Good evening everybody, happy Monday, Easter Monday. Wow. Long weekend has come and gone. Although all the days are a bit blurry at the moment, for me, they are. I’m wondering if they are for you as well. Tonight, I want to talk a little bit about a goal sprint. So what is a gold sprint? Well, a gold sprint is like … I really hope that’s the Chariots of Fire soundtrack, I’ve totally forgotten. So a goal sprint is when you have like this compact amount of time that you want to get a whole lot of stuff done in. So it’s not a long, slow, steady, the turtle wins the race kind of thing. This is the hair going gangbusters on a goal sprint. Why am I talking about this? Well, for the next two weeks, I don’t have a child. Well, I like gave her away for a couple of weeks, all jokes aside. She’s going to a dance for a couple of weeks.
So I have set myself these incredible things that I need to get done in this two weeks. And I thought I’d share with you guys how I’m going to get that done, because it’s not like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. I’m going to keep with the Easter Bunny jokes. I think. No more Easter chocolate. No. So how do you do it? It’s when you want to achieve something that’s tangible, it’s smart, it’s realistic. All that kind of stuff that we talk about in goal setting, but you really want to get that shizzle done really, really, really quickly. Now you cannot do this longterm. You cannot sustain it. It’s working long hours, working pedal to the metal for long periods of time. Sustained periods of time is not good for you physically, mentally in any way. And it’s not good for your business either because it’s unsustainable, your team can’t sustain it. It’s like a house of cards goes trolloping down as soon as anything gets out of whack.
But you can do it for like a short amount of time if you set it up properly. So how do you set it up? Well, I’m so glad you asked. So how you set it up? You’ve got to know exactly what you want to achieve in that sprint. Now, if you sit down and go, okay, in two weeks time, I want to do … Not going to happen. You want us to set a couple of goals, three, maybe five if they’re interwoven and can work together. But be really, really specific about it.
And the first thing you need to do. Yeah, I’ve got my trusty little notes because I didn’t want to forget anything. So yeah, the clear goals, absolute priority. Then you want to set yourself up for success. So how do I mean set yourself up for success? I want you to have your offer space arranged if it’s a work-related thing. If it’s a fitness related sprint you’re going on, make sure you’ve got all your fitnessy stuff organized. If it’s healthy eating, if it’s any of that kind of thing, set yourself up for success by having all of those tools, everything you need in place. So you can wake up the day you start your sprint and absolutely go. If you have to wake up the first day of your goal sprint and go, oh God, shit. I needed new gym running shoes. Oh no, I can’t start my sprint because I have to buy running shoes, your sprint is going to fail.
Likewise, if you wake up on the first day of your sprint and go, what was that business idea I wanted to do? Oh, yeah. I think I needed to … Did I need to write a book? Can’t remember. Or if you wake up and go that’s right. I wanted to learn how to speak French. Best I order the program. No, you must set yourself up the day, the night before your sprint starts with everything you need to get those goals happening. Everything. Down to the sharpened pencils. I’m talking everything.
Next thing you want to do is get rid of distractions. So yeah, no notifications. They are all gone. No Instagram notifications, no Facebook notifications, no email notifications, nothing popping up to tell you, you need to do something. This is a two week period where you are completely in control of your time. Every single minute. I’m talking down to the fact that my phone will go on do not disturb for my entire work hours, every single day for the next two weeks. I will turn off that do not disturb at appointed times during the day to check voicemail and get back to people. But my time is my time. It is not being dictated to by other people’s needs. So those distractions got to go. If you thought you were going to catch up on Westworld in a sprint. No, not going to happen. No TV, no TV.
Then I want you to schedule your life to within a millisecond. Not quite a millisecond. So to give you an idea. My life for the next two weeks has been scheduled in 15 minutes as the smallest increment of time. But my life is scheduled from 4.30 AM to 8:30 PM every day for the next two weeks. I know what I’m going to be doing every minute of every day for the next two weeks. I know, you’re going to think that sounds really boring. And oh my God, she’s a workaholic. I’m not, I have stuff I want to get done in this two week period. And it’s a brilliant time for me to be able to get stuff done as long as I’m clear and on purpose and all those kinds of that I’ve talked about so many times. So you can go back and have a look at any of my goals, setting lives, but this sprint, you have to be that dedicated. You really, truly have to be. I’m talking about get really time.
