Does your pile of to-do's seem like it only grows every day and you don't know how to tackle it? Try these tips to help you accomplish your short-term, daily goals.1) Start the day right: Try not to have one of those days. You know the days I'm talking about. The ones when you oversleep because your alarm didn't go off and you're so flustered that you throw on a dirty shirt, skip breakfast, and forget to grab your lunch on the way out. If your day starts like this, it becomes a million times harder to focus, organize, and get anything done. Therefore, think ahead by getting enough sleep so that you'll wake up with plenty of time to relax in the morning, shower, eat breakfast, and maybe do some reading. By doing so, you've already set a good tone for the day, helping you to accomplish more later.2) Make a to-do list: Whether you're overwhelmed by duties at work or looking to get things done on your Saturday, making a to-do list truly is a helpful way to achieve your goals. Something about seeing your goals written out gives you a starting point to accomplish them instead of scrambling to remember everything you want to get done. To get the most out of your to-do list, try to organize your goals by importance, give a specific time-frame for each goal, and cross off each goal when you've accomplished it.3) Think big, but realistic: While it's good to aim high with your goals, setting unrealistic goals for yourself will likely lead to frustration and disappointment if you can't meet those standards. Instead, try prompting yourself with smaller, more achievable goals, then, when you're able to get those done, raise the bar. For example, if your goal for this year is to lose weight, it's probably unrealistic to say that you're going to work out every single day when you currently don't work out at all. Instead, make a goal to work out for two days a week, then, once you make this happen, you can push yourself to three or four days a week.4) Have some accountability: As human beings, we can be very proud creatures. So, when we tell someone that we're going to do something, we're more likely to do it just so we don't have to tell that person that we failed. Now, a good accountability partner shouldn't make you feel horrible if you don't achieve your goals, but they shouldn't enable you to blow them off either. To get the most out of an accountability partner, choose someone who is not extremely close to you to tell your goals to. Knowing that they will ask you about your progress should motivate you to get moving!5) Reward yourself: Let's be honest; we all work harder and faster when we know that we're going to be rewarded at the end. So, decide ahead of time some specific way to reward yourself for achieving your goals for that day. To make sure that you don't cheat, tell your accountability partner about your reward. Whether your reward is big or small, it just has to motivate you.
