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Most people spend more time planning their wedding day or buying a second-hand car than they do mapping out their life and their career.
Just 3 per cent of us actively bother to set ourselves proper life goals. For everyone else, the task seems simply too daunting.
We cross our fingers, muddle through and hope for the best.
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Plan your next holiday today for a more productive personal and business life says author Tom O'Neil
And yet studies have shown that those who do set goals go on to achieve a significantly more successful life than those who don’t.
Which is where the One Per Cent Principle comes in.
At its core is the idea that by making tiny changes to our lives, we massively increase our chances of business and personal success.
Through a series of mini goals achieved over a short to medium period, we can totally transform what we achieve and how we live.
In my new book, I show you how to tweak a series of aspects of your life — marriage, health, career, friends, finances, family, time management, fun and lifestyle — to spectacular effect, through setting yourself a series of mini goals.
Arrange any appointments, such as dental check-ups, you’ve been putting off in order to declutter your diary
These are not major, life-changing actions, but when they are all added up towards a specific objective they can have a massive impact on your productivity and quality of life.
Here are my suggestions for applying the One Per Cent Principle to specific areas of your life.
You’ll be amazed what a difference they can make.
RELATIONSHIPS
- Give your partner a genuine compliment today that they have never heard from you before. For example: ‘I really like your dress style.’ Or: ‘You look great in that top.’
- Have an honest, fair and open discussion about the main thing you argue about in your relationship. (For example, money, sex or children.) What is one thing you could each do to make this problem less of a struggle in your relationship?
- Say something positive to your partner. Research shows that happy couples tend to have a five-to-one ratio of positive to negative comments.
Cook a meal together. Either work together on one meal, or take turns making a course each, while the other person talks and sips wine
- Ask your partner about their childhood. What were their favourite secret places, what pets did they have and what were their best holidays?
- Think about a time when something went wrong between the two of you. Ask yourself: ‘What could I have done differently? What could we have done differently? What is it we can learn from this?’ Talk to your partner about it, starting with what you could have done differently.
- Cook a meal together. Either work together on one meal, or take turns making a course each, while the other person talks and sips wine.
- Make your partner a surprise breakfast with all the trimmings.
- Leave a note telling your partner you love them, which they will stumble across during their day, or send them a loving email.
- Next time your partner mentions an appointment they are going to (for example, a meeting at work, lunch with a friend or catching up with a family member) remember to ask them how it went.
- Think about something you’ve both wanted to do together and find a DVD or website that shows you how to do it. Plan a date night around watching it together.
- Instead of watching TV, read a story out loud to each other or have a game of cards.
- Put on music you both like and dance in your living room.
FAMILY
- For four days a week, limit your family’s total TV, Facebook and YouTube use to one hour per day. Use the time you would normally spend on these things for some fun family activities.
- Set up a regular board game night once a week.
- Tell your children about your family history.
- Organise one-to-one time with each of your children this week.
- Phone your parents or grandparents. Sometimes a ten-minute call is all they need to feel loved.
- Say ‘yes’, rather than ‘no’ to your children. You won’t remember the report you were writing in a year’s time, but they will remember the walk you took them on.
- Introduce your children to a skill you are good at. This could be fishing, painting, gardening or working with computers.
Take Time to . . .
- Set your alarm clock for 15 minutes earlier and spend this time planning what you want to achieve.
- Declutter you life by giving an object you don’t use any more to someone in need. This could be an old suitcase, a pram, or a barbecue.
- Read a book in the next week.
- Arrange any appointments, such as dental check-ups, you’ve been putting off.
- Set up contingency plans. For example, sort out a spare set of car and house keys, or work out a different way to get the children to school.
- Put an emergency box in the boot of your car. Include an umbrella, a first-aid kit, raincoat and a torch.
- Take an extra business shirt or blouse to work and leave it there as a spare.
- Tidy one drawer a day.
- Consider your to-do list. Is it overwhelming you? Eliminate all but the absolute essential tasks and rewrite your list, making it more manageable.
CAREER
Many of these activities will take no more than a few minutes. (One per cent of your day is 14 minutes.) But their effects on your career could be far-reaching:
- Update your CV with some of your recent achievements. These can include things you might not have thought of, such as being awarded extra responsibility in your department, or taking part in a special project.
- Find out about further training you can do to improve your employability.
- Do a survey online and find out what people with jobs similar to you are being paid in the market.
Update your CV with some of your recent achievements. These can include things you might not have thought of, such as being awarded extra responsibility in your department, or taking part in a special project
- Think about what you want to be doing for work in ten years’ time. Write this down and start to plan how you can make this dream a reality.
MINI MONEY SAVERS
Here are some small things you can do that could improve your finances:
- Set up an automatic payment of £25 a week towards your retirement.
