I get faced with this issue often – clients wanting to quadruple their income in just a few months, or they’re planning to dominate the market when they’re brand-new in business.

I never ask clients to play small, but I do want them set up to win.  So I ask if their goal is worth shooting for – regardless of the results. 

When a client says that the process is only worth it if they get big results, I usually recommend they choose another goal.  Why?  Because when clients need big results to feel satisfied, their commitment withers up on the days when the results look doubtful.  In other words, they’ll lose their passion and enthusiasm right at the moment when they need it most to keep going.

When I hear a client say that they’d be happy they played for the goal, even if they miss it by a mile, I know their goals are a good fit for them – no matter how big the goal is.  The endeavour is fulfillment all by itself, and they’ll keep playing even when it looks impossible.  And really, “keeping playing” may be all it takes to achieve the impossible, so these clients actually have a chance of doing it.

The key isn’t to pretend you want to do the process, and fake yourself into thinking you’re committed.  The key is to be honest with yourself about your desires for results AND the process, and choose your goals accordingly.

Instead of telling him to just get it done, I helped him figure out how much time the project would really take and how many hours he had to do it in. We split the work up into a chunk for each hour. He made a deal with himself: every hour, he'd finish one chunk of work. Then he could spend the rest of that hour doing whatever he wanted. When the next hour began, he repeated the process.

Guess what happened? He got the project done on time and hardly felt like he'd been working, because he allowed himself some time to play as well. Sometimes just plowing through a project isn't the best way to go about it. If you feel overwhelmed, try to come up with a way to let yourself get some playtime as a reward for doing the work. You may find yourself getting it done faster and more easily than you ever thought possible.

We all do it sometimes. Instead of focusing on the task at hand, we steal glances at the clock every few minutes, thinking ahead to what we’d rather be doing and when we can leave to go do it.

If you do that, though, then you know that watching the clock does exactly the opposite of what you hope it will. Time passes more slowly, and what you have to do seems even more tedious than before.

So how do you get out of the clock-watching trap?

It’s simple: make yourself be present in what you’re doing. Even if all you’re doing is entering a bunch of addresses into a database, there’s pleasure to be found in being present and doing something as well as you can.

Turn your clock around (or hide the clock icon on your computer desktop) so that you can’t keep glancing at it. Just focus on the task at hand. Think about your task and how you can do it to the best of your abilities. Then do it! If you stay present in your task, you’ll work better, enjoy it more, and then? Voila–the time passes faster, and you’re done!

Come play with us.

Think about it: No matter what you do, there will never be more time in the day. You’ll always have just 24 hours (minus the time you take to sleep, eat, and otherwise take care of yourself–and you are taking care of yourself, right?).

What makes the difference between achieving your dream and letting it gather dust isn’t how much time you have. It’s what you do with that time.

Get out of the mindset of needing big blocks of time to pursue your goals. Life may get in the way and make having two hours an evening to write your novel or two days a week to build your business impossible.

Instead, take advantage of the little chunks of time you can carve out. Ten minutes here and there will add up to real progress without feeling like a burden. Even better if you can manage a couple of those ten-minute sessions a day. Just three ten-minute blocks is a half an hour that you’ve spent working on what matters to you.

Here’s a challenge: Figure out what you need to do next on that project you’ve always dreamed of finishing. The next time you have ten minutes to spare, get started. Don’t worry about how much you can get done, and don’t worry about how long it might take you to reach your ultimate goal. Just get started. Ten minutes later, you’ll have made a great beginning.

Next, figure out when you can spend another ten minutes on it. The very act of getting started will probably have gotten you excited; finding more time won’t be hard. Do another ten minutes. Then, the next time you have a chance, do just a little bit more.

After a week of this, look at how much you’ve accomplished. Amazing, isn’t it?

Simply getting started and taking advantage of the short breaks you get throughout the day will give you the momentum you need to keep going. After that, you’ll leap at every chance to do just a little bit more. And before you know it, you may be so far into your dream project that finding more time to work on it won’t seem so hard anymore.

And then? You’ll be done!

Many of us suffer from the same problem: too much to do, and too little time. Just thinking about everything we “have” to get done makes us freeze up. In the end, we don’t get anything done at all.

Want the truth? No, you’ll never get it all done. But accepting that is the key to getting more done.

We have a habit of thinking we’ll work really hard now and feel better later, when “everything is done.” Unfortunately, it usually doesn’t work out that way. Most of us struggle and struggle and never lighten up, because we’re chasing an impossible goal: the to-do list that gets cleaned out and never comes back.

But to-do lists never go away. They always renew themselves. Just checked “grocery shopping” off your list? Guess what? It’ll go right back on when the milk runs out. Just finished paying your bills? Next month you’ll face another round. “Everything” will never be done!

