(4 minute read)

We previously talked about the need to “Just Do It!” Whatever it is you want to accomplish or achieve, you just have to step up and do it. 

Simple, right? 

Today, I’m going to suggest a way to make things quite reachable and goals attainable, the solution to, okay, I’m going to do it, but do what? I call it “Just One Thing.” 

Before you go to bed each night, write down on a sticky note the one important thing, that NO MATTER WHAT, you’re going to do tomorrow. Then stick it on the bathroom mirror, so it’s the first thing you see after you roll out of bed. 

It should be something you’ve been struggling to do, but you know is meaningful and important to achieving what you desire. 

It should be something that will help you to reach a goal you’ve set for yourself. 

Perhaps you have a goal to workout more, so the one thing could be to take a twenty minute walk or do twenty sit-ups. Maybe you have a goal to self-educate, so the one thing could be to read an inspirational book, say just five pages worth a day. 

If you have a report due at work next week, tomorrow’s one thing could be to gather information for the report, and the next day could be to outline the report, etc. 

If you’re a writer your one thing could be to write for a certain amount of hours, to edit a certain amount of pages in your upcoming book, to prepare the title page for the cover, or to write just two pages a day of that new book you’re so excited to write.

Now, you may be asking, how is doing just one thing a day really going to get me closer to reaching my goals or accomplishing the tasks I need completed? 

Here’s how...

First, you must account for play time and vacation time because, as Jack Nicholson so eloquently said in The Shining, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” you must have some time off. You have to recharge. 

So, let’s say you work five days a week, and after a two-week vacation, you work fifty weeks during the year. If you do just one important thing a day, times five days a week, times fifty weeks in the year, you’ll have accomplished and/or completed 250 important and meaningful things during the course of just one year. 

Two hundred and fifty things! 

That, my friends, is a lot.

Let’s put that into perspective…

If you walked twenty minutes a day, five days a week, for fifty weeks of the year, you will have walked 5,000 minutes or over 83 hours of walking. 

If you did just twenty sit-ups a day, five days a week, for fifty weeks of the year, you will have done 5,000 sit-ups. Imagine how your body might be feeling more energetic after 83 hours of walking, or how your core might be that much stronger after 5,000 sit-ups? 

Feel like making it twenty five sit-ups instead of twenty? That would be 6,250 sit-ups in one year. 

Not bad for doing just that one thing each day, huh?

Got prospecting to do? 

If your one important thing to do each day is to make five additional cold calls or write five additional cold emails a day, that would amount to an additional ONE-THOUSAND-TWO HUNDRED-FIFTY additional prospects annually.

If you read just five pages to your child each night before bed, five nights a week, for fifty weeks of the year, you will have read 1,250 pages of stories to your children. Imagine how that’ll help them to speak well, to listen attentively, to arouse their little imaginations, and, most of all, to feel loved by you, and warm and cozy inside before they drift off to dreamland.

Don’t have children? 

If YOU read five pages to yourself each day that will be 1,250 brain stimulating pages for yourself over the year.

If you write just two pages of your next manuscript a day, five days a week, for fifty weeks of the year, you’ll have written 500 pages, which is longer than the average novel. Imagine that!

If you’re a photographer and you take just one great photograph a day, you’ll have 250 great photographs over the course of the year. 

You get the point, right? 

And remember, it doesn’t have to be the same thing each day. 

The point is to do at least that ONE thing that is most important to you each day, whatever it is, and by the end of the year, you will have completed and/or accomplished 250 of the most important and meaningful things you needed to do this coming year that progressed you forward into achieving your goals.

It really is that simple, and so often, once you start something, you get rolling and you just get things done. 

So…

Be awake! Be alert! Be alive! 

What helps me to get going is to sometimes crank up some adrenaline-charged music… 

So, crank up whatever gets you going!

Remember, attitude is everything, so there is no trying, just doing. 

Like Yoda said, “Do, or do not, there is no try.” 

And let’s remove the “do not” from your mindset. 

Just one thing a day. 

That’s all it takes.

YOU WILL DO IT!

Your partner in success,

Claudio Capra II

CEO, Jasper Dynamic, LLC