Goals are dreams with deadlines.

Goals are dreams with deadlines. ~ Diana Scharf Hunt

#2 Today I am grateful to stay focused on the tasks that will ensure I meet my larger goal objectives by creating and keeping deadlines for myself.

The older I get, time seems to slip by faster and faster. Sometimes I have felt like hours have gone by and I know I was busy but I'm really not sure where the time went. Knowing that I have a tendency to become easily distracted, this year I'd like to improve upon setting and keeping deadlines to ensure success. As I wrote down my 2013 goals last week, I added deadlines to completing each project.

When I break down my long term goals into daily tasks, one way to ensure I am staying focused on meeting my deadlines is to set timers for each task. At home as I awake in the morning and my coffee is brewing, I spend that time cleaning the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher, wiping down the counters and tidying that area. By the time the coffee is brewed 10 minutes later, I have a nice clean space ready for preparing my meals for the day. I then sit down with my coffee and spend the next 30 minutes planning my day. I know from past experience that if I don't do this daily, my highest priority items will not be my focus and I'll continue to wonder where the time went.

While working, I set a timer to stay focused on each project. For example, a daily goal is to spend 1 hour a day on research and collecting data for an idea that I've wanted to implement for a while but haven't made time to do so as of yet. I now set a timer. When the timer ends, I move on to a different task. This helps me stay productive and organized while handling multiple priorities and obligations and keeps me from getting sidetracked by distractions.

As a recommendation, I really like this great egg timer project by David LeMieux. It's a great tool to stay focused on a task for a set period of time. I hope you enjoy using it as much as I do. :)