If repetition is the mother of learning, then we are going to have to be a little more repetitive about our desires and intentions.

I don’t know about you, but there have been numerous times were I come up with a great post idea, only to have it disappear in my busy mind, because I forgot to lock it in.

If things only had to be stated once to be remembered, day planners would cease to exist.

If you want to achieve, yearly, monthly, weekly and daily objectives, you need to be intentional about what you want and how you are going about doing so.

Here is a 4 step process that you can use to really move forward.

1. Create four folders labeled: 5 year, This year, This Month, and This Week

2. Reflect on what goals you would like in your “Five year” and “This Year” folders.

3. In your “This Month” Folder determine your strategies for the comming month to help you reach your mid to long range goals.

4. In “This Week” Plan out your coming week with your meetings, and actions for the week to help you reach your “This Month”, mid and long term goals.

If you are going to resolve to do something once a year you might as well not bother even making the statement.

If you are going to resolve to do something 52 weeks a year, you are going to succeed.

Now I could justify that there is the big picture of this great new project that is worthy of my focus, but the truth is that after 5 days, though I know much more about how the interface works, I am far from being able to complete the basics. Even with my ability to learn quickly, at this pace it will be weeks before I am done.

Fortunately I had my AhHa, and have stopped working on the area that doesn’t need me, and returned to the place that doesn’t happen without me.

I have smartened up and am now looking for a developer that will probably be able to accomplish the task in a day or so.

My mistake:
I indulged one of my old habits of doing everything myself, due to lack of patience and misperceived cost savings, and the belief that I always do it best (no matter what it is). I also assume that because I am working nonstop I am being very efficient.

My lesson learned:
When I indulge these old habits I end up being highly ineffective. I spread myself over a number of tasks that I am mediocre at, and there for pull myself away from the tasks that are my strong points and give me the greatest return for the effort. It doesn’t save me any money. In fact the amount of money wasted in the past week will far surpass the amount that it will cost me to hire a developer on Elance, who will finish the task in a few hours.

Forward Focus:
Five minutes of planning, can save days of time wasted. Next time I am ignited by an exciting idea I will take a few minutes to set an effective strategy on how to approach the project, and realize where I will create the most value and where I should be outsourcing.

Next week is looking great…