Stop Managing Your Time - Start Managing Your Life

THROW AWAY YOUR TO-DO-LISTS!

To-do lists might keep you focused on what to do next, they may even provide you with a sense of accomplishment, but are they really helping you lead the life you want?
 
This week we will focus on how to turbocharge the way you plan and manage your time, to help you get profoundly better results.
 
Are You Spending Your Days Wisely — On Purpose, In Pursuit of A Great Dream?
It might have been the finest speech ever by a Hall of Famer:
     “The core of my journey to baseball’s Hall of Fame was a dream that took shape in my heart one day while sitting as a child on the front steps of our home.  That was the day on those front steps at the age of 12 that Ozzie Smith determined it was about time to decide what he was going to do with the rest of his life.  That was the day I started dreaming about becoming a professional baseball player.
     Luckily, I didn’t experience the dream for a moment and then dismiss it as foolishness.  Unfortunately, that is the way many great human potentials are forever lost.  Simply because we don’t give our dreams time to take root in our minds.  Too quickly we seem to cover them with a blanket of doubt and they are forgotten.  I, instead, let the dream come into the playground of my mind.  I embraced it, I embellished it to the point where I even selected the position I would play.
     And finally, after dancing with this beautiful fantasy adventure, I took ownership of it and the dream now ordained became a part of my future destiny.”
 
Introducing O-F, P-D, R-M, A-O —- the alternative to your endless to-do lists!
It is time to think differently, to plan differently, to accomplish differently.  This new approach to planning your life, instead of just planning your time consists of four new behaviors, integrated together into a planning system abbreviated as “OPRA”.  No this isn’t a typo of missing the “H” from Ms. Winfrey’s first name — rather it stands for the four components, the new behaviors required of you, that will form the strategic approach to planning and managing your life instead of just managing your time:
Outcome-Focused
Purpose-Driven
Reward-Motivated
Action-Oriented

Those who succeed always start with a clear end in mind - they are totally clear about the final result they wish to achieve.  When you have developed an outcome-focused, purpose-driven, action-oriented, results-accountable plan for your week, your day, or for any goal or project, then you will have created a plan that if followed will certainly bring your dreams into reality.
 
The first step is to figure out what you really want?  What is your outcome?  An outcome is a specific, measurable result that you want to produce - not the activity to get it done, but the actual result you are after.  When you have a clear outcome and consistently focus on it, you will immediately experience a change in your behavior.  With a focus on the outcomes you are committed to, you will find yourself consistently moving toward the result you are after (as compared to madly pursuing the checkoff of endless items on your to-do list).
 
The second step is to determine why you are committed to achieving this outcome, result or goal.  Your purpose will become your driver, the emotional reason why you will want to, why you have to follow through and do whatever it takes to create the outcome you desire.  Your purpose will create the emotional juice that will give you the drive and momentum to create the result.
 
The third step is to identify the specific rewards that you will give to yourself as motivation along the way.  Make it fun, make it a quest, make the rewards matter.  That doesn’t mean the rewards need to be big or expensive (although they could be - perhaps for accomplishing the full outcome), but rather have several smaller rewards along the path to success.  Let this be one way you create fun and joy on the journey.
 
The fourth step is to determine how specifically you will achieve your result or goal.  What do you need to do to make it happen.  These actions are the specific activities that you must complete to produce the outcome you are committed to achieve.
 
Albert Einstein said “The definition of insanity is to keep doing what you have always done, expecting to get a different result than what you have always gotten!”

DAILY PRAYER
Father, help us to transform our minds and think differently.  Being busy is not what You intended for our lives.  In Your Word, Proverbs (NLT) has much to say about planning: 
   16:9 — We should make plans - counting on God to direct us.
   19:2 — It is dangerous and sinful to rush into the unknown. 
   24:3-4 — Any enterprise is built by wise planning, becomes strong through common sense, and profits wonderfully by keeping abreast of the facts.
   27:12 — A sensible man watches for problems ahead and prepares to meet them.  The simpleton never looks, and suffers the consequences;
   16:1 — We can make our plans, but the final outcome is in God’s hands.
In Jesus name, Amen.
 
Tomorrow we will explore in more detail how to apply OPRA to your life.  In preparation, write down all the wild ideas you have of what you want to do, to have and to become.  If time, talent and finances were all unlimited, if you knew you could not fail, what would go on your list?  Push yourself, come up with 100 things on your own personal wish list for you, for your life, for your legacy!
 
Grace and peace multiplied to you,