Countdown
Sunday, November 5, 2006 at 16:11
Mark Forster in Articles, Getting to Your Goals

I have often written about the power of numbers to motivate. One way of building your business or increasing your liquid assets is to set yourself the goal of making £10,000. Then see how fast you can do it. Once you have achieved the goal, see if you can achieve the next £10,000 even faster. After you’ve achieved ten of these goals in turn, you can then move to seeing how quickly you can make the next £100,000!

One little known fact is that it is more motivating to count down rather than to count up. If you were going to set goals for yourself in the way I have outlined above, always think in terms of how much you’ve still got to go. Don’t say “I’ve made £6,000” instead say “I’ve got £4,000 to go”. This focuses your mind on the end result.

You can use the same principle in all sorts of different ways. If you are aiming to lose weight, don’t say “I’ve lost 5 lbs”, instead say “I’ve only got 2 lbs to lose to my target weight.” Counting down in this way will encourage you to keep going right up to time you reach the target, rather than be content with just losing a few pounds.

Article originally appeared on Get Everything Done (http://markforster.squarespace.com/).
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