Just Today
One of the greatest sources of stress and worry as an entrepreneur comes from knowing that no matter how much time you seem to put in, you’re never done. Every day there’s this massive list just HANGING over you, whether it’s an actual list you’ve mapped out – kidding yourself that if you can just plan a little better you’ll get it all done; truly! – or just the never-ending mish-mash of stuff in your head.
And every day, day in and day out, you wake up with a sense of anxiety at the knowledge that you WON’T get it all done, and every night, night in and night out, you go to bed feeling frustrated and disappointed in yourself for NOT having done it all.
So even though you may well have done a fair whack of productive work – work that matters, work that makes a difference, work that moves you forward into the life you are actively choosing to create for yourself – there’s still this infuriating feeling of not having done enough.
Do you want to know something really cool?
One day you’re going to die.
And when you die? Your list will STILL not be done. In fact, you could dedicate 12 hours solid a day, 16 hours a day, heck even all 24 hours a day to the Getting Done of Shit, and you still wouldn’t be done! Even if you lived that way for YEARS!
How can I be so sure?
It’s really simple:
You’re a creator. A leader. Someone who dreams BIGGER than big. Someone who understands what is POSSIBLE in this life, and someone who is wiling to do the work to create that life on her terms.
All of which is to say that just as fast as you manage to check shit off your llist, or finally launch that new thing, finish that project, wrap up the behind the scenes admin that goes with it you’ll have already come up with at least 10 new things to replace the 1 thing you just completed.
In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve already had at least one new random idea pop into your head while reading this! It’s who you ARE, it’s in your blood, your DNA, to never. stop. thinking. and thank God for that or you wouldn’t BE here, doing this, being this person, creating this life.
But you can’t have it both ways, y’know? You can’t be the mad-crazy creative person with ALL the ideas and the desire to fulfil them and also be a calm, sane, organised person who does one thing at a time, works within the realms of realism, then has a nice little nap before moving on to the next thing. As I said to a client last night when talking about this, you’re not a fucking accountant!
You are YOU.
And you?
Well you can give it all the get-up-and-gung-ho-go and ALL the time you like, but honey you ain’t NEVER gonna be done.
Realising this – and accepting it – is INCREDIBLY freeing, which is why I say it’s really cool.
It means you don’t HAVE to keep trying to be that organised in-control person who does everything all the time and in a nice and neat fashion, and just LET LOOSE BEING YOU!
Go balls to the wall just doing what you love, giving it all your energy and emotion and JOY and not giving a fuck about the rest of it!
Of course sometimes it IS good to give a little bit of a fuck. Sometimes being the mad-crazy absent-minded professor with her head in the clouds creating merrily means that things don’t get done that you do WANT to get done.
Things like leveraging your existing business.
Or actively growing your list.
Or extending your reach.
Or just, y’know, keeping some semblence of order behind the scenes so that when it comes time to do your next launch or program-creation you’ve got something to BASE it on.
And I know, I know, it’s kind of ANNOYING, all this stuff, and it would be so much nicer if we could just ignore all of that hoo-ha, but the truth is it IS worth it. A little. Okay a lot. It is TOTALLY worth it, ’cause you can make your life so much easier, your business growth so much faster, and the reach of your work so much greater, and to be totally honest with you it really doesn’t take THAT much to set up all this stuff.
Wanna know what it DOES take?
This is even cooler than the whole you’re going to die and your list won’t be done thing.
It just takes today.
Just one day.
In which you do one thing.
Or maybe two.
Or maybe you base it on time; you do half an hour.
Half a little measly hour.
And because THAT was the goal you set for yourself, for tackling that mammoth God-awful list of terror, you get to go to bed feeling GOOD about yourself. Because you did what you said you’d do. Just for today.
And because you now set your goals this way – where they are not only beyond DOABLE but where also the compound interest-like power of DOING them day in and day out means you create MASSIVE forward momentum – you get to wake up every day feeling excited, enthusiastic, even motivated. Because you know you will do what you said you did. Just for today.
Even 30 minutes a day, spent on activities that are important but never urgent, on activities that you perhaps they resist because without that achievable boundary they feel insurmountable, will over time TRANSFORM your results.
Can you imagine if a year from now you’ve DAILY spent 30 minutes on getting that book done?
On building that funnel –
On improving your fitness, your physique, your health –
On creating closer connections –
ANYTHING you give time and energy and emotion to consistently will grow.
So if you give daily time and energy and emotion to worrying about how you’ll never be there! No matter what! And how overwhelmed you are! All the time! Then guess what?
You’ll notice and also GET more of that stuff.
But if you give daily time and energy and emotion – even a little but CONSISTENTLY – to actually doing something, in a way that works for you, in a way you can measure or yes even ‘check off’, and you don’t try and always have to do EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE but instead just dedicate that small space in your day for Doing Important Shit, and then spend the rest of the day being the mad-crazy creator your are (which is of course the most important shit of all), then guess what?
You’ll get important shit done.
I daresay quite a lot of it.
And over time?
You may even look back and realise that you finished that whole list off. Of course that list is long gone, and there are a zillion new ideas in your head by now. But you’ve learned that even in the thick of the chaos, the madness, the never-endingness, you can still move forward. You can still grow. You can still ACHIEVE, and leverage, and produce and extend.
And all it takes?
Is just one day. This day. Every day.
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