I swear my feed is full of posts breaking down what a SMART goal is! So, I thought I’d compile my favourite tips for those who want to achieve their goals this year…and enjoy the process (without complicating it).

An incredible privilege to be named the 'Rising Star Property Manager of the Year' at the reiq 2021 awards.

I believe that in order to change we must begin with one very simple, yet very powerful question. This question unlocks more than it may first seem when examined more on a deeper more philosophical level. This question is the key which opens doors beyond the problems we try to solve every day and allows us to transcend to higher levels in understanding and awareness in every area of our lives. Where do all great breakthroughs come from? Challenging what is currently believed and accepted by the masses. This explains why the Catholic Church sentenced one of the greatest astronomers of all time, Galileo Galilei, to life under house arrest. He simply put forth an idea that potentially the Earth was not the centre of the universe, much to the Church’s disbelief. It explains why so many traditional companies have been trampled by the wave of informational and accessibility that came with the adoption of the internet. They simply didn’t believe it would make a ripple whilst others were challenging this belief which ultimately overcame what was believed before. The question I posed to your earlier, why are things the way they are? is one which can sometimes be looked down upon, an interrogation of the present and the authority who made it that way. I see it as an opportunity for learning and development. If we understand why things are the way they are then we can better understand the process required to make them better, improve upon what was thought to be perfect and change the world for the better because boy oh boy we’re not perfect. Everyone is in the business of change and it is now a prerequisite that if we want to be able to remain relevant and on top of the game, change has to be a language we all speak.

Ever since I hopped on the entrepreneurship train almost two years ago now I’ve known what my goal is and I’ve known what I needed to do to get there but what I have, until recently, lacked was the structured framework around it all. I’ve tended to do things in bursts, with a rough outline as to which way I was heading but no clear path exactly. That’s when I discovered that although I was motivated to reach my goals…it wasn’t enough. Motivation will get you started, but its discipline that’ll keep you going. Don’t get me wrong, motivation is great and it’ll help you spring out of bed in the morning faster than some, but after a little while the shine can seemingly rub off. That’s when some people drop the ball and others pull their socks up and commit to doing what needs to be done. It’s discipline that keeps the good ones going and enables them to continue to push the limits of success. It’s discipline that forces them out of their comfort zone. Discipline is essentially a structure or a framework around a certain practice. It provides a rigid backbone to your goal setting and is one of the most under-utilised weapons in your armoury.

Raise your hand if you feel as though you don’t have enough hours in the day. Keep your hand up if you would be prepared to do less in your day which would, in turn, give you more time to do the things you enjoy? I know that may sound a little unorthodox but trust me when I say that doing less may be the key to achieving more. Interested? I certainly hope so! Now you’re about to read something which may come as a bit of a shock. You may even choose to stop reading this article and scroll on to something which is a bit more in line with your current way of thinking. That’s okay, but trust me when I say...this could be the biggest kept secret in business and in life. The most successful people in the world do not focus on being busy. But how do they keep the wheels turning? How do they keep the doors open? Where do they get clients from? How do they know what to do each day? The answer is surprisingly simple, instead of focusing on being busy, day in day out, the most successful business leaders in the world focus on being more and more productive. They get done what they need to without the bullsh!t that comes along with the modern work environment. They don’t worry about creating another file to fuel the workflow or chasing another prospect around in circles, they focus on getting done what needs to get done minus the fluff. We are constantly taught and shown throughout our lives that successful people are busy people and that those who are busiest are the ones who have the nice things, the fancy cars, the shiny watches, the Mediterranean holidays in crystal clear waters. The #HUSTLERS if you know what I mean. But the truth is that it is those who know how to work harder while also working smarter than anyone else in the littlest time possible, will experience real success. It is those who say ‘no’ because although that juicy new client might mean that they hit their quarterly target by the end of the first month, they know there’s going to be a lot of time taken up in re-educating the client or fielding late night phone calls or dealing with a mountain of highly detailed, time-consuming emails from said client. They know the value of their time and they know that they will be better off working a little bit harder to achieve the right type of client who is perfect for them opposed to the one mentioned above.

Each and every one of us has power within us. Some utilise this power to its full potential, exercise it every single day, and use it for good over evil. This power that I speak of, is the power of choice. Every day we are faced with choices, from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to bed. Whether it's what we have for breakfast to which way we drive to work or what clothes we decide to wear. Everything we do involves some element of choice. It's the choices we make each and every day that determines what we do, when we do it, where we do it, and essentially...who we are as a person. Our decisions and our choices dictate the people we become over time. For this reason, it is so important that we understand the effect each and every decision we make has on the rest of our life. We're always brought up to "make good decisions", but what does that even mean? Who decides what a "good decision" or a "bad decision" is? To quote Gary Vaynerchuk, "doing the right thing is always the right thing." Regardless of what anyone else says as long as you are comfortable with the decision you've made that's all that matters. One of the very first lessons I learnt when I started out posting content and pushing my personal brand was that no matter which direction you head there will always be judgement. If you go left, you're going to be judged. If you go right, you're going to be judged. If you go forwards, you're going to be judged. If you go backwards, you're going to be judged. North, South, East or West...judged. There comes a point where you come to learn that your choices and your choices, they dictate your life and nobody else's, and regardless of the choice you make, you will be judged.

