Today is Friday, January 22 which means there are 344 days ahead of us before we usher in 2021.

It may seem a long way distant but my purpose in mentioning this is to ask the following: with the first 22 days of the year consigned to history, are you clearly on track to achieving your goals for this year or have you already fallen behind?

All too often I have worked with clients who consistently delude themselves with the damaging habit of “I’ll skip today and make it up tomorrow.”

Experience has failed to teach them that rarely does that happen and that the further behind we fall the more difficult it becomes to get back on track. It doesn’t take being too far behind before the task of getting caught up becomes seemingly overwhelming and then, we just give up.

It is often been noted that an enormous part of McDonald’s growth and success can be attributed to three essential factors: consistency, sustainability and replicability.

A cheeseburger at McDonald’s is always the same at any of its locations worldwide (allowing for regional differences) thereby meeting their customers expectations.

They have been able to sustain this “sameness” of their products for decades and have successfully replicated their recipes in tens of thousands of locations.

To successfully achieve the goals you have set for this year requires consistent, repeated effort throughout the year with little time for pauses.

In more than 25 years of being in the business optimization industry, I have yet to work with a client who has achieved great success through sporadic effort.

Much has been written of the differences between those few who achieve extraordinary success and all the rest, who don’t.

The differences are many but ultimately all come down to one thing: the truly successful use their time differently than everyone else.

And it is what we do with our time that, more than anything else, will determine whether we become members of the elite club of the truly successful or whether we retain our membership in the “others” club.

One of life’s truths teaches us that if something is important, we will always find the time. If it is not important, we will always find an excuse.

With only 22 days completed, there is still time to get back on track, but each passing day makes that task more challenging. To put it simply, if you are seriously committed to achieving your 2020 goals, you will, TODAY, take that very first step to getting caught up.

If you choose otherwise, perhaps it is time to re-evaluate how important your goals really are.

And if you choose to delay further, the truth is that it is probably not as important as you think it is.

With consistency, sustainability and replicability mountains can be moved in 344 days.

Are you a mountain mover?

Till we read again.