My Life Began in Lockdown
Is your life in a rut? Here are the lessons I learned when I pushed the restart button.
Life is an incredible gift — yet sadly, I see more and more people waste it each day. It’s something I hate to see; squandering the only time you’ve got and blowing the life you’ve been given. I wish more people would use their time for the good of themselves and the world around them — I know it’s none of my business how people spend their time but imagine the world we’d live in if each day everyone was concerned with bettering themselves and the Earth. With this article, I hope to help someone in their pursuit of improving themselves.
How is life going for you? Do you feel like you are just going through the motions? I know that’s how I felt. Before lockdown, I was asleep at the wheel — not doing anything to contribute to my future or anything above average. For years I’d had goals that I was meant to achieve but they never manifested. I’m going to discuss how I pushed the restart button on my life and started doing meaningful work. Whilst we go through that I’m going to establish some of the lessons I’ve learnt and how you could apply them to your own life.
Lesson 1: Write down your goals
The majority of people have a grand dream of where they want to be, but they don’t write down their dream nor do they have any plans of how to get there. And so their mind is where it will stay, a dream — never to see reality. What value do you gain from writing down your goals? You get actionable accountability and access to the mental phenomenon discussed in Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’.
Actionable Accountability
What is actionable accountability? When you write down your goals you instantly become accountable for those goals, if they don’t become a reality it’s your fault. Accountability is the key to achieving your goals — it makes you responsible for your own destiny. If your goals aren’t written down then it doesn’t matter if you don’t achieve them because you haven’t told yourself that you would. It’s the equivalent to making a bet with someone and then when you lose you say, “We didn’t shake on it”. The second you don’t shake it on, you give yourself an out. Stop giving yourself an out and start shaking on it. Writing down your goals is the action of shaking on it — you are accountable and you are liable if the goals aren’t succeeded.
Mental Phenomenon
Now, I’m going to explain this point through analogy. Here it is; can you look at a word without reading it? Is it possible to look at a word (of your language) and not read it? It’s impossible — once you have learnt to read you can’t stop. You can try it, look at any word on this article, your mind will instantly read it aloud inside your head. Now you understand that point, I hope to convey the next.
Your mind is an interesting thing… Much like when you see a word you can’t help but read it, when your mind is presented a problem, it can’t help but try to solve it. Your goals are a problem, saying you want to sell a business for £100 million in 10 years when you’ve never started a business is a problem. But when you present it to your mind, your mind will look for a solution, it will look for opportunity everywhere, look for learning everywhere, look for solutions everywhere. In the background, it will constantly try to solve the problem you’ve given it. This is something you need to just experience, it’s an incredible thing.
Lesson 2: Tell as many people as possible.
Ever taken an exam you wanted to do well in, fail and then tell people that you never intended to do well in the exam? Lot’s of us do it. Now telling as many people as possible about your goals and dreams is another way to increase your accountability and reluctancy to fail. Yes, writing down your goals makes you accountable, but at the same time — if you don’t achieve your goals then you’ve only let yourself down as you’ve only told yourself.
I began by telling my partner all of my goals, aspirations and ambitions — once you do that there’s no going back. I explained the kind of life we will have in 10 years time as a result, I explained what we would need to go through to get there and how it will be difficult but I’m determined to make it true. Well, the second you tell someone else you have now doubled your accountability, more even because it’s someone other than yourself.
Now the pressure is on me — I’ve promised a certain kind of life for my partner, letting her down is not an option for me. Needless to say, I’m working harder than I did when it was only myself that knew. Then I started to create content and I told pretty much everyone in my social sphere and beyond — I’ve increased my accountability as much as I can and believe me — it works.
Lesson 3: Manage your time well
Following the book, I developed a document detailing a system for time management complete with CSFs, KPIs and everything else needed to effectively manage my time. This was the first iteration of many to come. I now have a fully conceptualised management system to ensure I’m using my time most effectively; you can read about it in my article ‘Are You Managing Your Time Effectively?’.
