LIFE Blog

At the end of every year, many will tend to write down their Goals and Visions for the following year. They might have things that they want to achieve and also things /habits that they want to get rid of off. With much hope and faith, every single goal looks achievable and so, they print out their New Year Resolution and get themselves ready to conquer the upcoming year.

However, along the way, things normally doesn’t happened as planned. Some unpredicted /unwanted occasions might occur every now and then, here and there. And there you go, encountering many obstacles along the way even at the first month of the year!



Part of your January’s goals are delayed to February as you need to tackle some issues before you can move on. However, this means that February will be a heavy month as it is shorter and you might have some remaining goals carried forward from January to be accomplished. And of course, plans will always never be so smooth. What will happen next? Well, everything will pile up and eventually your motivation, faith and hope level will be declining.

At this stage, some people might be overwhelmed by the problems and finally abandon their New Year Resolutions. Some may become more skeptical in their ability to achieve great things in life. Faith suddenly turn into fear and hope turn into despair.

Well, I seriously don’t think we need to come into the situation as mentioned above. In this article, I would like to suggest the following; If there is any ability that we want to develop, let’s start with the ability to STAY FOCUS!

The opposite of Focus is Distract! Therefore, if we want to stay focus, it means that we need to stay away from distractions! In here, I have 7 tips in how we can overcome distractions!

1. PRIORITIZE
When we have so much things to accomplish, prioritizing becomes essential. The tough part here will be identifying the priorities. As for me, I would normally use the Urgent/Important Matrix in my priority setting. ONLY do those that are URGENT & IMPORTANT first before doing what is NOT URGENT But IMPORTANT!

2. HAVE CLEAR & REALISTIC ACTION PLANS
Some goals might need a certain period of time to be accomplished and it is very crucial to be able to break it down into smaller periodical goals with deadlines. Let the main goal to be clear and have realistic time frame. Things will be more manageable and your confident level will be higher as you are truly aware and conscious on the actions that you are about to execute. Some goals are irrelevant, omit it! Some goals can be delegated, share it! Some goals are crucial, align with your actions and just do it!!

3. BE TRUTHFUL & HONEST
When someone initiated a lie, they will need to create another lie to cover up the first lie. And it goes on and on with much energy and focus consumption. So, be true and honest all the time especially to yourselves and you will end up having plenty of energy and focus to achieve your goals.

4. HAVE A RHYTHM & HARMONY
Music is formed by arranging tones in some patterns and inserting pauses in between. A beautiful piece of music therefore will normally have pleasant tune and rhythm. Same goes to our goals. It must have the right combination of actions and in harmony with each one in order to have pleasant success stories to tell. You won’t want it to be monotonous and neither will you want it to be so boring. Some pauses in between will be essential as not to get ourselves exhausted. Anyway, I don’t think anyone attempted to sing a five-minute song with just one breathe before. When our goals have more rhythmic and harmonic action plans, it will be more interesting to achieve.

5. STOP THINKING TOO MUCH
We truly don’t need to over think of every single detail of the journey towards the goals. The best way should be keeping the final destination in your mind and keep moving in this direction. Anything that is moving towards extreme will not be good. That’s why we shouldn’t stop thinking, just stop thinking too much! It’s good to pause and think a while on actions taken so far to evaluate its effectiveness and efficiency in order to plan ahead for better execution. However, over doing it might lead us into analysis paralysis.

6. MOTION DOES NOT EQUAL ACTION
A hamster typically runs about 10 miles daily in its wheel but its location does not change. Staying busy for 24/7/365 doesn’t mean that you are moving ahead. We can be busy all the time for the wrong thing and reason. Therefore, it’s not about how much things we have done but rather on how much RIGHT things we have done. It’s not about how much actions have been taken but on how many RIGHT actions have been taken. We can be busy all the time for the WRONG thing but in actual fact, only RIGHT thing counts! However, not doing anything is worst than everything else!

7. BE IN THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT
Birds of the same kind flocks together. It’s very crucial to be able to position yourselves in the right environment. You might experience some pressures when you are in a competitive environment but understand that it is the positive type. Negative environment will easily cause us to be drowned into depression. I would rather stay in an environment that will always be giving the best FIGHT on how they can WIN than giving the best EXCUSES on why they think they will FAIL!

People with strong focus will have greater ability to ignore /eliminate distractions and the causes of it. As for me, I will setup Contingency Plan /Backup Plan for all my Action Plans. Simply because I have many goals that I know I can’t afford to abandon, goals that are very crucial for my future well being and satisfaction!

One last tip before ending this article…

You must know yourselves very well in order to have laser-like focus! We must admit and accept our own limitations but never to let it be the excuse on why we can’t achieve our goals. And we must be grateful on our strengths by exercising it!

For me, in order to stay focus, my action plans should be rigid but not to the extend that it will break me. Neither shall the action plans be too flexible that will leave me with many rooms for procrastination. I’m willing to pay the price to get good success!

What about you? How do you stay focus or how do you ignore /eliminate distractions?

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