The first step towards personal growth is that you want to largely be focusing your time on your purpose, vision and mission.

Your purpose is the garden that you want to grow.

Throughout your life though you’ll be harassed by distractions.

These distractions are like weeds trying to destroy your garden.

Essentially your purpose should be one of the key things motivating your personal growth.

You were given talents to share with the world. They’re not yours to waste. They're to be nurtured, so that other people can benefit from what it is you have to offer.

You have the power and potential to have a wonderful impact on the world.

There’s no time to waste.

The time is now to fulfill your purpose and create your dream career.

A study involving Harvard MBAs revealed that 3% of graduates make 10x as much money as the other 97% combined. Can you guess why?

The answer is that the 3% had a habit of setting written goals, with a long term plan on how they’re going to achieve them.

Having long term goals in place is absolutely crucial. The longer term you’re able to think, the better decisions you’ll make. 

Your career is a bit like a game of chess, whoever thinks furthest ahead will tend to make better moves and end up winning. 

A good way of going about this, is to set yourself smart goals.

Smart goals stand for: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

This is a great framework to use.

For example, if you were a freelancer an example of setting yourself smart goals might sound something like this:

• “I want to get 2 new clients this month”
• “I want to deliver 5 client projects in the next 3 months”
• “I want to reach 500 email subscribers by the end of the year”

By attaching a specific number and deadline date to your goal now makes it a smart goal.

It should now be clear and easy to understand, easy to measure, and easy to know when you've done it. 

However, you may be thinking that the word ‘achievable’ may seem a little vague. Only you’ll know what you feel is achievable for you, and it’s something you’ll learn to judge better with experience. 

But generally it’s best to set yourself a big goal that makes you feel a bit uncomfortable.

When you set big goals, you may not know exactly how you’re going to achieve it from day one. But as long as you’ve pinpointed a destination, you'll figure out a way of getting there.

Using Exercise File 12 you can start by firstly setting your end goals.

And make sure to set these goals using the smart framework as just discussed.

This will mean pinning down both a number and a timeframe to achieving those goals. For example your time frame for achieving your end goals could be something like 6 years. 

During this exercise you can also outline your end of year goals too.

We’d recommend starting your end goals with your financial forecast first.

So, your end goals might be something like:

• I want to earn £x of money by the end of 2028
• To do this my business will have sold x units at x pounds
• By 2028 I will have x number of social media followers
• By 2028 I will have x number of email subscribers
• By 2028 I will be exercising 2 times a week and meditating for 20 minutes every day


The more specific you are with your goals the better.

It’s of course completely up to you what your end goals are, this is just a quick example, but for the most part your end goals should relate back to your vision and mission.

Once you have your end goals set, you can then begin to reverse engineer how

you’re going to achieve those by breaking them down into smaller goals.

It’s advisable to split your smaller goals into four stages:

Firstly your end of year goals: These goals will flag up the key milestones you need to hit to ensure you’re on track to achieving your end goals.

You then want to be identifying the key monthly milestones that you need to hit to ensure you’re on track to achieving your end of year goals.

Your weekly goals then determines what milestones you need to hit by the end of the week to ensure you’re on track to achieving your monthly goals.

And finally your daily goals are the key milestones you need to hit by the end of the day to ensure you’re on track to achieving your weekly goals.

In Exercise 12 you can start off by setting your end goals and your end of year goals. 

Once you have those in place you can then begin to determine how to organise your monthly, weekly, and daily goals in order to achieve those bigger goals, which we’ll get onto soon.

Personal growth in a nutshell is largely all about setting meaningful goals and then allocating the bulk of your time and attention to the tasks and activities that help progress you towards those goals. 

If an activity doesn't help progress you towards a goal then you should devote less time to it.

By setting yourself goals in this way you’re giving yourself a clear road map, helping you to define and measure what success looks like for you.

Here at Rocket we define focus as the strategic allocation of your attention and time towards what’s of most value. 

You should have by now already flagged up what your long term goals are.

Now it’s time to start setting your monthly, weekly and daily goals to ensure you’re fully aligned.

This is known as time-management, and is key to your overall wellbeing, as it not only helps you focus your attention and time more effectively, but when done correctly it will actually free up more time for you to relax and look after your physical and mental health.

We all have the same 24 hours in the day. The better you plan for how you use yours, the more efficient and successful you'll be.

In order to manage your time effectively you need to have a system in place in order to improve your focus. This will help you manage all of your ideas and tasks into an effective schedule.

In this next exercise we’re going to now look at establishing a system to help you set your monthly and weekly goals.

So here's the system that we suggest you use.

Firstly, have a central gathering point for your ideas and tasks.

We recommend using Google Keep, which is basically a series of digital to-do lists.

It’s a good idea to have different lists focused on different goals. For example we recommend having a series of pinned lists at the top. These can include: 

• your end of year goals
• your product development tasks
• your product development ideas
• your marketing ideas
• a list of ideas associated with your day job
• and a general admin list

So whenever you have a marketing idea or identify a new task or activity that could be done, don’t let it hang around in your mind, just simply slot it into the relevant pinned list. 

