I’m a big dreamer. I’m a big talker. I love increasing my knowledge and talking about what I want to do.

But I have a big struggle – execution. I mentioned to Bret the other day how I feel very passionate about my book, but have been really struggling to actually sit down and write it. He made a comment that really “woke me up” and caused me to try something new.

He said you have to have goals and a laid out plan. You have to be told exactly what to do. Thankfully, I can tell myself what to do.

Let’s take a walk back to kindergarten….and sticker charts.

I went through the list of things I’d like to do during the day. I’m not going to tell you what they are because I just listened to a TED talk about how bad it is to share your goals. So! You’re only seeing the sticker side! Yesterday was my first day and it went REALLY well. (I wasn’t tracking Sunday, so that’s why there’ are so many frowny faces.) There was only one square I didn’t do…but it wasn’t a “have” to do square. See, I’m also going into this with a “some of these things WILL get done because they’re already a part of my routine” and there are things that “I want to do daily eventually, but understand it won’t happen overnight, so I won’t beat myself up about it.”

I’ve also started tracking exactly what I’m doing all day. I track my time for a client of mine because I’m paid by the hour. It’s crazy how “on the clock” (in a good way!) it makes me feel. I am more energized to work when I’ve written down a start time. I’m hoping the same will be true tracking everything I do all day. I also hope to find areas to grow and things I can cut out.

Do you have weird and/or fun ways to increase your productivity?