10 Common Sense Rules

Good News
By Bedros Keuilian

All too often we forget what we should remember and we remember what we should forget.

It’s officially 2013, and whether you hit your goals for 2012 or you missed them by a mile – forget them.

If you did hit your goals in 2012, that’s great, but it’s not going to do you a lot of good in 2013.

And if you missed your goals for 2012, then dwelling on that fact isn’t going to help you make 2013 any better.

Forget about 2012 all together.

It’s a brand new year and you have a brand new opportunity to make a massive impact in your community, in your business and on your personal development.

But I sincerely hope you didn’t make any resolutions this year.

I just looked up some stats on New Year resolutions and found some interesting facts that confirmed my suspicions.

First off, only 45% of people make resolutions.

Within the first week, 25% have already broken their resolution.

By six months nearly 60% have fallen off the wagon – the rest are unaccounted for.

Those aren’t reassuring facts.

But this is something we can ignore. Here’s why.

This is a list of the Top Ten Resolutions made for 2013 are:
Lose Weight
Getting Organized
Spend Less, Save More
Enjoy Life to the Fullest
Staying Fit and Healthy
Learn Something Exciting
Quit Smoking
Help Others in Their Dreams
Fall in Love
Spend More Time with Family
These should NOT be resolutions, they should be a way of life. That list of top ten resolutions should really be called…

The Ten Common Sense Commandments to Living a Better Life.

Everyone should just be doing this stuff, don’t you think?

It breaks my heart to think that people make these resolutions only to break them at an alarming rate – losing further hope.

But instead we continue to make resolutions, more like spontaneous proclamations of how we want the future to look, only to fall short because resolutions give you a false sense of preparedness.

Resolutions are a complete and total waste of time.

That’s my expert opinion.

Simply saying that you want to be “more organized” in 2013 isn’t going to magically make you more productive, increase your self-discipline or make you better at time
management.

You might as well wish for a pink unicorn because the odds of getting that are just as good.

Resolutions don’t work. So if you have them, just forget about them now. Just stop.

I will tell you what does work and how you can achieve anything you want to achieve in 2013.

Ready for some good news?

Set goals.

I know, I know, that’s not profound. You were probably expecting something deeper than just “set goals.”

But the fact is, goal setting works, almost every time, if done right…

….and that’s what I want to teach you.

So let’s go with #2 there on that list above – get more organized.

If your goal was to get more organized, then reverse engineer what the outcome would be.

In this case it would be to get all of your daily tasks done efficiently and on time.

It would mean that you’d have to be better at time management and productivity.

That’s your outcome. In other words, if you were good with time management and productivity, and if you got all of your tasks done on time and efficiently, then someone might look at you and say, “by God, this person is really organized.”

So how wound you go about meeting this goal on a daily basis?

You’d start each day with a list; an actual paper list with your things to do on it.

If you have long term items like create a follow along fitness program online then that’s not something that’s going to get done in one day.

For big task items like that you’d set a deadline, and then each day you’d work on a thing or two that keeps you on track to meet your deadline.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Now, the things on your “to do” list should be in order of importance.

If you were organized, you’d ruthlessly guard your time and put your list first. No Facebook, no emails, no twitter or Youtube, and no checking the text messages or voice mails.

You’d set a time when you’d do your list (ideally first thing in the morning, right after a workout), and you’d plow through your list without giving into temptations of the things that can suck your time and productivity away.

You’d have your daily ritual and you’d stick to it.

Each and every weekday would look the same way.

For me, my list is to wake up, send out an email, hit Starbucks, get my workout in, go into my business headquarters, go through my list to things to do, and then come out of my cave and make myself available to my staff.

Then make my list of things to do for the next day and head home.

Nice, simple, routine.

I don’t know what your goals are for 2013. But I can tell you that if you write them down, and reverse engineer what the outcome would look like, and you create new habits and then take action on your goals each day – you will achieve them 100% of the time.

I like those odds.