Crush Your Goals into Bite Sized Snacks
Hot on the heels of the Quarterly Planning Mind Map is my first 2-Week Sprint of the season. These Sprints are designed to 1) break down our bigger goals into bite sized pieces, 2) get us focused and gain momentum in our projects.
I promise this monstrosity can be crushed into daily “snacks”!
The Funnel of Goals
In the larger scheme of life, the Q4 Map sits at the top of my Funnel of Goals framework, whereas this Sprint fits in the middle. The lower you go down the funnel, the more actionable the steps.
If you’re unfamiliar with 2-week sprints, no worries! I’ve got a primer and walkthrough. If you want to learn more about the Funnel framework, I’ve got a field guide here.
The Sprint
The major focus areas of MMN, YouTube, Hiring, and Writing map closely to the Q4 map. It’s essentially a micro version of the larger map. I added another category for “Self” to account for self care/improvement activities.
Each focus area splits off into its component tasks complete with SMART goals. The red annotations are time estimates that add up to 86 hours (I didn’t count “Self” because these are nonnegotiable personal growth items that I front load in the morning before I start working). This is a sanity check to see if my goals are realistic within the timeframe. Some tasks like “Post ops role” (i.e hiring my assistant) are crossed out as they won’t fit this time, and will instead be moved to the next sprint.
86 hours is aggressive. A typical 8-hour, 9am-5pm day has only about 5 truly productive hours if you take out lunch, breaks and distractions. So 86 hours is equivalent to 17 work days.
In addition, I’ll be an all-in-one writer, speaker, videographer, editor, social media marketer, coach, community leader, and hiring manager. To deal with the immense switching costs (time, focus and energy of switching between roles), I need to batch tasks together so that I’m in one state of mind for as long as possible. Careful planning of my calendar and using the Todo mind map and Pomodoro tracking will be key.
The Daily To-do
Here’s the Todo mind map I make every morning. The major nodes closely resemble my Sprint Map. I’ve grouped YouTube and Writing under “Create”. The red numbers signify the estimated number of Pomodoro sessions (25 minute intervals) I’m allocating to each task.
This is the same time sanity check I do for the Sprint Map. In this case, I determined that “Edit & Publish” (my new video) wasn’t feasible today. It’s now captured in this map so I can come back to it tomorrow.
The Pomodoro Tracker
After I make the to-do map, I run my Pomodoro timer and begin executing the day’s tasks. I religiously keep track of my sessions my custom built Notion tracker. The gamification of setting Pomodoro goals and smashing them creates a powerful incentive system to finish my mini-sprints.
These daily todo’s roll up to the 2-Week Sprint, which in turn make up my Q4 goals. The journey of a thousand steps begins with a humble 25-minute Pomodoro. This is how I built the MMN website and community in 3 months.
You can get this tracker by downloading it here. , but I’ll open it up with an upcoming YouTube video breaking down my whole process.
Make the most of your mind maps
Thanks for reading this article. If you found it useful, you can get a new mind map in your inbox every week. Epiphany is your dose of structured thinking and ordered chaos.
