“I don’t have the time” or “There aren’t enough hours in a day”. How many times have you heard or uttered these phrases? Focusing on management of time alone puts your emphasis on something that can’t be controlled. There are 1,440 minutes in a day that we can’t change, control, stop or influence time. Time continues to move undaunted. What we have sole control over is the activities we choose to take part in during a period of time. The disciplines of goal setting, planning, and execution are at the heart of activity management.

The activity management principle focuses on selecting and executing a set of activities that you have deemed critical to attaining your goals. When we carefully manage our activities, the rest will take care of itself.

When setting your goals, remember to be realistic, specific and have a date for attainment in mind. If you want to live at the beach, write down by when and determine the actions you will need to take to make it happen. If you want to retire early, write down that target date and the milestones you must achieve along the way. Keep drilling down on that goal until you come up with specific activities that you can do daily, weekly or monthly. For example, if increasing prospecting by 50% is your goal, you might drill down on that goal to actionable activities such as making a specific number of calls to add two new prospects per week for the next 5 months. In short, write down actions that can be measured to hold you accountable. A goal, without a plan, is a wish.

After you've determined...