Most of us today want to be successful in some form or the other, be it with great grades in college, financially if adult and doing a job, or in terms of happy family. For this very reason most of the aspiring achievers read books, blog posts, and even take up courses to improve life significantly.

But!

We seldom take action to improve our lives that we have today. We for sure dream about having great lives, expensive cars, gadgets, and what not, but we the core idea of taking action or I must rephrase “Getting things done” is absent.

I have been at that ladder as well since very long, I used to read tons of books, blog posts, and Reddit self-improvement material (Yep! that exists) for hours and waste my time and in the end all I did was dream and do nothing, but recently everything started making a lot more sense about taking action and moving along the path that I wanted to be on. I got my thoughts and ideas on to the paper into my journal.

Plan everything on paper first and then take action!

Earlier I used to have everything in my head, it made sense at the time I was thinking about it but later, it didn’t at all. So for providing myself with more clarity I started writing all the ideas, goals, plans, and self-improvement material on the paper and reviewing them daily.

I set my 5–10 year goals, 1–3 year goals, and 1 month goals. Then for my 1 month goals I wrote everything I need to do the coming week the main 9–10 items that will get me closer to the 1 month goals. And finally I made my the tomorrow to-do list with things that need to be done.

Everything that I mentioned was done on the paper first and then I added action items and scheduling into my calendar (Google Calendar) and to-do list (Todoist) for better access and organization.

After doing all of this I felt a whole lot of control of my life and felt a little more pleased with my action and planning as well: The motivation upward spiral, as I call it.

As a result of this motivation spiral I was able to write this Medium.com post that I was procrastinating on for 3 weeks now, but finally I was able to pull it off.

Summary of Ideas:

Don’t memorize, write everything down! Don’t just read stuff online or on books, take minimal action and get something done. First plan on paper and then organize your electronic calendar and to-do list. 5–10 Year goals, 1–3 Year goals, 1 Month goals, Weekly accomplishments , and Daily to-do planning. Follow this architecture if you are just starting out. Doing things will bring “The motivation upward spiral” and will help you get more things done.

Thanks.