Hello everyone👋, in today's post, I decided to dive out a little bit from technology this week and talk about something many people have struggled with, even as developers. I struggled a lot with this particular topic before I finally got on track and felt the need to share my experience on it.
Planning
I am the typical type of person who loves to plan a lot and doesn't like doing things on the spur of the moment unless that is my intention for that day. I love planning all the things I want and need to do for the day. For years I was not able to follow the plans I had consistently. On some days, I tried to do some of the tasks I planned; other days, I ended up doing things I never intended to do or not doing anything productive that day. I always wondered why until last year, I realized why. Sounds late right, I mean, how wouldn't you know the reasons why you have been disorganized and not achieving your set plans?
Trust me; it's never too late. After I found out why I wasn't doing well in the planning area and started doing the right things, I have achieved much more than I have achieved in the past years, and it has been rewarding. I would be sharing some of the steps I took below.
Decide on what you want to achieve💭: This is the first step to achieving your goals. Decide on where you want to be in the next month, year, or decade. Be specific about these decisions. If you decide to be a better developer, you can say by next month; I want to be better in this area. At the start of the year, I decided I wanted to know more about cloud computing and decided, I would start learning AWS. Make specific decisions on your life goals or achievements.
Write your plans down✍: I had my plans in my head and knew what I wanted to achieve for the day but couldn't do it, and this was one of the reasons. I wasn't writing them down. No matter how many plans you have in your head, if you don't write them down, they become hard to follow. As developers, we have so many tasks today from work, personal development, and all other extracurricular activities that we engage ourselves in. Writing which of them we need to achieve that day keeps us in check. If you find yourself diverting, you can always go back to your list and get back on track with what you need to do. You can always modify it too if need be, but it has to be in written form.
Set a deadline for your Goal⏳: After writing down your plans, pick a reasonable deadline for your goals and write it down. Don't say you want to have learned all of AWS or React by next month. Those are very unreasonable deadlines. If it is a big goal, like for me who is learning AWS, set sub deadlines or steps on what part you want to have achieved by a particular time. A typical example is, I want to read Eloquent JavaScript and cannot finish reading it in a month and learn what I am supposed to have. So what I do is; divide the books into chapters and say by this month, I should have completed this chapter and practised it. This way, your learning will be more efficient. Do this for each of your goals.
Organize goals by priority⚖: After writing all your goals down and setting deadlines, this is the next step. We all know what goals make the top of our lists and the ones that are just extracurricular. Decide what you need to do first or second. This way, you would be able to achieve your primary goals while not neglecting the secondary ones.
Take action and do something every day👨💻👩💻: After organizing your goals, start on them immediately. Don't procrastinate on the start time; get busy. Take your first step. Also, make sure you are doing something every day which moves in the direction of your goals. For example, read an article a day or a page on that topic you want to learn.
After taking all these steps, you would have developed self-discipline in setting and achieving your goals. Believe me; as you become consistent with this, it becomes easier to pick up more beneficial habits, and you achieve more than you ever thought you would in shorter periods.
Get planning today and achieve more🦾.
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