High Performance Goal Flow

My first job at fifteen was working at my dad’s industrial warehouse. We were building those commercial signs you see everywhere on the outside of buildings with neon lights inside. I learned the lesson of hard work in that shop as our crew would exceed 24, 48, and 72 hour long days to meet customer deadlines. It was good training but with a double edged nature.

Learning the Value of Time

Six months later, when I was sixteen, I started my second job programming a computer. Working 18+ hours 7 days a week became my norm; it was my homeschool. I carried the habit fourteen more years through military service and a civilian job afterwards. I was rewarded for my behavior everywhere I went but I eventually broke down and hit my physical limits. I’d finally learned the value of time.

Time is your most limited resource, period!

Time is the only thing you can spend and never get back. What I learned after years of trading sleep for productivity was how to use my time more effectively and efficiently. I took a programatic approach to managing my time and rooted out every ounce of waste. I was forced to focus and become more self-disciplined.

If I could go back to when I started with a system like Goal Flow I would’ve invested less time and achieved a lot more.

Self Discipline

Self-discipline is the linchpin of productivity. If you don’t have it you will fail. So make sure you read that post if you need help.

Luckily, Goal Flow is an ideal application for self-discipline and you can learn these skills in tandem.

With the power of your will and decision in hand, let us proceed to understand how to structure our day with a very brief philosophical reframe of our perspective on time itself.

Philosophy of Time

You likely have a linear mental representation of time with our universe having a beginning heading towards its inevitable end. In school you probably saw something like this:

The first questions most people will ask is what happened before or what happens after? How did we get something from nothing? It falls apart upon immediate inspection by the logical mind. Humanity will not view time this way for much longer and I believe you are best served by adopting a non-linear view. Everything we see persisting through time exists as a cycle or else it will disappear.

It’s a paradoxical type situation. Presence is the only point in time we can perceive and everything arises from it. The past flows from the present yet the past must exist for both presence and the future to exist. It is an eternal and co-creative action.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. - Albert Einstein

Do you suppose he would agree that it’s a necessary illusion? I view time as an instrument for creation. Eternally flowing from an elusive presence at the beck and call of our will. We can use it to mold our vision into reality and how we decide to use it is what matters most.

Change your perspective on time and realize you are not a victim of it but its master. Time is your loyal servant standing by to reify your imagination through your creative acts.

To properly manage time and make plans that bring our visions to life we need a tracking system. Humans have been using calendars to track time for millennia and it’s important to understand how we measure time, the origination of our modern Gregorian calendar, and that our ancestors viewed time differently.

How We Got Our Calendar

Many ancient civilizations tracked the celestial bodies of the night sky and observed the cyclical nature of their movement and developed calendars to track them.

Presumably, the first measure was the time it takes the Earth to complete one rotation. Ancient Egyptians used devices like sun dials to measure the change in time and broke day and night into 12 units. This is the origin of the modern 24 hour day. Egyptians are known to have utilized base12 as opposed to our daily use of base10. Sumerians used base60 for astronomical calculation which is why we have a subdivision of 60 minutes and 60 seconds for each hour.

Ancient Egyptians also observed the seasonal changes denoted by the equinoxes and solstices, thus formulating the concept of a solar year and transitioning from a lunar calendar. They divided the year into three seasons consisting of 120 days. Each season had four 30 day months, meaning, each year was a total of 12 months with 360 days. They added 5 extra days at the end of each year to arrive at our familiar 365. Their calendar is graceful and was subsequently adopted by Europeans.

Ancient Egyptians created our modern solar-based calendar of 365 days with 12 months and a 24 hour day. Our calendar is at least 5,000 years old.

Ancient Egyptians also knew about the constellations of the zodiac. The significance being, they observed cycles of time on a vast scale like the Mayans with their long count calendar which was 144K days.

The Dendera zodiac Egyptian bas-relief.

Understanding how some of our ancient ancestors viewed time is essential to a healthy and cyclical perspective.

Cyclical Thinking

When we think in cycles we are empowered with the ability to work in focused intervals towards explicit outcomes and optimize our routines upon reflection.

The majority of people work in a linear fashion, even viewing their career as a preparation for their retirement and death. They wake, work straight through the day, and take the weekends and holidays off. They live as though they have many days ahead.

