Daily Action Fail #1: The Scattershot Approach
Research shows that consistent, daily action, even just 15 minutes per day, will help you reach your goals faster, and is more fun and rewarding, too. People who work in short, daily sprints make more progress and are more creative than those who work in the occasional larger blocks of time.
And yet, people are not necessarily successful when they try this approach. I think this is a shame; everyone can use this technique to help them make steady progress on their VIPP — Very Important Procrastinated-On Project.
The thing is, most people go about this the wrong way. In this series of blog posts, I’m going to examine the reasons that people fail with small daily actions. I’ll also help you with concrete steps as to what to do instead.
In this blog post, I’ll tell you about the “Scattershot” Approach to Small Daily Actions, in which you decide to work on whatever seems important that day, for a short period of time.
This doesn’t work, and here’s why. The scattershot approach, where you flit from one thing to another, dooms you to be a “jack of all trades, master of none.”
For example, here are sample daily activities of someone who works this way:
If you continue to work this way, you won’t see much progress in any of your important goals.
What to do instead of the Scattershot Approach:
Work on your VIPP each day. In order to work on your Very Important Procrastinated-On Project (VIPP) every day, you need to decide what that project should be. Here are some helpful questions to ask yourself in order to determine what your VIPP should be:
Examples of Very Important Procrastinated-On Projects
Here are some examples of VIPP’s that clients have worked on:
Does the Scattershot Approach sound familiar to do? Have you experienced the feeling of doing lots of things, but accomplishing little?
It just takes a few minutes to decide on your own VIPP – try it! A few minutes a day on your project will make a world of difference in your business growth.
Next time we’ll examine the 2nd “fail” you should avoid when trying to do small daily actions to accomplish your VIPP.