it with you:

1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
   
2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.

Pareto meets Parkinson

I’m reading Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Work Week at the moment, and I notice that he recommends using the Pareto Principle combined with Parkinson’s Law in order to focus one’s work so that one is achieving the maximum in the minimum time. This is very similar to what I have just been writing about in my posting DIT And Focus.

You may be more familiar with the Pareto Principle as the 80/20 Rule. This states that 80% of results are produced by 20% of the effort. This can be applied in many different ways. In a time management context you could say that 20% of your tasks produce 80% of your results. Or in a marketing context, it could be phrased as 20% of your customers produce 80% of your income. Note that the corollary is also true: 80% of your customers produce only 20% of your income!

By concentrating on the 20% that produce the results and jettisoning the other 80% you can greatly increase your productivity.

I expect most of you are familiar with Parkinson’s Law:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

As I have often said, if you are struggling to fit all your work into the day, the solution is to set limits on your working hours. This forces you to be more selective in what you do and more efficient in how you do it.

The Do It Tomorrow system works best with set working hours. If you carry out the audit procedure correctly whenever you fail to complete your Will Do list within your set hours for more than a few days, then you will be forced to narrow and define your focus. Always try to identify the 20% of actions which bring in that valuable 80% of results.

And if you gradually reduce the length of your working day, the effect will be even more pronounced. I don’t expect many of us will get down to the 4-Hour Week Tim Ferriss dangles before our eyes - but do we have any real doubt that our focus could do with a bit of improvement? How far can we go in the right direction if we use these two principles - Pareto and Parkinson?

Website changes: comments invited!

I’ve now arrived at what I think is a viable layout for this website and I will leave it this way (apart from minor adjustments) for at least the next few weeks.

The major changes are:

• Two margins instead of one
  
• Navigation bar at the top of the page
• Width of the page increased
• Larger font for editorial matter
• Colour scheme altered
• Changes to the layout of blog and discussion group entries

All comments on the new layout will be very much appreciated.

DIT and Focus

I’ve often remarked that I’ve never been able to take full advantage of the Do It Tomorrow (DIT) system myself because I am always experimenting with new time management methods. Each time I experiment with a new method I am letting go of DIT itself. The result is that I certainly sympathise with Edison’s famous remark that he had learned 10,000 ways of not making a lightbulb!

I’ve determined however that I am going to make DIT itself the subject of an experiment. What I want to find out is if consistent use of DIT over a relatively long period results in a virtually automatic focusing of one’s energies in the direction that is most profitable (using that word in its widest meaning) - even if one has no idea to start off what that direction might be.

The reason I think this is probably what will happen is that our minds are naturally creative - too creative in the majority of cases. We get sidetracked onto all sorts of fascinating byways, while what we should be focusing on gets neglected. But at the same time that natural creativity will be coming up with many new ways of being more productive. The problem is of course distinguishing which of these creative ideas are sidetracks and which are productive.

If one implements DIT conscientiously - especially the requirement to carry out an audit if one can’t finish the Will Do list for more than a few days running - one is virtually forced to identify what is really important and cut out the rest. My theory is that this will provide a concentrated focus on what is important which will propel us forward!

So I am going to stick to the rules exactly for the next few months and see what happens. Bear in mind that my aim is not to get through all my work but to monitor continually the validity of what that work should be.

Website changes

Squarespace launched a massively improved version at the beginning of the week, so I am going to be taking advantage of the new facilities to experiment with some changes to the website. So please don’t be surprised if the appearance and layout changes backwards and forwards for a bit.

I’ve turned off comments on this entry because it will be difficult to tell which temporary version any comments refer to. However when I’ve got something like a stable version I will post again and ask for comments.

Chaining: A Way to Keep Going

Most of us have some goals which we would like to keep going on a daily basis - it may be going for a run, or doing our piano practice, or tidying the office, or any of thousands of possible actions which we feel will leave us better off physically, mentally or financially.

Some of these may be negative goals, in that we want not to do something on a daily basis, like smoke cigarettes, eat chocolate or drink coffee.

So we are either trying to establish a new habit or break an existing one.

The trouble with these types of goals is that they often are very difficult to keep going. We usually start off with the best of intentions, keep going for a week or two and then miss a day. Then it’s a shorter period until we miss another day and that turns into two days, and before we know it we have given up the goal altogether. All we have achieved is to make ourselves feel guilty!

How can you motivate yourself to do better than this?

There is a simple method called “Chaining” which can greatly increase your chances of success. It takes the form of competing against yourself to produce the longest chain of days in which you succeeded with your goal. 

For example, if your goal is to practise the piano daily you manage to carry this out for two weeks and then miss a day. You have made a chain of fourteen days. Now your aim is to beat your record of fourteen days.

The great advantage of chaining is that it recognises that we are almost certain to fail sometimes, but this a positive as it allows us to compete with ourselves to get better and better.

So why not give it a try? Select one goal (positive or negative) which you would like to establish in your life and see how long a chain you can make. There’s even a website to help you do this:

www.joesgoals.com

Get your first goal well established before taking on another. Having too many goals going at once will dilute the effect.

Let me know how you get on!