I’m one of those rare people who love to create plans for everything. If you can name any area in your life that you can have control over, I guarantee you that I have created a mission on how to improve that aspect of my life at some point. (Okay, so maybe I’m a little bit nutty in that respect, but that’s okay. )

Day to day planning is what I focus on now. To me, having a productive day is incredibly important. If I go to bed with a lackluster feeling, I’m almost certain to wake up in the morning carrying over some residual emotions from that. Or vice versa – a great day yesterday means a great start today. Planning has a lot to do with these feelings, obviously.

At first, I would plan out my days as if I was a productivity robot, able to burst through tasks effortlessly with a little time to spare. Back to back objectives with a little breathing room made up my schedules. I would think to myself, “this is what it means to be productive. This is what it means to schedule your time wisely.” Of course, I now know that life doesn’t work like that.

Something would always happen that would tear my plans to shreds. The task at hand would be completed way before my estimated time… not necessarily a bad thing. Or worse, the task at hand would take up way too much time, sometimes several hours more than I would have guessed. This happened way too often than not, and it often pushed other necessary, urgent tasks to the next day. While that would be okay once in a while, the cumulative effect wasn’t too pretty. I began to feel burnt out and stressed to the max.

Is it human nature to think that we’re more efficient workers than we really are? I’d like to think so. We all want to believe we’re great at barreling through tasks at a breakneck speed, able to conquer anything that we put in front of ourselves. The real world and our lives don’t work like this, however. We’re not perfect machines; we’re human beings. We plan for computers, but we behave like primates.

After these realizations, I began to plan in a different way. I had to be more flexible, more conscious in the realization that I can’t possibly execute my plans perfectly if I tried to box myself in a tight schedule day in and day out.

With a little trial and error, I worked out two planning guidelines that I use to allocate time to activities:

1. Only assign time amounts to those activities where time is the only requirement. There are certain things that I do that merely require I put in the necessary time. Piano practice is one of these. No matter if I choose to practice for one hour or three hours, I need to simply put in the time. Results will happen regardless, as long as I’m focused on the task at hand.
2. Schedule wide open spaces for activities that are creativity based. I love writing these blog posts and sharing my ideas with the world. Sometimes words flow effortlessly and I can create an inspired post at an incredible speed. At other times I decide to go at a slower pace, deliberately crafting my sentences and carefully choosing how I want to convey my message. These are the activities that I choose not to assign a time to.

Before I started planning like this, I would assume every task would be a #1 task. Somehow my brain thought that any objective could be assigned an allotted time amount and I would be able to finish that objective within that time frame. How wrong I was!

It’s true that some tasks will only require you to pump in the time. Running on the treadmill at the gym for 30 minutes will never, ever take 29 minutes or 31 minutes. Always 30. In order to knock off that exercise goal, all you have to do is put in the time. Easy. The same goes for any activity where time is the main measurable aspect of accomplishment, such as practicing a musical instrumental or studying.

But what about creative endeavors? It took me a while to realize that not all creative pursuits are made equal. There are instances where it’s fairly easy to finish up a project within a short amount of time. There are other even greater instances where more time is needed then you’d think. Countless times I’ve started writing blog posts that I think will only take me an hour to write and edit, but wind up being over 3 to 4 hours (or more) start to finish. Note that there’s nothing wrong with this – just the fact that it can and does happen.

Looking at planning through the nature of the tasks helped me create better plans that I can actually carry out. Try this method of planning out yourself. Plan for the human being that’s going to be carrying out your schedule – yourself.

Questions to ask yourself: Think of one of your current goal. Are you having trouble breaking up that goal into manageable chunks of time? What if you set aside one afternoon and freely worked on a section of that goal, without a time limit? Would you get more work or less work done? Why or why not?

It sounds like a weird, half-semantics quibble, right? A “deadline” vs. a “goal”? Why does the word choice matter? To me, the word choice (and as an extension, the word meanings) make all of the difference. I like to think of a deadline as a goal that cannot be changed – a deadline is something more finalized, a goal is still an aspiration up in the air. Turning a goal into a deadline can be used to motivate you to take action. Let’s get into a little deeper detail.

We all know what a goal is. A goal is something that you’re working towards – a final product, a finished masterpiece. But because of the nature of the word “goal,” we think of goals as being more lofty and something that isn’t exactly concrete. And the word “goal” is so vague, as well; the word “goal” can be stretched to apply to nearly anything. Visiting the South Pole can be a world traveler’s goal, but a college student’s sole goal in life might be to make it through a week’s worth of classes without feeling burnt out.