You live only for a day. Yesterday is dead and tomorrow is in today’s imagination. Live today completely.

Weeks, months and holidays are entirely arbitrary. There is no reason to live your life by them. Days and years are measures of natural cycles. These two rhythms provide us everything we need to efficiently manage our time.

The only natural cycles we require for planning are days and years. Exclude all else, especially weekends, from your thinking.

Your day begins when you wake up and ends when you go to sleep and the times you chose are personal. Ideally, you should sleep when tired and wake naturally.

Your day should consist of several mini routines, or cycles, accompanied by pre and post actions. Longer cycles should be designed to encompass multiple days and have their own pre and post actions. You are technically doing this now with the constructs of weeks, months, and quarters. I’m proposing you only use quarters and design, or discover, better cycle durations that support your efforts and lifestyle.

Replace weeks and months with your own cycle times, i.e., 10 days / 40 days. Discover the natural rhythm of your body, design your life around it and optimize it.

Goal Flow Methodology

With a cyclical mindset and new perspective on time, let’s begin to construct new daily routines and compose them into larger blocks of time.

When you work in a Goal Flow you become entirely focused on achieving outcomes. All your time is wholly dedicated to realizing your goals, even rest.

1) Goal and Outcome Definitions

Identify all your goals. These are your mid and long range targets. Every morning you will see these targets and relentlessly pursue the desired outcomes associated with them.

1.1) Be as specific as possible

Having extremely clear goals and outcomes you want will allow your brain to comprehend them and even work for you in the background while resting or doing other activities. Ambiguity creates doubts and divides attention. The mind will seek to resolve that ambiguity so do it up front.

Do not set goals like “make a million dollars”. Translate that into something like “create a proof-of-concept for xyz product idea” or, even better, “determine if customers exist willing to pay for xyz product idea”. Only create goals you can achieve without question. You want to know that by putting effort in you’ll get it done.

1.2) Refine

After you’ve defined everything you have in mind you should scrutinize the list. Employ something like Buffett’s 5/25 rule. The aim is to filter out the goals that will prevent you from being successful overall. Look specifically for the ones that don’t give you big returns. Especially in the beginning, it’s wise to do less.

Some goals require validation. You may have had a business idea rolling around your brain for years and never even validated its viability. In that case you need to exclude it because it’s ambiguous. The best you can do is make a goal to validate it. You want to know that applied effort will yield a result.

1.3) Optimize

Organize your goals into Pareto efficiencies where possible. That’s a fancy way to say that if two or more goals are mutually beneficial they should be near the top of your list.

Look for opportunities to organize your goals into your own personal Flywheel. This means accomplishing one goal will provide outcomes that fuel the next. Eventually coming back round to the first goal creating a kind of circular perpetual motion.

2) Time Management

Once your goals are defined you must create your routines to start driving towards your desired outcomes and measuring your performance. I call these “Goal Flows” because the word “routine” doesn’t imply any action is taken to advance towards an outcome.

2.1) Create Goal Flows

Create at least two daily flows. e.g.

• Flow 1
  • Wake
  • Meditate
  • Plan
  • Business goal, outcome X
  • Communications (email, text, phone, etc)
  • Handle ad-hoc task work
  • Business goal, outcome Y
  • Fitness goal
  • Business goal, outcome X
  • Communications (email, text, phone, etc)
  • Handle ad-hoc task work
  • Business goal, outcome Y
  • End-of-day review & reflection
  • Family, Love, (Inter/Intra)personal goal
• Flow 2
  • Wake
  • Fitness goal
  • Plan
  • Business goal, outcome X
  • Business goal, outcome Y
  • Family, Love, (Inter/Intra)personal goal
  • End-of-day review & reflection
  • Family, Love, (Inter/Intra)personal goal
• Flow 3
  • Wake
  • Fitness goal
  • Relaxation
  • Family, Love, (Inter/Intra)personal goal
  • End-of-day review & reflection

Over time you’ll end up with many different flows. In the beginning you need at least two so you can begin to compare.

Bear in mind a new routine can take 66 days to become habitual for the average person.

