Author: Bill George

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Planning Your Day

What’s the first thing you do when you start your day?

I’m not talking about your breakfast, shower or even morning workout. I’m talking about your day of work.

Do you get to work and just dive right in? That might feel like the right thing to do — jump right into what you need to do and get the ball rolling. However, that approach doesn’t allow for much  vision. Until recently I would just log on, check my email, read the news and just open some analysis I was working on without really setting any plan for my day. It’s easy to skip a plan in a day and age when there are a million things that will likely derail the plan even if you make it. Don’t let that fact fool you. Making the plan still helps by providing clarity and accountability which helps you say no to things that aren’t priorities.

Here at Elite we are all about setting big goals and living dreams rather than just dreaming them. In order to make progress, you need to be aware of these goals and then further you need to chunk them out into smaller bites. If the goal is to finish a painting in the next month, it helps to have an idea of what parts of the painting process need to be done by which deadlines. No matter how big your goal is or how long the time-horizon is, breaking it down day-by-day will provide you with a better chance of success.

Take some time to plan out your day, so that you can live a lifetime according to your plan.

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Setting Clear Expectations

Expectations.

They come from others, they come from yourself and overall they can be very stress-inducing.

 

It’s understandable why they result in stress. Stress is a natural response that drives action. Correctly set expectations help drive behavior in order to accomplish goals. So, expectations are a vital part of any goal or relationship so that the parties involved are able to communicate and understand the future.

With that being said, expectations can also cause a destructive form of stress. This occurs when the expectations are not clear. Without a benchmark, how can you measure success? There is no way to assess your progress or understand your priorities. Without clear expectations, people begin to expect too much of themselves or others and relationships (both internal and external) are put at risk, while progress towards goals takes a hit.

 

This is something we are focused on as a team here at Elite. Here’s what we’ve learned over the course of our Summer ’17 community projects.

 

  • Clarity drives accountability
    • It’s easier to make excuses when you leave yourself grey area.
    • You are more inclined to accomplish a task when your team knows what you’re working on.
  • People know what to expect
    • You won’t surprise them for the worse
    • Efforts that go above and beyond will be noticed more
  • Prioritization and planning are improved
    • It makes it easier to decide what to do next
    • You can decide whether or not you have enough time to commit to the task

 

So take the extra time, whether with your own life or your team, and make sure you’re setting clear expectations.

 

 

 

 

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LTD — Go Long

The biggest “secret” to success is the ability to delay short-term comfort in order to maximize long term gain. The reason it’s a “secret” is because even though it’s right in front of us, we choose not to admit it because that would mean accepting discomfort. That’s why they say the first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have a problem. Similarly, the first step to true success is the admission that it won’t be easy, and that you’re willing to sacrifice your comfort to get there.

 

You have to be willing to grind it out — that is the part you CAN control.

 

 

Gulf of Mexico // October 2013

 

Otherwise it’s all just a pie in the sky. Your dream begins to liken itself to the club keno booths at the end of the bar — plastic, unchanging and disingenuous no matter where you choose to go. You throw your resources at it and tell yourself you are chasing something real, but in the back of your head you know you are wrong. You know you’re skipping the fundamentals and focusing on the frills. You let your whims control you and you forge no path.

 

This is your dream. You like to imagine it as a fluffy ball of clouds where you have power, fame, fortune and eternal bliss. You imagine pure comfort in all of this, and so until you feel eternally blissful you feel empty. The only time you answer someone’s “How are you doing today?” with “Living the Dream!” its with pure and bitter sarcasm.

 

I’m starting this blog to share my thoughts and my journey. I’m buying into my dream, even though it’s not fully planned, even though I work full-time and even though I’ll have to say no to a lot of things. I am confident that these sacrifices will pay off someday, because I will be comfortable knowing that I tried.

 

Until that moment of reflection comes, whenever someone asks how I’m doing, I’ll reply:

Living the dream!

with a genuine voice while i embrace the struggle and remember how great it will be to have lived a life where I legitimately pursued what gave me a sense of purpose.

BG

LTD — Go Long was originally published in Live-The-Dream on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.