A deadline, however, isn’t lofty. It’s specific. A deadline is a deadline – a dead line. When something is dead, it’s absolutely dead. Its status will be forever unchanging: no longer alive, no longer up for discussion. A line is something that’s concrete; a line is immovable, it’s as clear as black and white. A deadline, therefore, is something that’s forever unchanging – a line that cannot be crossed under any circumstance.

We often think of “deadlines” in various ways, so I’ll do a little bit of clarifying. Here are a few different types of deadlines, with definitions:

• Daily deadlines. Things that you can reasonably expect to be done by the end of the day. An example of a daily deadline would be writing up a new blog post for your personal development blog.
• Weekly deadlines. Things that you can reasonably expect to be done by the end of the week, sometimes sooner (possibly within the time frame of three to six days.) An example of a weekly deadline would be creating a series of five blog posts on a topic you’re passionate about.
• Biweekly deadlines. Things that you can reasonably expect to be done within a time frame of two weeks. These deadlines generally have a bit more depth than a weekly deadline. You might be able to accomplish a good chunk of a two week project within a week, but that extra time you give yourself could be the difference between “good” and “outstanding.”

I hesitate to go any farther than biweekly, because monthly deadlines more or less fall along the lines of goals and goal setting. Things that take a month or longer can  be broken down into daily, weekly, and biweekly deadlines.

I know what you’re thinking at this point. “You just defined what goals are and instead swapped the word ‘deadline’ for the word ‘goal.’ How is this any different?!”

It’s different because it makes me feel different. It should make you feel different, too.

You could have a goal that you need to walk for 30 minutes a day. That’s a fabulous goal, on the outside. But what if instead of referring to your walk as a goal, you referred to it as a deadline? Think about how you would phrase that deadline – “The deadline for walking 30 minutes must be done by 6:00 PM CST today, no exceptions.” Now you created a sense of drive and need solely with your words. With no choice but to either complete your objective or fail, you’re much more likely to be motivated to take concrete action.

Deadlines pick up where goals leave off. Goals may be what you wish your future to be like, but deadlines transform those goals into realistic action steps. How will you ever expect to achieve your goals if you don’t complete the deadlines you set for yourself?

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A deadline is like a goal that’s cast in stone. How different would your life be if you thought of goals being as unchanging deadlines instead of wishes and dreams you aspire towards?

Practical application: Pick one goal that you’ve been mulling over that you want to accomplish. Choose an aspect of that goal to work on, and set daily, weekly, and biweekly deadlines for accomplishment. Be crystal clear with your planning and deadlines, and work towards competing those objectives, no matter what.

Hyperactivity is not wasting your time wallowing in pointless, mundane activities. It’s easy to get lost in a day of internet surfing, TV watching, checking up on e-mail, Twittering, and doing a lot of other virtually worthless activities that won’t add up to any real value later on in your life. Instead, hyperactivity is choosing the one goal you want to ruthlessly go after with a vengeance and directing all of your actions and thoughts onto that goal.

Hyperactivity – in the personal development, goal setting sense – is not being impulsive, reckless, or “fly by the seat of your pants”. It’s calculated and driven. You’re getting the most amount of work done in the shortest amount of time. You’re making strategic decisions to go after the activities that give you the highest rewards in the end.

Suppose one of your 2009 goals is to create a blog that produces $3,000 worth of income a month. Difficult? A little bit. Will it take a lot of work? You betcha’. Possible? Entirely.

Using hyperactivity, you would determine exactly what you need to do for the blog to grow the quickest so you can make the most money in the shortest time possible (i.e., achieving your goal before your deadline). When you identified these activities, you would do them as quickly as possible while still keeping up a high quality of results.

If you needed to submit posts to blog carnivals, you wouldn’t think “Oh, gee, well, I don’t know if I can do that right at this time… I’m kind of busy…” Instead you would immediately do it – it’s a done deal. Essential activity identified and completed. If you needed to contact other bloggers in your field, you would put the activity on your to-do list and jump on the task as soon as it came up. If a new blog post needed to be written for the day, you would write, edit, and publish the post ASAP.

Most people think you need to work in something you love to do to be successful. That’s complete B.S.. Since when do you need to love what you do to be successful in it? The world is full of unhappy, seemingly successful people, right? The only thing different between unhappy successful people and happy unsuccessful people is the level of determination that each person brings to their own job.

