Do you ever feel that no matter how busy you have been, or how many things you have done in your day, you haven’t accomplished anything? Is your to-do list endless? I’ve felt like that before, but I found a way to move forward in my business and feel that I’ve accomplished things, even if there is a lot more to do.
What I did is start to implement a little “game” that I learned from one of my clients, Vari. At the time she was giving away a gift to sign up for her newsletter. Part of the gift was an organizing kit that I could use to get my tasks together for the week.
The kit was so well designed that I printed it and put it on the whiteboard I keep by my desk.
The kit had two keys that helped me immensely. Using them I was able to organize myself and feel a sense of accomplishment. They are:
1- Write down all the tasks you need to do and then re-group them into “urgent” lists.
I picked the five most urgent tasks and put them on my first do to list. Then, the next five and so on. Each “urgent” task then would be assigned a priority and scheduled for a certain day of the week. That way, I made sure I did them all. I try to get three to five things done every day, depending on the level of difficulty they bring.
The idea is to start breaking down our overall goals into doable steps. Instead of having one, big, endless chunk of things to do, I just pick the three to five that are the most urgent and move on to the next.
2- Reward yourself for each task completed.
Ooooohhh, this is where the magic lies! This was the game changer for me. I followed Vari’s outline that went like this:
I’m going to achieve this task > By this Date > and I’m rewarding myself with….
For example, for me it went like this:
I was designing a Speaking Kit for my motivational speaking career. I had done a kit, but I needed to tweak it and take it to the next level. This task was urgent, as I needed to send it to some prospects who were interested in hiring me.
I worked day and night with my designer for days. I wrote down on my list that I would reward myself with a bike ride to the beach truck that sells Acai bowls with granola and bananas!
My reward was nothing special, expensive, or difficult to do. As soon as I pressed “send” on the email and my speaking kit went out to the prospective clients, I got on my bike and bought my well-deserved Acai bowl. When I was paying for it, I felt like a child buying ice cream from an ice cream truck! I could hardly keep my excitement in check and almost told the cashier that the Acai bowl was my reward for my Speaking Kit! I got my bowl, went to the beach to watch the surfers and enjoyed the sunset while eating my treat.
I tend to treat myself with whatever I want to eat, but this time it was special and different, not because of what I was eating, but because I was rewarding myself for completing a job that had taken many days to get done. What this episode did for me was to anchor the energy of abundance in me. I felt that I was moving forward with my business and bringing the joy into all of it.
Another task that I had to complete was to write a blog post and send out my newsletter (as I do every week). For this task, I rewarded myself with reading my new Vogue magazine on the beach.
I am looking forward to my big reward for when I send out my book proposal to agents soon: a full spa day with my best friend. I envision a massage, a mani-pedi and a facial to start with!
This task-reward game brought a lot of joy into my day-to-day work. It helped me acknowledge what I had done, and I felt fulfilled and accomplished day after day.
To keep expanding into more abundance, we need to first acknowledge what we have today. When we bring the loving into what is today, that movement of love and joy takes us to more abundance.
By treating ourselves and claiming our efforts daily and weekly, we become aware of our expansion, and we start bringing gratitude into the process.
We need to see the bigger picture so we don’t get lost in our day-to-day tasks. The rewards are a great way to help us realize that we are manifesting our dreams, one little or big step at a time.
Now, I’d love to hear from you:
Have you ever tried rewarding yourself for your efforts?
If you haven’t, are you willing to give it a chance? I would love to hear what kind of rewards you’ve used, or more about those you are planning to use!
Let me know in the comments below and please share this blog with your busy friends! Besos and endless abundance, Mercedes
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