Motivation Monday: How To Stop Overthinking And Act On Your Goals

It’s Motivation Monday. Today, we’re going to take action on our goals.

Does that sound glib? As if I had all the answers? I don’t; for years I was the queen of overthinking and general procrastination.

However, I do know what works for me and for my coaching students. At least once in every coaching program, I advise students: you’re overthinking this. Keep going!

Overthinking is a demon.

You need to exorcize it.

Motivation Monday: exorcise the overthinking demon

Overthinking ensures you go nowhere.

Imagine you’re the owner of the car of your dreams. A sleek sports car. (Or maybe a truck; your choice.)

You’re sitting in the vehicle’s driver’s seat.

In your garage. Vroom!

Sadly, no matter how hard you press the accelerator or how much you turn the steering wheel, you’re going nowhere…

Turn on the ignition; then set the vehicle in gear.

Vroom! Here you go!

Drive out of the garage. Once you’re on the road however, you hit a BIG snag. Where are you going?

An open road: where are you headed? Nowhere, without goals. Stop overthinking and set a goal.

Yes, the car and the situation is a metaphor for your life if you fail to set goals. No matter how wonderful your vehicle and how much gas you have in the tank, without goals you’re going nowhere.

So, to exorcize overthinking, set a goal.

1. Set a goal (make it challenging)

Set a challenging goal because you need a destination. You can change your mind about your destination once you’re on the road.

But…

What do you want? Which goal?

First, decide what you want. Then set a goal.

Here are some examples of goals.

(Date) In three months from now:

• (If you own a business) My startup is fully funded/ I increase the profits in my small business by 30%/ I develop a complete marketing strategy for my business;
• (If you’re a self-publisher) I sell 1000% more books/ I get more readers onto my mailing list/ I complete the third book in my series…

Please notice the date limitation.

All goals have deadlines. Without a deadline, a goal is merely a wish.

Now you’ve set a goal, let’s look at how we can ensure that you stop overthinking and act on it.

2. Chunk down your goal into projects

Your first step is to look at your goal, and your deadline, then chunk your goal down into projects,

Why projects? Because you can’t “do” a goal. You can only do projects and tasks.

So, if you want to increase the profits in your small business by 30% in three months, you could chunk that goal into projects like:

• Remove all products which don’t repay their Return on Investment, within in 30 days;
• Rebrand! — aim for 60 days;
• Choose suppliers and products for our new target market — 90 days.

Tip: a goal always has many projects. Initially, you’ll guess about projects to create so that you can achieve your goals.

That’s OK. The entire world works on guesses: have you heard of computer modeling?

3. More chunking: turn projects into tasks

After you chunk down each goal into projects, you’ll chunk each of your projects down into tasks. How you slice your projects is up to you, but I like to set a one-hour limit on each task in the project. If you wish, you can chunk projects down into 30-minute tasks.

List your projects; then chunk each project into tasks.

Then schedule; enter each task onto your calendar.

Motivation Monday: when you’re overthinking, chunk down your projects and tasks

When you commit to ACTION, you don’t have time to overthink anything. Action avoids premature judgments and overthinking.

Find yourself overthinking anyway?

Keep chunking.

For example; perhaps you chunked a project and set this task: post to social media daily.

Each day, you sigh and roll over the task to next day. You’d do it, but it’s a huge project, and… A light goes on over your head. No wonder you’re overthinking. This isn’t a task. It’s a project.

Create a new “post to social media” project.

Then create tasks for your new project:

• Which audience? Research and choose the audience;
• Where do they hang out? Choose venues;
• Create a social media promotion…

See how it works? Goals; projects; tasks… Onward.

This Motivation Monday, stop overthinking. Achieve your goals… Create projects and tasks and do the tasks.

And vroom! You’re on your way to success.

---

---

---

Car photo by serjan midili on Unsplash