Is it possible to have each day filled in less than 10 weeks?This is fourth and last week of the 2011 Dating and Lifestyle Kickstart Guide. Tuesdays, we've covered lifestyle.
I’ve made a conscious effort to really focus on people who are looking to make changes.
Sometimes, you need someone to cut through the non-sense and tell you what’s truly preventing you from success.
The problem is most people don’t want to hear it. “It’s too harsh,” they would say. I think it’s even more interesting that when it comes to feedback, most people ASSUME it’s negative.
My first job growing up was working for a youth organization. I was the Communications Chair. Not sure what that meant but that was my title. We would have weekly meetings and at the end of every meeting, we would have give feedback on how the meeting went.
On one side, we’d talk about all the positive things about the meeting. On the other, we called it “delta” -- what we’d like to change about the meeting.
My lead organizer thought it was important to never take feedback as negative but only as what you can do better. That has stuck with me my whole life and it’s how I work with my clients when they are going through tough sticking points.
To make things easier and not overwhelming, I’ve introduced to them the 10/10/10 system. This system can be applied to so many things in your life (if you’re looking for more in-depth uses, sign up for the newsletter).
When it comes to your lifestyle, the 10/10/10 system is set to make long-term goals, the things you need to work on and how you’re going to accomplish them. To break things down we’re going to take a look at each “10,” and use a previous client as a case study.
The First 10. Your goals and sticking points. At this point, you have a sense of what kind of life you’d like to have and what’s holding you back. Write down your top 5 goals. My client’s goals were the following (not in order of importance):
- Have a weekly bro’s night with close friends.
- Be involved in a meetup group.
- Go out to more theme-focused events (wine tastings, sports socials, etc.).
- Go rock climbing weekly.
- Have a party once a month.
After that, I had him write down reasons he hasn’t accomplished each goal. The results were a little staggering for him. Check this out:
- Calling to organize.
- Deciding on a passion or special interest.
- Doing the research on events coming up in the area.
- Finding a rock climbing gym.
- Throwing a small party.
Do you see how each reason becomes a secondary goal to the bigger picture? When you can change your sticking points to an objective, psychologically, it seems more attainable and less of a stumbling block.
Now that you have them all down in front of your face, you can now move on to the next “10.”
The Second 10. Your action items. This list is the ten things you will do to accomplish your goals. Each goal has 2 action items. They can be retrieved from your previous 10 (sticking points) or you can set milestones to get a baseline for your progress.
Here’s what my clients action items were:
- Organize a poker night with the boys.
- Buy a pay-per-view UFC program and invite my closest friends.
- Decide on what I love to do and search for it on meetup.
- Go to one meetup event.
- Find an art gallery event to go to.
- Ask friends for good ideas on events.
- Search rock climbing gyms
- Check it out and see if they’re looking for instructors.
- Find a holiday to throw a party.
- Ask friends to chip in (food, drinks, etc.)
The Last 10. 10 weeks. Now that you have action items, you can work on one of them each week for 10 weeks. Some of you may be saying,
“Well, Thomas, doing ONE action item a week seems a little small. Why wouldn’t I want to do more than one in the week?”
Great question! If you think you can handle doing more or all in less time, go for it! But let’s take a look at what my client accomplished in 10 weeks.
- Had a poker night and held a UFC party with his closest friends.
- Joined a meetup group that meets every two weeks.
- Went to a wine-tasting, an art gallery opening and two live jazz shows.
- Became a weekly instructor at a rock climbing gym.
- Threw a Super Bowl party.
Doing all of that in 10 weeks was a lot for him. If you think you can do that in less time, go for it. However, I wouldn’t advise it. It will get overwhelming VERY quickly and your focus will diminish because you end up multi-tasking.
One important thing to also remember are goals will vary and some action items will take longer to accomplish than others.
With this strategy, you’ll slowly integrate new activities into your social calendar, one at a time. When it comes to social integration, this is as solid of a system as it gets.
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