Donald Trump is a master at hyperactivity and getting work done each and every single day, even during vacations. So is Madonna. You could easily become a blogging superstar in any field you chose – even if you immensely hated your field – if you only focused on what needed to be done.

The key here is choosing the right activities and doing them in the quickest amount of time. But how can you decide what to do vs. what not to do? Some questions you can ask yourself:

• What kinds of benifits will doing this activity bring me? If you’re a blogger, do you get an increase in traffic? Another post to add to your archives? Another income stream? Depending on your goals, you’re going to be wanting to focus more on certain tasks than others.
• Are there any other easier ways to be achieving this goal than what I’m considering? If you want to establish online connections, are you going to focus more on personally e-mailing other bloggers or sending them quick messages on Twitter? If you want to build traffic, are you going to focus more on blog carnivals, blog comments, or forum posts? If you’re tweaking the layout of your blog, are you going to make it more streamlined so visitors can find their way around the site easier or better at income producing? Think of all the outcomes of various possibilities and stack them up against each other in your mind.

Once you find the right activities you want to accomplish, put them in a to-do list in order of most important to least important. If you can’t decide on an order, write them in any order – you’ll be going through your entire list anyways. Read the first task, and do it. When it’s done, read the second task, do that immediately. If you need to take a break, do it in between tasks, not while you’re working on something. Breaks should be quick and refreshing. As soon as your break is up, move on to the next activity.

Hyperactivity sounds draining, but in reality it’s incredibly motivating and worthwhile. You build self discipline by pushing yourself to get through beneficial tasks that might otherwise slide to the side. You reach your goals much faster than you’d ever believe because you’re working so intently on what needs to be done.

Do you really need to check how many people visited your site 5 times a day? Do you really need to be working on that e-book nobody is going to be reading because you haven’t built your traffic up yet? Do you really need to be checking your e-mail 10 times a day, just to see if that one person has returned your request? Cut out nonessential tasks. Only do what’s necessary. Do as much of it as possible.

What’s one of your goals that if you went at with a fierce sense of determination could you make a huge dent in? What if you went at that same goal with an identical attitude for 30 days straight?

So what are you waiting for? Get started today!

Today’s secret has to do with “extreme goal achievement” – what are the specific steps you can take to always get amazing, fast results when you embark on achieving your goals?

Think quick. Act even quicker. Get results now.

If you suddenly found yourself under the ice in a frozen lake, seemingly unable to escape, what would be racing through your mind? Chances are you would feel extremely claustrophobic, frantically trying to escape the sheer coldness of the icy water surrounding your body. You would be smashing the thin layer of ice above you with your fists with all your might, eventually shattering a hole in the ice above your head, big enough to escape.

To you, this might be the world’s strangest metaphor. To me, this is the perfect example of how the process of achieving your goals should ultimately feel like. You must think and act quickly. If you didn’t get the results you want, modify your game plan slightly and keep on going.

So as you can see, there are three major parts of extreme goal achievement – thinking quickly, acting swiftly, and obtaining the results from your actions.

1. Thinking quickly. The most successful people in the world have a knack for thinking quickly on their feet. They see an opportunity, a problem, a possibility, and they immediately brainstorm action plans for success. They don’t wait for permission from another person for them to start.
2. Acting swiftly. Once these people have plans ready to go, they immediately get started. They take the initiative and go for what they want, acting as if they’re going to get exactly what they dream of. The most successful people don’t wait for others to give them the green light to start. They begin ASAP.
3. Obtaining the results. The world’s most successful people gather their results and observe what worked and what didn’t work. They make immediate changes to their goals and plans, and then they try something fresh and new. They don’t sit around and balk at horrible results; they accept the fact that what they tried didn’t work, and then they try something brand new.

The easy part is reading about the three parts of extreme goal achievement. The hard part is applying them to your life to consistently get great results. To do this, you have to ingrain this method of thinking into your memory.

Make this line of thinking a way of life.

Thinking like this is a habit. It’s a total way of life.

Most people think incredibly successful people, from entertainers to athletes to business people, got to super-stardom in their respective fields through a blind stroke of luck. And in some cases, that’s what propelled them to achieve the results they earned. Sometimes exactly what a person needs is an unforeseen opportunity for them to shine so their talents can be fully recognized by everybody else.

But in most cases, this isn’t what happens. The top people do what I described above. They think quickly when they see a brand new opportunity arise that hasn’t been taken advantage of yet. Once they formulate a plan, they act swiftly, trying to score the results they desperately dream of obtaining. And once they finish their plan, they obtain and glance at their results. What succeeded? What failed? What can they do even better next time to obtain even better results?