Tick…tick…tick There it goes, your time. Never again will you get those seconds back, never again will you get to live that moment. The concept of time, managing it, investing it, spending it, and donating it, has captivated my attention for the last 12–18 months. After spending many hours trying to find the right tools and systems for managing my time as a young professional I came away empty-handed, taking bits from here and there, trialling this program, ditching that one, but nothing of too much substance. I was disappointed, to say the least but upon reflection what I had consequently done is opened a door of opportunity for myself to create my own system which worked for me, and now like all good things, I’m sharing it. Since that time of confusion and frustration I have successfully doubled my productivity at work, started a business, managed two full-time jobs working 50 hour weeks, studied a Bachelor’s degree full-time and lived to tell the tale. What I realised was that it wasn’t about how much time I had, because there was very little spare at the end of the day, it was what I did with the time I did have that really mattered and defined my actions each and every day. It’s not about how much time you have, it’s about what you do with the time that you DO have that defines your actions.  Now it’s definitely all easier said than done but once I cracked the code, which did, in fact, take quite a while, my eyes were opened to a whole new world and a whole new appreciation for time. Time is the commodity we trade every day in exchange for value. Regardless of the currency you use, the culture you were raised in, or the language you speak we all trade our time in exchange for value. This was the ah-ha moment I had been waiting for. I had known it all along and had been reading about it across so many different mediums but nobody had plainly spelt it out to me. Time is not just something we use to program our lives to tell us where to be and when but a commodity like gold or silver, it has worth, except we are the only ones who can define this worth. We all have time, but we don’t all use our time to the best of our ability. It gets wasted, overspent and underinvested in. Those who succeed in life first understand that time is our greatest asset. Time is the commodity…the commodity of our lives. What’s even more powerful is the fact that we don’t know how much time we have. We know we have some time, so of us have more than others. We cannot see it, feel it or hear it, but we all know. That’s why I’m so passionate about maximising the time we DO have because we never know when that clock is going to stop ticking. We never know when our time will come to an end. So remember, next time you’re complaining about not having enough time like I was 12–18 months ago, we all have 24 hours in a day. There’s no difference in the amount of time you have to the amount of time Richard Branson has in a day. It’s the actions that we take that define our days and the way we harness the commodity that is time. I’m also running an event where I’ll share the complete Time Is The Commodity system and give you all the tools, tips and tricks to take back control of your time.

Impossibility. Who or what defines impossibility now or ever for that matter? Once upon a time the idea of sending people into space was impossible. The concept of containing people within a pressurised metal can and sinking to bottom of the sea was ludicrous. Oh and who would've thought that we would be able connect with anyone across the globe instantaneously using a device the size of our hand? What was once deemed impossible by the masses is now just another element of human life in the 21st century. Although we may not live a life of flying cars and robot butlers as envisioned by the Jetsons, we sure have come a long way. The idea of someone telling you that what you want to achieve is impossible is simply crazy. After having achieved so much as a species in such a short amount of living history some people still have the audacity and the nerve to tell someone else that something is impossible? It simply can't be done they say! That's something I just can't wrap my head around, and then there's the fact that people continue to believe this claim that whatever they are trying to achieve is impossible. It doesn't matter who that person is, what they've done or when they were born their assessment of your situation and your capabilities is just an opinion. It's not set in stone, it's not a hard fact, you shouldn't base your decisions on someone elses opinion of you. Nobody knows you better than you Could you imagine if the first time the Wright Brothers were told that their idea for an aeroplane was impossible and they stopped? What if Donald Trump never ran for President of the United States because someone told him that it couldn't be done? Or what if someone told Elon Musk that building a lithium battery that could power South Australia in 100 days was a fantasy and he decided against doing it? We would never progress, individually or as a society. If anything, I'm fairly sure if you'd asked those people mentioned above what they would do if someone told them that what they were setting out to achieve was impossible, they'd probably laugh. Better yet they'd probably use that doubt as motivation to absolutely make it happen. I believe a lot of the "impossible" labelling that occurs today is founded from jealousy and the desire to see someone else fail. This is the mindset that slows progress and the evolution of societies. This is the mindset and the act which poisons the dreams of those who don't know better. Those who value someone else's opinion more than they value their own ability. My call to you is to not let anyone elses opinion dictate your views on where you are, where you're going or the path you choose to take in achieving your goals. It has been proven time and time again that labelling something as impossible is destined to be proven wrong so instead of taking that label to heart and quitting, turn it into fuel and make the impossible, possible. Impossible is just an opinion, and we all know that saying about opinions...everyone's got one.

Where focus goes, energy flows. That would have to be one of my favourite Anthony Robbins quotes. I've heard this phrase and many like it hundreds of times but it wasn't until recently that I was able to fully appreciate the power of focus. Where focus goes, energy flows. Now I consider myself to be someone who is able to sit down and be pretty productive with my time however I didn't quite realise how much time I was chewing up in lost focus time. You know when you're in the middle of something and someone comes and interrupts you so you drop what you're doing to divert your attention to them for even just a split second just to answer a question or give an instruction. How many times might that happen per hour, per day, per week. I started taking note and you can chew up some serious time stopping and starting like this.  According to a study completed by FastCompany it takes the average worker approximately 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back on task, to return to the same frame of mind you were in prior to being interrupted. Now imagine that happening even three times per day. It adds up very quickly. So you might be thinking, "But Jacob I can't just ignore people when they need something, that's just rude!" Well here's the good news, you don't need to sit in room by yourself with the door closed or wear noise cancelling headphones and remove yourself from the world in order to reach peak productivity with minimal distractions and interruptions. You simply need to condition your brain as to how it processes interruptions when they occur. One of the strategies I've been implementing around this has been consciously entering and exiting the task at hand. Meaning I consciously close off the task when I'm finished and enter a new frame of mind when starting something else. Devoting my complete focus to the task at hand and then when interruptions inevitibly crop up you quickly finish the task you're on without diverting your focus and then redirect your focus to the interruption. It's a stop/start system which provides your brain with closure on each task throughout the day. This little hack has single handedly allowed me to significantly increase my productivity over the last couple of weeks and as simple as it may seem it makes a big difference in the day to day.