5 YEARS, 5 DAYS, 5 HOURS, 5 MINUTES

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Do you ever feel stuck? Unsure of what your next move should be?

It’s not like you don’t have things to do, you just don’t know which one to do next.

What’s the little snowball that will cascade down the mountain of life, picking up size and momentum with every roll?

This has always been a challenge for me personally.

There’s a great resource called The 6 Types Of Working Genius and on this work style assessment my two areas of genius are Wonder and Invention.

This essentially means I see all kinds of possibilities and come up with lots of creative solutions, many of which are quite good.

So where’s the problem?

The problem is how to choose between all the good ideas; and then again of the few that make the list, how to decide which to begin with first.

The Solution:

But first…

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Create a loosely held 5 year plan.

I feel a real tension when it comes to planning. I personally love it! But I also feel guilty like I am being presumptuous, particularly as a follower of Jesus who is called to stay flexible and obedient to whatever He wants me to do.

That being said, I believe there is value in prayerfully and thoughtfully creating a loose plan of where you would like to be in 5 years.

This becomes your true north. The driving direction everything else will hopefully be optimized to reach.

Create a 5 day plan.

I could have written about a quarterly plan, but frankly I tend to fall off that bandwagon well before I hit the 90 days.

What’s still difficult, but more readily achievable and with amazing results is planning your 5 day work week to best achieve your biggest goals and ultimately your 5 year plan.

Create a 5 hour plan.

I believe it was Cal Newport in his book Deep Work, that said we really have about 4 hours a day worth of mental capacity to do our most deep and demanding work.

So planning what you want to spend your best 4-5 hours of work on each day makes a lot of sense.

Stack enough successful days together and you have a momentum machine. Pair that with a long term plan and now you’re really cooking!

Create a 5 minute plan.

Personally, this one really works for me! I set a 5 minute timer, sometimes I’ll go as long as 15 minutes, and then I’ll begin an unpleasant or uncomfortable but important piece of work.

A few cool things tend to happen… I often end up doing another round or more of the timer and end up putting in some “real” time to the project.

I also prime the pump and set myself up for success the next time I sit down to begin. Now it’s not a totally nonexistent canvas, even if it’s still a blank one! The document is titled and created. Maybe it has a couple of tentative bullet points.

There you have it, create a plan that looks ahead 5 years, 5 days, 5 hours, & 5 minutes!

I hope it will help you focus in on your most important work, so you can begin it, well now. 5,4,3,2,1…

See you next Thursday!

Geno Schmelzer,