98% of people aren’t like this. Most people are fairly lazy. They really don’t care to rise above the mediocre. If you asked them where they want to be a year from now, they might be able to mumble a fuzzy, vague answer at best; if you asked them where they want to be five years from now, they’d have no clue whatsoever.

Then somebody comes along, blows away the entire status quo, becomes a celebrity in their chosen field, and the average people wonder why they couldn’t achieve those same results.

The amazing news is that you can achieve those results. You can become a blogger making a full time living online. You can go to college and get that degree you’ve always wanted. You can find your soulmate and start a family with them. But these things take time and effort; they require you to put forth an incredibly amount of self discipline and change your entire “normal” line of thinking.

Extreme goal achievement shouldn’t be a secret. In fact, it’s not too much of a secret anymore – I’m sharing exactly how to achieve your wildest goals right here in this post. But in the end, it’s up to you. You have to take those first steps. You have to find an opportunity, you need to create an action plan and work that plan as quickly as possible, and you need to measure up your results to find out how you can optimize your actions to work even better in the future.

It doesn’t matter what field you’re in. It doesn’t matter where you come from in life or where you want to go. It’s all the same, to everybody. Goal achievement, across the board, is universal.

Think quickly, act swiftly, obtain results should be your mantra. Say it until you’re sick of it and see if it doesn’t make you into a better, more successful person.

Our human ability to imagine a better future for ourselves and translate our vision into words is something most people take for granted. As a result, most people don’t bother setting goals – they have a general idea of where they’re headed and where they want to go, which is good enough for them. And that’s totally okay! You don’t need clearly defined goals to have a sense of direction in your life. (This also includes people who set goals in only a specific area in their life and let all of the other facets slide – e.g., the manager who only sets goals to meet certain monthly quotas in her business.)

In Philip Zimbardo’s awesome book, The Time Paradox (opens in a new window), he explains there are several perspectives human beings look at time through: the past, the present, and the future. The past perspective is concerned with past events and how we relate to and think about them; the present perspective is concerned with how we’re going to find immediate happiness in our lives; the future perspective is concerned with what actions we can take right now to achieve our future goals. While the three time-frame labels aren’t exactly breathtakingly new, the unique twist on looking at the time-frames makes the book incredibly worthwhile to read.

I’ve read parts of it, and already it’s changed my views on thinking of my personal goals and my limited time. In this blog post, I want to share two mindsets with you that he talks about in the book – the “present-minded mindset” and the “future-minded mindset.” Both are ways of living and analyzing time management with. Utilizing both of their unique benefits in your life can make your life a more richer, rewarding experience.

The Present-Minded Mindset

The present-minded mindset is being totally focused on the present moment, with no regard for how your decisions will affect your future at all. Generally this means being focused on what can make you pleasured and happy immediately, without looking at the long term consequences of your actions.

Smoking is an example of a present-minded action. So is eating that double quarter pounder with cheese you just ordered from McDonald’s because you’re a bit hungry and need some fuel. Drinking copious amounts of alcohol, gambling, and whittling away your time at video games are all activities that make you happy solely in the present. These choices lead to future consequences down the road – lung cancer, a failed liver, a highly developed character in a video game – but your focus isn’t on the future. It’s completely on the here and now. What can you do right now to give yourself a little thrill?

You see this mindset with teenagers and young adults. Do you have a one night stand to make you satisfied, or do you wait it out just a bit longer to find somebody you’re more comfortable with? Risk vs. reward thinking is subtle here – you may know promiscuous sex can lead to unwanted pregnancies and STDs, but that’s not what’s on your mind. Your mind is set on what the immediate rewards are, so why dilute that with thinking about future consequences? The rewards you’d get from having sexual activity right now is far greater than analyzing the pros and cons in your mind.

The Future-Minded Mindset

The future-minded mindset is being totally focused on the future, with all of your current actions stemming from a desire to want to build a better future for yourself or others.

Why do high achievers always achieve so highly and make the rest of the population scratch their heads in awe and wonder? It’s not because they’re that different than you – it’s because they’re solely focused on the future. They have specific goals that they must accomplish at all costs, and they eschew everything that doesn’t lead directly to their desired results.

Future-minded people have no will to engage in pleasurable activities that only benefit them in the now. Choosing between watching a half hour TV show and reading a book about their desired work field, they’ll always choose the book. Distractions need to be dealt with and removed ASAP; what matters most is getting results. Anything else isn’t worth the battle.

