When I began my business doing consulting, the freedom was great. I could do anything I wanted whenever I wanted. No one was there to look over my shoulder to tell me what to do. I knew I had to deliver things, but it seemed that was always a job for “Future Jon”. Until the first month went by and I created my invoice (at that time everything I did was hourly based) and dropped my hours onto the detail log and summed up my fee based on the hours and rate.
Uh… oops. I guess “Future Jon” was on vacation.
I learned an important lesson that month that I needed to work hours to write invoices.
Even though I really dislike hourly billing for customer facing payments, I don’t think I’ll ever get away from keeping track of my productive client hours. Why? Because of that first month I worked. I know I need those hours for myself to work in order to make progress on whatever I’ve promised to deliver.
So I had motivation. If you find you aren’t doing something (eating right, exercise, etc.) I look for motivation for myself. Why do I want to do it? I am particularly motivated by knowing the likelihood of future benefits. But there’s more. Consider these three things as stages to discipline (continuing to do things)
- Motivation
- Goals
- Revitalization
Once I’m motivated to do something, I’ll set goals. Goals should be concrete things you can say were definitely accomplished or not. I want to hit 170lbs on the scale. Ok. That’s a goal. If I weight 300lbs, I might want to smart smaller so I can build on accomplishments.
Once you either reach a goal or have miserably failed to reach a goal in the desired timeframe, you will need to revitalize your efforts. For me this might be re-reading the book Eat To Live by Joel Fuhrman. This will remind me of all the positive consequences of eating healthy and re-spark my desire, then I can set a new goal. If I just failed, maybe it will be a less aggressive goal, or something I think I just can’t fail at.
So anyway, this is the process I find myself using to be disciplined and continue to do things that need to be done when I have no one looking over my shoulder to tell me. I’ve lived this way in business for about 25 years and I like it.
What are your experiences with being disciplined and following through on things?