- Take ten minutes to review your bank balances and financial agreements.
- Ensure all your insurance policies are up to date.
- Use price comparison websites to find the cheapest option when buying a medium or large-sized item. (I did this recently buying a fridge and found a £150 price difference.)
- Set up direct debits for household bills.
- Set up a ‘sanity money’ account, so you can indulge in treats without blowing the family budget.
- Make your own lunch and take it to work rather than buying overpriced (and often unhealthy) cafe or deli food.
- Calculate the cheapest way to get to work (including public transport, bicycle, walking and so on) and try it out.
- Keep all your receipts for a week and find out exactly where your money is going. Analyse your findings and look to cut back where necessary.
- Do a personal asset stocktake and streamline your life. Does your family need three TVs?
- Think of three things that you love about your job.
- Tell a friendly colleague that you genuinely enjoy working with them.
- Start a blog about your professional area of expertise. Over time you will develop a following and be seen as a key person in your industry. However, remember to ensure you do not breach any confidentiality or privacy issues and get permission from your manager, if required.
- Sharpen up all your online profiles (including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook), making sure you come across professionally.
- Clean up your desk and rearrange your furniture so it’s more efficient.
- When you make a decision in your job, ask: ‘If I owned the business, would I do this?
LIFESTYLE AND FUN
- Ask your boss about working from home for one day a week.
- Be disciplined about turning off your work phone and don’t answer any emails at the weekend.
- Plan your next holiday today.
- Write down up to ten things that you enjoy: whether it’s spending time with family, going to the cinema, belonging to a gym or learning a new language.
- Take time to reflect on the past 12 months. What were the highs and lows? What were the successes and failures? How can you move forward in the next 12 months?
- Think of a time when you felt really alive. What were you doing and how can you re-capture that feeling?
FRIENDS
- Phone a different friend every day for a week just to catch up and say hello.
- Organise to have coffee with a friend you have lost touch with.
- Cull your Facebook friends back to only those who actually mean something to you.
- Make a list of your friends’ birthdays and ring or text them on the day.
- Offer to babysit for a couple who have not had an opportunity to have a night out without their children.
- Start writing a journal or diary. You will be amazed how therapeutic this can be.
- Learn to ignore things that aren’t important in your life or don’t affect you directly.
- Go somewhere alone. Listen to the sounds, feel the breeze and focus on enjoying the time with just you.
- Think of a favourite memory. When you are stressed, remembering happy moments can relax your mind.
- Give yourself a present. It might be a week on a cruise, or a day off.
- Surround yourself with happy people. It’s easy to think negatively when you are surrounded by people who think that way. Conversely, if you are around people who are happy, their emotional state is infectious.
- Learn to laugh at the little things and be amused by your mistakes and failures.
- Stop being a perfectionist today. Doing the best job you can is vital to your success; however, perfectionism will destroy all your pleasure and send you in search of the unattainable.
The 1% Principle by Tom O’Neil, £9.99, is published by HarperCollins.
Don't let fear of failure hold you back
Even when we do set ourselves goals and targets, as often as not we lose heart and give up. There are a large number of reasons for this. Among them are:
Trying too much, too quickly
When we set ourselves goals we often get over-excited, failing to think through the time and/or money needed to achieve them. We start to miss deadlines and progress begins to fall away. We say to ourselves: ‘This is too hard. I cannot set and achieve my goals. I am a failure at this.’
No passion for the goal
It’s important to understand who is setting your goals. Family psychologist Dr James Dobson has highlighted the story of a man whose father and grandfather were both surgeons.
No prizes for guessing what the family expected the man to do as he grew up. He duly qualified as a doctor and then a surgeon.
His family was very proud, and he went on to have a highly successful career.
On the day his father died, however, the man resigned from his post at a leading hospital and signed up for a new job as a builder’s labourer. His passion had always been for building and construction.
He had no real enthusiasm for the medical profession. It sounds basic, but make sure that the goals you set are your goals — not those chosen by your parents, friends, colleagues or teachers. Be true to who you are and who you want to be.
Procrastination/distraction
The ability to procrastinate and get distracted by a wide range of unimportant things can be very strong, especially when the next stage of your goal is some distance away.
Tasks such as tidying your desk or cleaning your car take on a new importance.
This becomes a trap because we unwisely devote our time to these small jobs, then get caught when it becomes apparent that we cannot reach our goals in time.
Fear of failure
A lot of the time we don’t achieve our goals because we are afraid we may be seen as a fraud or a failure if things don’t go according to plan. This leads to a state of ‘development paralysis’, whereby we don’t strive towards the goals we have set, then later on don’t set any goals at all.
Don’t worry what other people think. Just focus on taking that next 1 per cent step towards your destiny. Trying is what counts.
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