Delaying gratification whenever the future rewards outweigh the immediate benefits is something future oriented people are masters at. If I told you that I would give you either $50 today or in two months I’d give you $100, would you choose the former or the latter? Future-minded people would immediately choose the latter. To them, the choice is simple – there’s a bigger reward to be had in the future if short term happiness is skipped.

Combining the Two Mindsets for Amazing Goal Achievement

When people set goals, it’s rarely in a present-minded mindset. Goals start out with a future-minded thought, e.g., “I wish I made more money!” Then they turn into some kind of  more specific statement, “I will make $3,000 a year completely through my personal development blog.” It’s only then do we turn our goals into a present-minded version, “I make $3,000 a year completely through my personal development blog.”

Writing out your goals completely in the present seems like a fabulous idea on the surface – if I can imagine my goals are real right now, that would make me want to act in congruent with those goals. If I feel like I’m already making $3,000 a month through my blog, I might be more apt to continuously deliver actions that really do get me those results; I’d create an awesome self-fulfilling prophecy for myself. But is a present-minded model of goal setting really worth it in the end? It’s both yes and no. If present-minded written goals conjure up thoughts of immediate happiness and instant gratification, then they can be pretty effective. Otherwise, I would personally would stick to future-minded goal setting.

It’s important to have a razor sharp focus on the future to know specifically where you are headed in all areas of your life, but it’s also equally important to enjoy your present moment as much as possible.

Present moments allow you to have immediate fun; future-minded thinking allows you to gaze into the future and allocate your time to goal achievement. Living solely in the distant future can drain your happiness bit by bit because you don’t feel as happy as you should; living without a regard for tomorrow can make your life miserable in the future. Becoming so obsessed with the risks in life can lead you not take calculated risks that could end up being major rewards.

Where do you fall in the grand scheme of things? Do you focus more on the present, skipping out on your long term goals to have fun right here, right now? Or is your focus more skewed towards the future, missing out on fun right now for a better life someday? Focusing on the future but also having fun in the present is the way to go – but you can’t go wrong consciously choosing the way to spend your time, every day.

This approach can – and does – work decently well. But that last line – “when they need the help and assistance of other people, they ask” – that’s a little bit bothersome, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it make sense to find people you need to achieve your goals beforehand?

Let’s proactively switch up the status quo for a minute. What if we consciously made the decision to enlist other people in our goals to create a win-win situation for both parties, before we even began our goal?

There are at least three major benefits of this method:

1. You save money.

Let’s pretend your the director of a production of “My Fair Lady.” The show is premiering in exactly one week, and you have no pianist. You need a piano player ASAP, but the only one you can find is charging you $500 to do the entire run of shows. You might be forced to pay up. You have no choice because you don’t have time to comparison shop. You might lose money, the show definitely might lose money, but you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.

What’s sadly ironic is this is exactly how some theater directors operate. Waiting until the last minute to find specialized help, they complain because the services they get are inadequate or majorly expensive. Oftentimes, these directors can’t find any help in the little time they have left.

Do your goals have any specialized compartments that require you to pay another person for their services, such as a web designer, photographer, or musician? Can you network around beforehand to find the necessary help at a cheaper rate instead of waiting until the last minute?

2. You save time.

When you were a little kid solving a puzzle, what’s the first thing your parents had you do? Find all the outside pieces, pop them in place, and slowly connect your way into the middle. But what happens if you tried to work this method backwards – connect all the inside pieces first, and save the outside border for last? You’d be in for a long puzzle.

Goal achievement should work the exact same way. Find people who can help you achieve your goals before you start. Figure out exactly what types of people you’re going to need and contact them ahead of time. Connect the puzzle pieces and create a strong border. Otherwise you might come to a crucial point in your goal without any connecting pieces, and then you’d be out of luck.

3. You make connections.

The majority of life is all about making honest connects with other people. You can’t survive shunned off from socialization… unless you’re good at making money online. In nearly every career, you need people. People are the reason you can make more money, get that promotion, and find your soul mate. The more connections you have, the more likely you are to advance your life at a higher rate than normal.

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What can you do right now?

Think of your most pressing goal. Have you been going at this goal alone, or with others? If you had no choice but to network with other people to get the job done quicker and more efficiently, who would you ask for help? Who’s services would you enable? Can you make contact with these people ASAP and see how they can aid you?