Many people look back on their previous year and breathe a sigh in relief that the hard time is over. They are happy to be able to start anew. Is this you? If you perceived 2019 as a tough year, you now have a great opportunity to make 2020 a great and inspiring one. You need to actively plan for that.
Plan, plan, plan
If you don’t plant flowers in your garden, you’ll forever pull weeds. If you don’t fill each day of the year with high priority actions that are deeply meaningful, inspiring and productive, your days can become filled with low priority distractions. This will mostly be meaningless, uninspiring and not fulfilling.
Also, if you don’t plan and fill your days with challenges that inspire you, your days can be filled with challenges that won’t. That’s because your mind – just like everything else in the universe – automatically moves towards death physics or entropy if you don’t take command and fill it with life physics or order. You, therefore, have to maintain your focus on bringing about order. It’s your responsibility.
This is the key to a fulfilling year
The beauty of this is that you are being nudged toward being accountable in your focus on what’s truly meaningful. Because if we don’t decide on what constitutes a priority in our own world, other people will decide for us. Their values, rather than your own, will fill your life. And they will inject their opportunistic expectations that overtake your own plans. No one is dedicated to the fulfilment of your own life, except you.
I’ve found that there is a way to manage this. The best way to turn this great principle to my advantage is to schedule every single day. I schedule it so that it fills up with activities, precisely as I want it to. I don’t leave a single minute unscheduled. If I want time for relaxation, that, too, is allocated a time slot. I do the same with time I would like to spend exercising, meditating or socializing. That’s because I know that if I don’t, other things will creep in. And I do this not only every day but every week, month and year. I even document all the goals and institutions I want to invest in so that I am planning for beyond my own lifespan.
Live Life With Foresight. Plan
But if you don’t live life with foresight, you live with hindsight or trial and error. Which is generally less fulfilling and less effective. People who plan wisely according to their true highest values go further and rise higher than those who don’t. This is a fact proven by a statistic showing that executives spend 70-90% of their time planning. Compared to the 5% of people who work in factories spend on planning activities. Sure, you can opt against planning, and you’ll get the same job done. But it will probably take you much longer, due to those unexpected and unplanned events.
You might argue that planning to this extent takes away freedom. But the opposite is, in fact, true. When you understand your agenda, you can make allowance for things that suddenly arise that you would like to invest time in according to priority. On the other hand, when your schedule is very open, things that you don’t value creep in to fill it.
Take control of your time. Your energy. Your money. Take control of your life. Because until you value your own time, no one else will, either.
And it goes further than this. Just as it’s important to plan your days, weeks, and months, you need to have a strategy in place to ensure your health can keep up with your new schedule. Click on the link to find out how you can stay healthy at work – we don’t plan to take any sick days in 2020!
Who Is The Writer?
Dr John Demartini is a human behavior specialist, educator, international best-selling author and founder of the Demartini Institute. Visit Dr Demartini’s website for more information.