2.2) Select a Goal Flow

When you first wake up you’ll select a particular routine. The factors by which you chose include things like:

• Physical and mental energy level
• Quality and duration of sleep
• Time constraints for the day
• Which goals you choose to prioritize

Every day will begin with planning and end with reflective analysis no matter what routine is selected.

2.3) Execution

While working throughout your day:

• Don’t multitask
• Take breaks
  • Use the (pomadoro technique when helpful
  • Meditate
  • Breathe
  • Exercise
• Limit interruptions
• Leave buffer time between blocks of work
• Drive towards outcomes for each block
• Address high willpower work early in the day and after a later (mid-day) rest period

You may choose to time-box your blocks of effort or not. It’s up to you.

Over time I found it best to focus on outcomes and not worry about time boundaries. After enough practice I became good at intuiting levels of effort enough to keep the blocks focused so I could achieve them all in a day.

2.4) Reflect

At the end of the day document your progress and assess your performance. This is where you can begin performance assessments of alternate daily flows. It will take time to collect enough data to inform a change. Be patient and over time you’ll reach homeostasis.

During your review session:

• Think about the priorities for tomorrow
• Track any regrets you have for the day
• Seek sustainability
• Rate the quality of your day in multiple categories such as:
  • Energy level
  • Work satisfaction
  • Progress towards goals
  • Outcome achievement
  • Family happiness
  • Self-discipline
  • etc.
• Document your lessons
• Practice gratitude

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. — Charles Dickens

2.5) Rest Times & Strategy Sessions

Once you are flowing through your daily routines you are ready to implement periodic rest periods and strategic analysis sessions. By working in a Goal Flow with no regard for arbitrary rest periods, like weekends and holidays, you’ll begin to detect when you fatigue and need to recharge. After doing this long enough I have such a balanced lifestyle that I don’t need rest often. You’ll discover your own on/off cycle that works best for you.

At least quarterly, you should do a big strategy session and possible rearrange your goals and needed outcomes. I set goals by quarter and take time to do milestone checks every 20 - 40 days depending on the type of work. Fitness goals require different checkpoint durations than business goals for example.

Principles

Some guiding principles I bear in mind throughout my days are:

• Value your time
• Guard your time; limit meetings; say no
• Fully focus on tasks, be methodical and deliberate
• Plan time to recharge
  • Watch for signs you need to recharge
• Automate everything possible
• Don’t be perfect
• 80/20 rule, 80% of the value is in 20% of your effort
• Stop half-work; get to the end, even if that means just doing a draft
  • Make iterative updates until you get to the final version
  • This way you achieve an outcome each time you visit the work
• Delegate what you can
• Don’t waste time waiting
• Parkinson’s Law
• 2-minute rule
• Telecommute when possible
• Change locations to keep things fresh
• Tap into the energy of others
  • Have a list of go-to people
• Limit/eliminate social media use
• Maintain an investment mentality and seek returns for your time
• Reduce decision fatigue
  • Make decisions that can eliminate many more
  • Be decisive and get them over with
  • Commit to decisions and avoid revisiting them
• Plan around strenuous work; maintain balance each day
• Maintain peak mental performance
  • As with physical exercise, don’t over work yourself so much that you can’t perform the next day. Strive to perform every day.
• Increase decision speed and resolve unknowns soon
• 10-10-10 Rule

Conclusion

Time is our most limited resource. How we choose to manage it will be the difference between success and failure for most of us. A cyclical approach to managing time allows for the natural process of refinement, reflection, and optimization to bring your flow into a state of homeostasis and turn you into a productivity powerhouse!

Goal Flow methodology overview:

• Create a list of goals with specific outcomes
  • Refine your goal list using the 5/25 rule or similar
  • Optimize your list even more by utilizing the Pareto efficiency and Flywheel principles
• Time management
  • Create Goal Flows (aka routines that drive towards outcomes)
  • Select a Goal Flow at the beginning of your day based on energy level, time constraints, etc.
  • Execute your plan and avoid multitasking, distractions, and drive towards outcomes in focus session
  • Take time to reflect at the end of your day and improve for tomorrow
    • Do your best and forget the rest
  • Plan in rest times and strategy sessions but let go of the weekend mentality