Yesterday, I talked about how it’s okay to want what you want.
But there’s a second part to that:
You have to know what you want.
As I’ve been going through my journals, I’m realizing how much time I’ve spent trying to answer that question.
Dan Sullivan once committed to writing, “What do I want?” in his journal every day for 25 years.
He understood that many of the situations he’d found himself in were the result of not being clear enough about what he actually wanted.
So that’s a good place to start.
Take out a piece of paper and write:
What do I want?
Don’t limit yourself or immediately start worrying about how you’re going to get it.
You might begin with your days.
What do you want your mornings to look like?
Where do you want to be?
Who do you want around you?
How do you want the day to flow?
You can also walk through your environment as though you were creating a property improvement plan.
What would make this room better?
What problem could be permanently solved?
What small improvement would make your life easier every day?
I’ve always kept pages in my journals called “Better Ideas”—little observations about things that could be improved.
You can also look at the activities that fill your time.
Which ones light you up?
Which ones are merely tolerable?
Which ones drive you crazy?
That list gives you something practical to work from:
Do more of what energizes you.
Improve or delegate what you merely tolerate.
Begin systematically eliminating what drains you.
That’s one of the great advantages of being an entrepreneur.
You have more power than most people to design your days, your environment, and the work you do.
But you can’t design it until you can see it.
But you can’t design it until you can see it.
It’s okay to want what you want.
But first, you have to take the time to discover what that really is.