What do you do every day?
Asking yourself that simple question can be very revealing.
The way life works for many people is that we have habits and routines. These haven’t likely been developed overnight unless we recently went through some kind of change. Maybe a job change. Maybe a relationship change. Maybe we wanted to start doing something to improve our life like a workout routine or diet.
But for the most part our days stay pretty much the same and we live our lives and time passes and before we know it we’re behind on our goals.
And that’s where auditing your habits and routines on a regular basis can be a good thing for your life and what you want to achieve.
Auditing Your Life
Previously, we discussed why it’s good to audit your business website. But the idea of an audit works in real life. It’s the same process for the most part.
The process is simple:
- Schedule regular audits: quarterly, every six months, annually
- Look at your daily activities, weekly activities
- Revisit your vision for your life
- List potential replacement hobbies and routines
- Start anew
That’s really it.
The biggest step is getting this on your schedule. If you’re like me you need something on your schedule otherwise you’re not going to do it unless it’s something that’s a daily habit or routine. I have no problem remembering to check my email at 7:00 AM every morning, but auditing my life every 3 months won’t happen unless it’s on my calendar.
Next is listing the things you do each day. That doesn’t take too much time. Checking email, getting coffee, reading the news and so on throughout the day. No judgment at that point although you might start having feelings about certain things you’re doing.
Then you revisit the vision you have for your life. It’s good to have it written down. Maybe even discussed with your spouse and loved ones. It’s important to look at what you want in life and from that end you can work backward to create a plan.
If you don’t define your vision and create a system or plan for getting there you just have a dream and you probably won’t achieve what you want. And that’s sad.
Once you have your vision you then look at what you’re doing every day to achieve it. Then you look at daily activities that will help you achieve your goals.
And you can break it down into yearly goals, monthly goals and then the things you do each day.
For example, maybe you’re watching more TV than you thought. Things like that happen to all of us. It’s okay. The important thing is to realign every once in a while and working back into better habits.
Commitment
A final step that’s not in the list is commitment. If you’re not going to commit to doing something every day then you’re probably going to stop doing it and get into bad habits once again and you don’t want that.
Successful people and happy people seem to have their lives aligned pretty well. They know what they want in life and they’re willing to work backward and do things every day that will get them to where they want to go.
Songwriters, for example, will write songs every day and hone their craft. They don’t have overnight hits. They might write one song every day for five years. That’s like 1,750 songs. Chances are that once you get to the end of that catalog of songs that you’re going to have some hits.
Identify your goal and then commit.
Conclusion
The point here is that when you want to achieve something in your life you have to come back to your daily habits and routines. You have to assess what you do every day and determine if that will help you reach your goals.
And one final point is that it’s okay to have fun things in life. It’s okay to grab a beer with your best friends every Friday night or whatever. Enjoyment is important in life. And if a goal is happiness in life you’ll find a balance with things like getting a beer or practicing a sport and work-related things.
That’s where the audit can come in handy. You can assess what you’re doing and get back to a balance if you’re going too far in one way or another.