For me, my Facebook Lives are scheduled every day for the next two weeks, walking the dog time, eating time. I have washing up time, shower time, time I’m studying something. Time I’m reading something. I have the four times a day I check social media for 15 minute bursts. I have checking email, I have checking phone, in my beautifully color coordinated Google Calendar, iCal actually, sorry, iCal. So I did talk about the do not disturb.
The last thing you want to do is look after yourself. So we’ve all heard the story stories about the tech startups and they do these massive workaholic phases of their lives, where they’re living on Red Bull, vodka and work basically. That’s it. That’s their lives. No, that’s not going to work. Even if your sprint is only for like a four or five day period, you must look after yourself. So go back to how I said my life is scheduled between 4:30 AM and 8:30 PM. That’s because I’ll be asleep at 8:30 PM because I need eight hours sleep. I’m a sleeper. I don’t get eight hours, I’m like cranky pants and I don’t work efficiently. So I need that eight hours so I have to look after myself.
I will be making sure I drink more water. My daughter’s like every day, she’s like, mum, you haven’t drunk enough water. So I’m working on it. Got the little clicker thing on my phone, another cup, another cup. Eating properly, exercising, yes, my walking my dog is in there. My doing my workout with the center app is in there. My couch to 5k is in there all scheduled because I must look after myself. I’ve done my vitamins for the next two weeks in those little bitty pill things to make sure I take those. So those are the things you must do in order to set yourself up for a goal sprint.
Now a goal sprint is a great thing to do. Don’t listen to what I’ve said and go, oh my God, that sounds like hard work. It is so amazing. At the end of this two weeks, for me to be able to go tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. I’ve done all of these things because I followed that methodology of setting myself up, getting rid of distractions, timetabling myself perfectly, looking after myself and making sure your time is your own. You can achieve anything, like it’s amazing. Think back to those days, when you were a kid, high school, [inaudible 00:08:27], maybe your first couple of years out of work doing a show, anything. And like two days before you had to get something done, you’re like, oh my God, I haven’t done it. And you always managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Most of us can do that. It’s like this innate ability that we get to that fight or flight mode of something really dramatic happening. And we go bang and we can get it done.
Everything kicks in, the adrenaline kicks in, our mojo kicks in and we can achieve anything we want to achieve, but we cannot do it for a long period of time. So I just encourage you if you have anything. I’m lucky at the moment, because I have got this two week break without Elodie where I’ve been able to go bang, bang, bang. This is what I’m going to get done, but I really encourage you to look at what’s going on in your life at the moment, in the next six months, at the moment don’t look six months out because God knows what’s going to happen. But if you can carve out a little sprint period somewhere in your life to get some stuff done that you really want to achieve, it could just be that there’s a book you want to read and you want to have a sprint to get that book finished. It could be something around the house.
Whatever it is that you want to get done, that can really realistically be done in a short period of time. But because of life we go, oh I’ll give myself 12 months to get it done. I encourage you to chunk it down into a sprint, go back to my do it diet live where I talk about chunking down goals and then set yourself up for success by having a teeny tiny sprint, two days, five days, two weeks like me. Join me if you want, send me a message and I’ll give you a few more tips and tricks about what I’m doing for the next couple of weeks and I’ll send you messages of encouragement and make sure you can get your goal sprint done. And I will see you all tomorrow.
Happy 301. Can you believe it? 64 to go. And then I’m never doing a Live again. No, only joking. I will continue to do Lives, but they will be in a different format. So head on over, if you haven’t already to samanthaleith.com, jump on the newsletter bandwagon and then I get to come into your inbox as well as your beautiful screen every night. Have a great night. And if you hadn’t already, finish all your Easter chocolates, so then there’s no guilt. Because if you eat the Easter chocolate tomorrow, there’s a bit of guilt because it’s not Easter anymore. But if you finish it today, there’s no guilt. Bye.