A thousand mile journey starts with a single step – Lao Tzu – Chinese great philosopher.
You have heard about the think big concept so many times, right? And after some big training and motivational events, you set a huge target, however it seems that after a couple of days, your motivation goes down quickly and then you go back to square 1 and nothing changes!
Why is that? This is quite simple: as your brain is not used to big targets, it tends to go back to its comfort zone before rather than venture into the unknown terrain of think big and feels very uncomfortable and awkward when doing new stuff!
It happens to me too and over the years, I have found that the secrete sauce to overcome this uncomfortability and trick the brain is to break the big targets into mini daily goals and activities and 10-15 minute activity goals.
Now is the perfect time to take action to transform your life – Chris Chuong
Next, you must get going immediately and bang, you can immediately see that you have achieved a something just in 15 minutes!
This little step of achievement then fuels further action and if you keep doing this for the next 10 days, then your subconscious mind accepts this new fact that you can do it!
For some people, it may take a bit longer to form a new habit but if you can maintain for 10 working days and seeing the mini goals and activities achieved, then congratulations and you have move to a whole new ball game!
Please don’t forget to use the SMART principle when you set your targets and goals.
CASE STUDY
Here is one example. Let’s say you often achieve a sales target of 10 product units per week and earn 1500 USD in commission per week.
To achieve this target, on average you contact and follow up with a total of 100 clients and have a success rate of 10%.
Now you want to set a double target of 20 product units per week and immediately feel overwhelm with having to double the work and the contacts! However, having a closer look, then it is much more achievable.
● You need contact 200 clients in one week and break it by day: 40 clients (assume you work only 5 days).
● If you work a bit smarter and harder say 10%, then you 5.5 days 36 clients per day.
● If you say no for a few 10 minute chit chats and save one hour per day then you have 9 hours, instead of 8 work hours.
● In addition, you can always work 5 hours extra per week whether week day or weekend to get more clients either by email, social media, so in total your have an extra time of 10 hours per week!
● So instead of only 40 hours standard work week, you now have 50 hours work week and on average you need contact only 4 clients in one hour.
This task of 15 minutes per client now must be very achievable for you! In addition, you can do better if you can automate some process.