So how can you get more done? Reject the mindset that everything has to be done. Not everything has to be done. Not everything has to be done right now. In fact, many things can be postponed, or ditched altogether.

To figure out what you should do, ask yourself a few questions. What matters to you? What brings you joy and fulfills your sense of your direction in life? Those are the things you should focus on first and most. Once you realize that, taking care of those tasks will come naturally. As for the rest? It can wait.

Personally, I almost rarely do something the moment it occurs to me. Instead, I keep my schedule next to my desk and note all those “to-dos” in one list. Every day, I spend an hour handling that list. That doesn’t mean that I do all those things then. I might do them, or I might take that time to schedule them for later or decide to ditch them.

The advantage of this is that putting off those “to-dos” temporarily gives me time to consider whether I really need to do them. They may not be as important as I originally thought; they may not be important at all. Giving myself the time to realize this, instead of blindly rushing to check items off of my list, often saves me time I would have wasted struggling with an unnecessary task.

We often get caught up in the busywork of productivity. Getting “things” done isn’t what really matters. Getting the things done that are important to you–that’s what matters. In the end, if you focus on what matters, instead of getting dragged down by what doesn’t, you’ll find yourself free to get a lot more done.

A great schedule blocks off time for you to do the things that matter to you. It protects you from overwork. It makes sure you get time to play.

A great schedule says, “It’s important that I work, but my life is always more important. I could defer “living” forever, trying to get work right. Instead, I’ll use “living” to enjoy life fully, and support my work.

A bad schedule is one where you have to find time to play in-between all the things you have to do. It micro-manages you. It makes you less important than tasks.

A schedule guides you and tells you what to do at a given time. So most people confuse it with a slave-driver or a boss, that gets to say what you do. Most people forget that they’re the ones who create the schedule. Imagine if you were the slave-driver’s boss (hint: you ARE). Now you get to say to the slave-driver: “Make her go to the spa for a massage.” Or, “Don’t let her work too hard. If she breaks that rule, give her extra time off.”

Imagine if your schedule was filled with things like:

• All day Sunday. Empty block. This is my time to do whatever I want in the moment as it occurs to me.
• 7am – 8:30 am. Monday morning. Take time to read, eat, and enjoy coffee. I love this time to myself.
• 6pm Tuesday. Go to kids soccer game and have fun watching them learn to kick the ball. Make sure I free up my attention for that.
• 4pm Wednesday. Take off early for a massage appointment. My job for the hour is to enjoy the massage fully.
• 5pm Friday. Meet Alex for Happy Hour and a movie. This is our time for ourselves without the kids.

And then you filled in all the time slots with work. There’s still plenty of time on this schedule. But you’ve constructed it so it’s in your interests.

So often, we think of our inner rebel as an agent of self-sabotage. It's not. What our inner rebel is fighting against are our habits of beating ourselves up in the name of "productivity." Our inner rebel is rebelling against our inner schoolmarm, the one who smacks our hand with a ruler and then asks us why we can't work, when the answer's obvious: our hand hurts!

Your inner rebel is the voice that tells you, "There's so much more to life than this." She refuses to give in to self-abuse. She wants you to enjoy life–to get some play.

If you have an inner rebel, that means you have an inner schoolmarm. One doesn't exist without the other. Your inner schoolmarm is the voice in your head demanding that you put your nose to the grindstone, that forbids you from going out until your work is finished. And your work is never really finished, is it?

Rebels resist authority. If you ever saw the movie Footloose, you might remember that the biggest rebel in town was the daughter of the Christian minister, a man so conservative he banned dancing. The strength of her rebellion was directly related to his insistence on his own authority.

Similarly, if your inner rebel is strong, it's because it's resisting your inner authority's demands on yourself, like pushing yourself too hard.

Most people never listen to their inner rebel. They're too busy being like that minister, assuming that authority is always right. By not listening to their inner rebel, they just continue the pattern of the rebel resisting the authority. The stress of the conflict slows them down and makes them miserable.

What we need is neither rebellion nor obedience. What we want is a state that we won't rebel against.

Your inner rebel represents real needs that you aren't acknowledging. Those needs might be for things like freedom, play, or peace of mind. Your inner rebel won't stop rebelling until you let yourself fulfill those needs.

The fastest way to get your inner rebel to work for you is to give her some of what she wants. Add some items to your schedule that feel good. Treat yourself to a lovely dinner, quality time with your kids, or maybe just quiet time to yourself. Get a massage. Take a vacation. Get the idea?

The trick is you have to keep these promises you make to yourself, just as much as you keep your deadline commitments with your work.

Make pleasure a priority, and your inner rebel will stop sabotaging your work.