How to accomplish goals.
This is a great mystery to me. How to acomplish goals, and how to prioritize them. Of the four personality groups I am a strong Meloncholy Choleric, which means I naturally priotitize my work over anything else. I must make a mental effort to include myself in public events and family gatherings or I will lead a very unbalanced life. I consider my body a slave and a tool which can be forced to produce excellent or non excellent work. It's up to my brain to push and make conscious decisions which my body aught to follow without questions. Sore muscles are no excuse. This is the way I think, and this is the temperament I have to work with when I make efforts to balance my own personality. We are born with a temperament, and (with the Holy Spirit's help) we can manipulate our personality.
Personality: Our 'born-with' Temperament, which is then manipulated and shaped according to our life's experiences.
I've been considering the effects of what can be described as Round-thinking, which can be described as counter-intuitive thinking for the desired effect. Round thinking is risky. But when you find what works, usually you will find a pattern of which the results can be dependable. It is similar to being in a boat and seeing a fish. You could dive in after it. But you are better off by thinking of how a fish will think, making predictions according to the time of day that fish bite, where a fish is going to be in the water according to the bend of light, considering depth of water, the kind of bait you have, then making the action of throwing your line in the right way... and even then the fish may not bite. BUT if you are good at these things, often they will.
Direct-line thinking. Cause and effect. You want someone to move over, you push them over.
Round thinking: Opposite psychology. You act interested in someone, then walk away. Yup, we've all had this.
Perhaps not the most explanatory examples, but will give you an idea of how i'm going to be using these terms.
So, according to my TEMPERAMENT, (not my personality) I naturally try to get as much done as possible in the least amount of time. This leads to chaos typically. I used to find pride that I could juggle the kitchen utensils, dry my hair, finish my homework and do my makeup by alternating the tasks and never wasting a second, but I also found that things were more easily wasted and broken by the haste. I concluded, that the waste is not worth the effort and there must be a better way to get things done in the fasted amount of time possible.
That brings me to my next point: To go faster, go slower.
This is Round-thinking. Now let me define 'go slower'. There are many projects that we often want to accomplish, often in the shortest about of time possible. Why could this not be done? There has to be a way. What I am finding is that there are ways, or i'm going to call them "Tools", to create a faster success to your goals.
1) Routine: This is a tool that you can insert to many areas of your life. The definition of routine is: a sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed procedure." You can take ANY area of your life and create a standard procedure for the actions involved as well as the problem solving process for any issues that arise. This will not only give you predictability to the solution in most situations, it will speed up the process because you will not be spending mental time working through how you should re-act to a problem. It's been pre-thought out already.
Example; receiving phone calls is messy, you jot down notes helter skelter, post its are everywhere and you don't know which is what. The plan: Caller ID filter all calls, prioritize what calls you will take and when. Take a small calendar and pen with your cell when you are out of the house and transfer everything to a master calendar when you return. (Now I do realize that smartphone do a lot of this already... yadda yadda yadda. You get my point I hope.)
Conclusion: Make a plan, stick with it no matter what. Make the plan the priority.
May I make a point, that innovation (change) and routine (repetitive) are opposites. Routine was very hard for me to accept into my life. For some people on the opposite end of the Temperament spectrum, change is one of the hardest things to accept. Alright, on we go...
2) Written goals. Write them down!! I don't know how many times I emphasize that plans need to be on paper. You will see more problems before they arise if you give yourself a spreadsheet on your goals and how you will accomplish them. Document it. You can also be encouraged when you see where you've come and where you hope to go. Have a mission statement for your life.
I will finish this paper later, i'm going to visit a friend at church today. (One of the lessons i've learned, keeping up relationships should always be a high priority.) If what I wrote so far causes you to think or you have input do not hesitate to comment! Always be open to learning, you'll be surprised by what you find.
Next inspiration to document: Helping people understand who they are through horses.
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