A brief overview of my system works like a funnel; it begins with my goals — these are the yearly objectives, the long-term stuff. The goals are distilled into monthly and weekly objectives — these are the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) which ensure the success of the goals. The KPIs (monthly and weekly objectives) are distilled into daily objectives — these are the CSFs (Critical Success Factors) which ensure the success of the KPIs. So, I can effectively turn a long-term goal into actionable tasks I need to achieve daily.
Lesson 4: Pay off your time debt
You need to manage your time like you do your money. If you have debt, you need to outline how you plan to pay it off. It’s the exact same thing with time — if you’re lucky you can skip this, but for most of us, this is a big task. If I asked you to write a to-do list — what would be the biggest thing that jumps right out at you? The thing that goes at the very top of the list. That’s your time debt.
Once you’ve established the debt in your time you need to plan how you plan to pay that off and gain your time back. For me, that was a renovation project that I mistakenly undertook. Progress was slow, non-existent even. Even though I had a new found love for reading and entrepreneurship, I had to focus my efforts on repaying my time debt so I can then focus 100% on my goals. The project is now close to finished — a graph of the progression would be an exponential depiction. Once you’ve paid your time debt off you then get your time back, you are free to spend your time where you wish — spend it wisely.
Lesson 5 — Cut away the things holding you back from change
Here you have to be ruthless. Change causes evolution — evolution leads to a better you. Your goals should (hopefully) paint a picture of a future that is different from the life you have right now. I can’t imagine anyone’s goal being that they want to be the exact same person as they are right now — although that goal is the one that is commonly achieved. The only way to reach a state which is different from the one you’re in now is through change — that’s the only way that can happen. So, you need to create, embrace and enforce change within your life. Thus, you need to stop doing the same old sh*t you always do. You need to be ruthless here…
Get a pen and paper and write down everything that is holding you back in life. Really, this list should be the stuff that you do now but that has no place in your list of goals. My list was as follows; perfectionism, smoking, shopping, snooker, TV, negativity, procrastination, woodworking, among others. This list should be constantly evolving — it’s all about self-awareness. What are you doing right now that you shouldn’t? Eliminate it.
Now, some of those items in my list were just hobbies that I enjoyed doing, but I wanted as little drain on my focus as possible; so I eliminated quite a few hobbies so that time could be used to pursue my goals. I’m happy to say that so far I no longer have problems with perfectionism (this was an underlying creator of many problems in my life), I have quit smoking (after 7 years), I tackled my shopping addiction and got a handle of my money and I’ve greatly improved my productivity by cutting out the things that don’t contribute to my overall goals. You can read about how I tackled some of these issues in my other articles; ‘Perfectionism Will Kill Your Productivity’, ‘Quit Smoking for Good.’ and ‘Are You a Master Procrastinator? If so, I’ve Got Something for You…’.
Lesson 6 — Manage your money
It goes without saying but you need to get a handle on your money. This was something I was ashamed to admit, I was spending everything I earnt — I had a real problem with shopping, I bought things I didn’t need just because I liked buying things. It’s not something I speak very openly about due to my embarrassment regarding the subject — so I’m not sure if it’s a problem plagued by others but I suspect it may be. If you have a problem with spending, you must first be honest with yourself and admit the problem. Admit the problems you have with money to yourself, and then much like the teachings from lesson 2 — tell the others around you. Get help and get a handle on your money. Money can be a great thing, it can be an awful thing. Make sure it’s a force for good in your life.
I’m glad to say that I now have a good handle on money and I have very health looking projections. My money management system is rigorous and any money spent is spent wisely.
It’s not too late to restart your life. I knew I wanted more from life, I knew that my current state could not achieve the things I wanted. So I set out to improve myself — I’m still doing that, I will always be doing that as it’s a constant requirement of life. I’m happier and healthier. I’m building an empire — I’m starting with my life and will finish with the world. You can read my full life plan in my article ‘Build an Empire.’ — this details my blueprint for success that I’m following. The person I feel I am today is nothing like the person who I was at the beginning of lockdown — these are a few lessons of how I pushed the restart button on life. I hope this was of some value to you. I really hope you achieve what you set out to in life — do not waste the gift you’ve been given.
