stephen covey

I am doing a series of posts further explaining the ideas in my new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice; All in 140 Characters or Less.

Today’s post is on Tweet 13…

Your vivid mental image is a blueprint.  It is a plan for success, but you still have to do the work to make it a reality.

I probably should amend the tweet to say, “Your vivid mental image is a goal.  You need to create a plan (a blue print) to make this goal a reality – and then do the work.”  Regardless, the career success coach message here is simple.  You have to do the work to achieve your goals.  It’s up to you.  You’re the one who has to do the work.

My current vivid image of my career success is one in which I work primarily from home as an internet marketer. 

I have a plan to make this vivid mental image come true.  To implement this plan I need to manage my time well. Most of the really important work I do requires large chunks of unbroken time.  I create large chunks of time for working on big projects and important activities – like writing books, blogging and creating products.    

The same is true for you.  You have to figure out what’s important to you and then create chunks of time to do what’s important.  Besides my career success goals, my health is important to me; so I allocate 30 to 60 minutes a day for exercise.  I’m going for a bike ride as soon as I finish writing this post.  I have friend who reads inspirational literature for at least 15 minutes each night before he goes to sleep.  He says that this helps him begin each day inspired and ready to move forward toward his goals.

The important point here is to plan your days in advance.  Schedule specific fixed time periods for particularly important activities and tasks.  Make appointments with yourself and then discipline yourself to keep them.  Set aside thirty, sixty and ninety minute time segments in which you will work on and complete important tasks that move you toward your vivid mental image of success.

Stephen Covey tells us that successful people find the time to focus on the important, but not urgent tasks.  If you’re not careful, your day will get taken up with urgent (sometimes important, and sometimes unimportant) tasks.  If this happens, you will be keeping your head above water, but not gaining any ground.  You won’t be moving toward your vivid mental image of your success.

Writing and posting this blog is a good example of one of the chunks of time I carve out for myself.  My blog is an important, but not urgent activity for me.  If you’re a regular reader, you know that I post every day, Monday through Friday.  This structure helps me when it comes to composing my posts.  Right now, I’ve added even more structure.  I am doing a series of blog posts that further explain the advice in Success Tweets.  This is the 13th post in the series.  I will keep going until I have done a blog post on all 141 tweets – there is a bonus tweet in the book.  If you want a free copy of the eBook version, go to www.SuccessTweets.com.

I usually write my posts two or three days ahead.  At a minimum, I write blog posts the night before I post them.  It takes me 30 to 45 minutes to write a blog post.  My discipline in writing a day before I post means that I don’t feel under the gun to write something every morning.  I think it results in better quality posts, and moves me toward my vivid mental image of success.

I post my blogs first thing every day.  If I have a very early meeting, or will be traveling early, I post the night before.  It takes me about 30 minutes to post this blog, as I post it in several locations.  www.BudBilanich.com is the main page for this blog.  However, I also post to several other sites.  

All of this takes time and discipline.  The time I spend writing and posting every day is a very important part of maintaining my internet presence.  My internet presence is the cornerstone of my marketing efforts.  I carve out large chunks of time to do the important, but not urgent task of building and maintaining my internet presence.  I have disciplined myself to set aside 60 to 90 minutes per day writing and posting my blogs.

I also carve out time to comment on five blog posts, written by other bloggers, every day.  This also helps with my internet presence and takes about an hour a day.  I have identified a number of blogs I read regularly and on which I comment.  It takes about seven to ten minutes to compose a thoughtful comment for each post.

In the past, I have had good intentions of doing this, but the urgent tasks that come up every day have made this a hit and miss proposition.  Recently, I decided that I will take one hour at the end of every day to read and comment on other blogs.  I will do this before I end my business for the day. 

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  From a time perspective, you get the biggest bang for the buck from the activities that are important to your success, but are not urgent.  Unfortunately, important but not urgent tasks often don’t get done because of all of the urgent tasks that come up during any given day.  Tweet 13 in Success Tweets says “Your vivid mental image is a blueprint.  It is a plan for success, but you still have to do the work to make it a reality.”  One way to get started doing the work is to schedule time to work on the important but not urgent tasks that will result in achieving your vivid mental image of your career success.  My best career success coach advice is to keep your commitment to yourself and your career success by planning you work and working your plan.

That’s my take on Tweet 13 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud