Integrating New Habits and Routines as You Shift Your Goals
Photo by Terry Chay
Most planning and productivity systems, like Franklin Covey® and David Allen’s Getting Things Done, place a focus on establishing life goals and envisioning what we want to become. Essentially we seek our driving principles by asking “What will my perfect life look like?” Are you a great parent, spouse, employee, business owner, humanitarian, athlete, risk taker? How do you define success and happiness?
After you define success you will gain clarity about your priorities and have a much better understanding of what you ought to be doing. You will also begin to gain some clarity about how you should proceed with your daily and weekly plans.
Over the past couple months I have recognized a gap in my goals and my actions with the realization that to be more effective in all facets of my life I need to be healthier. If I want to be a better father I need the energy to participate with my children and to be a better coach to my employees I need to be able to instill the discipline that I expect in the work setting in my personal life. Upon recognizing this need I began the process of changing my daily task to include healthier eating and exercise.
Since I have defined success in my professional and private life and established a basic roadmap to achieve my goals it was important to analyze how the new goal of personal health would augment those other goals and how it would fit into the plan; I also needed to identify the routines that would allow me to maintain existing goals and accomplish the new objectives.
For me this was an easy task to integrate the new goal into the plan because a healthier lifestyle is complementary of my other goals. More challenging was integrating the routines into my schedule; for example I needed to identify an exercise routine that would not create conflict with my work or family. To overcome the challenge I chose to wake earlier to exercise before work and enjoy active time, like walking, with my family.
Four months after reevaluating my priorities, establishing goals, and turning actions into routines I have lost over 30 pounds and have established some fitness goals that I am working on accomplishing. Making the change in my life has given me insight into how I can integrate future changes that will inevitably occur in my goals and guiding principles. It has also reinforced the need to establish goals and envision success to ensure success.
What successful techniques have you used to integrate new goals and habits into your routine? How do you change your focus and goals? How do you integrate new habits and routines as you shift your goals?
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Glad my photo could be of some help. BTW, small correction: my name is Terry “Chay”
My I suggest you read the first chapter of “Brain Rules”? I think you’ll find it highly interesting and relevant to your path to 7 Habits/GTD.
Congratulations on your success on sharpening that saw.