A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
You have probably already heard this quote a thousand times before and are probably sick of it. Despite that, there's a good reason you've heard it so much: it's true.
Let's dive into what “actionable steps” are and how we can use them to become as efficient and productive as possible in our everyday lives.
Actionable steps are specific actions that can be taken to achieve a particular goal or objective. They are concrete and measurable, and their purpose is to make achieving big goals easier by breaking them down into smaller, more manageable tasks.
Before getting into all of the ways we can incorporate them into our everyday lives, let's get familiar with all of the possible benefits.
If you break down one big goal into many smaller ones, you accomplish more goals in less time. That way, it's easier to get a sense of where you're at and how fast you are working toward your goals.
From personal experience, I can tell that that certainly makes you more ambitious about accomplishing goals and motivates you to continue achieving them until you achieve your big goals as well.
When you have a list of actionable steps, you can prioritize them based on their importance and urgency. This helps to ensure that you focus on the tasks that are most important and likely to have the greatest impact, while spending less time on the unnecessary ones.
Actionable steps establish a clear plan of action and help to ensure that progress towards the goal can be tracked and measured.
Establishing a clear plan of action is great because we know exactly what to do to stay on course towards achieving our goals. If we stray from that plan of action, we feel guilty and hold ourselves accountable.
That can motivate us to make up for any detours we take and help us achieve our goals even faster.
Breaking down goals into manageable steps is easy. Just think about your goal and answer these questions:
Let's look at an example:
Tina wants to get into shape. The next step she can take is to go to the gym. She can break down that step into even smaller steps, such as putting on her workout clothes. Once she does that, the rest becomes easier. To encourage going to the gym, she can prepare her workout clothes every evening before she goes to the gym. To stay motivated, she could take a nice, relaxing bath after working out. Despite all of that, she could still procrastinate going to the gym. To prevent that, she can tell a friend that she started working out and send her updates about her progress.
See? It isn't that hard at all! You can even use to-do lists or keep an accountability diary to track your progress towards your goal.
Actionable steps are key to success and are essential to effective goal-setting. They can skyrocket your productivity by constantly motivating you and making you aware of what's really necessary for achieving your goals. We can use them to achieve any goal by asking, “What can I do now to achieve this goal?” Although this is a proven technique for success, the major con is that the real results depend on your self-discipline and how dedicated you are to achieving your goals.
By Marko D, Tsumori Productivity: March 15th, 2023.