Use “Active Actions” to hit your goal FASTER: How To Stay Focused On What’s Important Rather Than What’s Urgent

Can you eliminate almost everything from your todo-lists and still be more effective than most people?

Turns out, you can? If you follow the system I describe in this short video.

Watch to find out how:

As business owners we all have one million things to do every single day.

Massive to-do lists, calendars that look like busy games of Tetris or messy patchworks.

We’re checking things off, we feel like we’re being efficient and productive…

But is that really what’s happening?

Here’s what I’m noticing:

Not many entrepreneurs know how to prioritize their time. Not many can effectively select ONLY the items on their lists that are important.

What usually happens is, they end up doing things that are urgent instead of working on things that move them towards their goals.

Urgency gives you a false sense of importance. What’s more, urgent things are usually external. They come from other people expecting things from us.

Remember this: Not all actions on your to-do list are created equal. Some will move you ahead, some will keep you busy and stagnating.

Can you tell them apart?

The actions that move you towards your goal are what I call ACTIVE actions. On the other hand, the actions keeping you busy without any real results are PASSIVE actions.

What you need to do is get rid of all the passive actions on your list. And focus on active ones only.

All active actions have these two things in common:

First, an active action always aligns with your end goal.

For example, if your end goal is $1 million in revenue then everything that aligns with sales is your active action.

Second, an active action pushes you outside your comfort zone.

If your action is $5000 in sales this week then try to set that bar just a little higher. Enough to feel uncomfortable.

And instead of just saying how much revenue you want, you need to break it down into a chunk that you can actually take action on.

For example: Follow up with 20 prospects this week and get 5 sales appointments.

(Now, we don’t know how many we will close- but we want to base it on previous conversion rates!)

What about passive actions?

Well, passive actions are everything else.

Even when you think something is important or urgent? If it doesn’t align with your goal and if it doesn’t push you out of your comfort zone? it is a passive action. You should delegate it or put it at the bottom of your list.

But knowing your active actions is not enough. You also need to have a simple system helping you track them, week by week. So you KNOW you’re headed in the right direction? Towards your goal.

Here’s how I do it with my paying clients:

At the beginning of each week they decide on 3 to 5 actions they’re going to focus on. And this is all they do for the week. Nothing more.

Do not go crazy and load your list with a million things again. The point is to have those three active actions done by the end of the week.

To help you with tracking your weekly progress I created a simple tracker tool for you.

This is how you use it:

First, pull out your current to-do list. Read through all the items you have on it and star the ones that are active actions. (Based on the criteria above.)

Next, go to EventualMillionaire.com/tracker and download your tracker tool.

Once downloaded, open it and add your starred actions to the list for the following week.

If you starred more than five items, decide which five you’re going to do first. Do NOT overload your list!

And here’s the cool part: Next week you only focus on those five actions. Don’t go out with friends until those actions are done!

Simple, isn’t it?

Let me know how it works for you!

Categories: All, Goal Setting, Productivity

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

Learn More