If you’re anything like me, you can find a whole list of things you’d like to do, but how do you actually convert them to reality? Watch this to find out…

Transcript:

Hi and welcome to another episode of BaranovTV, designed to demystify the world of accounts and tax and to help your business grow.

I don’t know about you, but I find it really easy to construct huge to-do lists of all these ideas that I have going round my head that I think would make a massive difference to our business if I could just get them done. I’m putting huge pressure on myself to do loads and loads of things all at once, which is just nuts because it’s never going to happen. Actually we don’t need it to happen this time around, but I still have these long to-do lists, and I struggle to decide which to do first, to actually concentrate on them and get them done and get them off that to-do list and cross them through.

Today I wanted to talk to you about something that we’ve adopted recently, which is 90-day goals. We’ve heard people talking about it for a long time, and just never quite got as far as implementing it.

The idea is that as human beings, we are kind of magpies. Particularly as entrepreneurs and business owners, we see the next new thing and it attracts our attention and we think oh yeah, that’s the thing to go for. 90 days is probably around about enough to start something, see it through, and finish it, which is the key thing obviously, and then you have the opportunity to move on to something else.

90 day goals are working very well for us and working very nicely, so I thought I’d share the idea.

What you do is you work out, from your huge to-do list, you work out what your priorities are, and you set the goal that in 90 days, those things are going to be done. Now obviously what you don’t do is select lots, you select probably two or three, then you take those goals and you break them down. So you break them down to say right, if I’ve got to be there in 90 days, what do I have to do working backwards from where I am right now? That may mean that you need additional resource, it may be that you need some additional support, you need some training, whatever those things may be, by working it backwards you can actually break it down and work out what they may be.

You also need to obviously identify which are the most important things off your to-do list! You need to make sure that those steps along the way and your goals, so that you know you’ve come to the end are smart and measurable. So it’s fine if it’s get three campaigns set up in the new CRM system because that’s very clear. But if it’s implement this in this way and make sure that the team are adopting it, that’s much more difficult. So you need to make sure that that’s measurable.

You need to allocate in your diary some time over that 90 days to actually work on these goals, and that’s often tricky. We decide we’re going to do something but then the day-to-day takes over. So make sure that you allocate the time. And actually when you’ve got the time in the diary, as you would a meeting with a client or a customer, it becomes much simpler to make sure that you actually get that stuff done and you can actually achieve it and tick it off at the end of the 90 days.

My recommendation would be to have a look and have a think about the things that you’ve got on YOUR to-do list that would make a real business, a real difference to the business to get done, and block yourself 90 days, and say right, okay 90 days, which ones do I want to do, which ones would make a big difference? And just start to book the time and get them done. And I think you’ll see as we have, that it can make a real difference.

I’d be interested to know how you get on with that. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with that thought, and I’ll see you all very soon.