I saw this quote and it got me thinking about how many of us are silently measuring ourselves each day against a yardstick that isn’t the right fit for ‘us’.
It is unavoidable, you will judge yourself on some level against something. I recall the Olympic sprinter, Michael Johnson once stating in an interview that he didn’t care what times the other athletes posted, his focus was always on his own times because that was what he could influence.
I really loved that outloook, it meant that he had laser focus on the things he could change and work on. For Michael that worked out very well and lead to Olympic Gold.
Einstein’s quote above applies ever more so to my audience here. There are a lot of people who are working away at the ‘day job’ and in the 5pm-9pm hours, weekends and any spare time are working away at building their side-projects or side-businesses to make them real.
So what measure do these guys apply?
So what do you measure yourself against?
There’s the daily measure of the ‘day job’. This doesn’t go away and might be a fantastic job that you’re really great at and love.
OR….it might be the pits and you can’t wait to do something better with your life.
It matters not which because at some level you need to measure your success at the day job, if for no other reason than to ensure you’re still in it to help fund your side-work!
Measuring your side-business
There is also the measure of the ‘side-project’ or ‘side-business’ to consider.
It’s not ‘really’ a job yet, and it’s yours to push along and make happen. So in effect – you’re the boss!! YAY!
STOP – it’s not a YAY for everyone.
The danger with the ‘side-anything’ is that you continually treat it as a ‘side-thing’ and that usually means it’s the poor cousin when it comes to being measured and monitored for progress.
How many of you have ‘side-stuff’ that has been a side-thing for more than 6months…..12months……24months…!!!
The measuring of your side-projects is MORE IMPORTANT than your day job if you want to make it happen.
So…
To make sure you’re MEASURING THE RIGHT THING for you and are able to bring your idea to business faster you need to get practical with yourself.
Practical Measurement
Because the side-projects don’t always have finely tuned project work breakdowns and plans I’m going to propose the simple tool of ‘journaling’ to help you focus and keep track of where you’re going each week.
I recently wrote a post called Use Journal Power-how looking back will power you ahead that talks about the power of the Journal, so I’m not going to repeat myself here – go take a read.
But the Value in this approach is…
The value comes from taking a look at what you want to achieve with your ‘side’ thing over the next 7 days, the next week is your biggest hurdle to your future success – it always is! Without making stuff happen in the ‘next week’ you’ll NEVER get where you want to go.
So very simply, the idea is to:
- Write down the top 5 things that you will achieve this next week to get you towards your goal.
- Each morning take a look at your list and review what you’re focussing on this week.
- Each night – wrote down what you have done towards achieving these TOP 5 PRIORITIES for the week.
SIMPLE!
Then at the end of the 7 days, read through what you achieved against what you set out to achieve and take 5 mins to assess what worked, what didn’t and what you can do next week to make better progress.
Doing this consistently sharpens your priority setting muscle, and keeps you laser focussed on what you can do EVERY day to get you closer to your goal.
End of Practical Session – just go do it 🙂
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Richard