Additionally to your pinned lists, you should have a series of monthly to do lists below your pinned lists, which focus on what pinned tasks and activities you need to focus on each month.

Within your monthly lists, you can also include your weekly goals. 

You want to try allocating a little bit of time each week to processing and updating these lists and ensuring the ideas and tasks on your pinned lists are directly related to your long term goals, and then prioritising them into a logical order.

You can then begin to move your pinned tasks into your monthly and weekly lists, as well as schedule them into your calendar too if you wanted.

Google Keep also has an app on your phone, so you can quickly add to it if you have any bright ideas whenever you’re out and about.

Once you've set up your monthly and weekly goals in Google Keep, the final step is to then set your daily goals.

At the start of each day (or even better the night before), write down the top three most important tasks or activities that you need to complete on that day to help you achieve your weekly goals. 

Then, write down any bonus activities for the day, such as admin tasks.

As a general rule, it’s recommended to always complete your top three priorities before you move onto your bonus activities.

This typically means focusing on important work activities first, then once you’ve completed those you can then move onto your other priorities such as health and wellbeing activities, resting, and spending time with family and friends.

You could simply write your daily goals on a virtual notepad on your laptop, or you could use a real notepad on your desk.

The key thing here is to ensure you do this at the start of each day or the night before in order to ensure you are mentally aligned with your goals.

In order to help you achieve your daily goals it’s a good idea to have a positive morning routine.

We have outlined an example of a good morning routine in exercise file 16.

Your morning routine is of course really subjective and it’s completely up to you to figure out what works best for you. But typically what we’d advise is that you focus your morning routine according to your daily goals.

So for example if your top 3 goals for the day are to:

• work for 4 hours on your day job
• work for 2 hours on your side hustle
• and go for a 15 minute run

Then this would mean that ideally the first thing you’d want to do would be to work for 4 hours on your day job because that’s your main priority for the day. 

By focusing your day according to your daily priorities will help de-stress you as once you’re able to tick off your top priority, it should allow you to then kick back, relax, and enjoy the rest of your day with the peace of mind knowing that you’re on track towards achieving your goals.

This may all seem terribly strict at first, but with a little discipline and dedication you’ll be surprised by how quickly this can all soon become a regular and seamless habit.

Once you have your pinned priorities and monthly and weekly goals set up in your Google Keep you can then start mapping out your Google calendar schedule.

We recommend saving your Google calendar in your Tools folder for easy access.

Typically a healthy work/ life schedule can be split into the following activities.

• Your morning routine
• Your day job tasks
• Your side hustle tasks
• Health and wellbeing activities
• Rest breaks
• Other activities (for example social events or admin tasks such as doctor appointments)
• And your evening routine

It’s helpful to set-up a Google calendar to help keep you on track of your schedule. 

Typically, this will work best when you add your work tasks into your Google calendar first and then try and keep your weekly work schedule consistent each and every week, and then you can organise your other activities to fit around your work.

We’d suggest you aim to set in around 40 hours a week dedicated to working on your day job and your side hustle tasks. Of course, it’s completely up to you to judge how many hours you want to devote to work, but we think 40 hours is a productive number, and gives you enough time for rest and wellbeing too.

Another useful tip is to set up reminders in your calendar for your different scheduled activities. For example if you want to meditate for 15 mins everyday at 12:30pm then you could create a daily calendar reminder for that.

We recommend that you get in the habit of adding new planned activities into your Google calendar schedule whenever you come across them, and to then make it a habit to quickly check in on your calendar as a part of your morning routine.

The most important activity within your schedule will be your work tasks, so lets take a closer look at that now.

Typically we’d suggest that when you work on a work task you think about scheduling it in as a two hour block of time in your calendar. We also recommend a 10 minute break within that 2 hour block of time. 

There's actually a little bit of science behind this. If you have a little pocket of space, it'll not only leave you a bit of room to allow you to decompress and process what you’re learning, but also when inevitable interruptions do occur, you'll be less impacted. By leaving this buffer space in your schedule, you'll find it easier to maintain focus and you'll be mentally prepared for whatever comes your way.

So you might want to consider scheduling your work tasks into your calendar initially as 2 hour blocks. For example:

• One 2 hour block could be considered a short work day.
• Two 2 hour blocks could be considered a medium work day.
• And three 2 hour blocks could be considered a long work day.

In order to improve your focus, pick one task and set yourself a time limit, in this example 2 hours.

Set a time limit that you know you can hit, and then try to stretch a little bit beyond that limit. 

You can think of focus a little bit like a muscle. You can use it for a period of time but then eventually the strength gives out. Each time you use it, it gets stronger, but eventually you're going to run out of strength. 

In time you’ll more than likely find that you’ll soon be able to stretch your focus to 3 hour blocks of time, rather than 2 hours.

If you think that you’ll have to give up most of your vices in order to truly dedicate yourself towards personal growth, the answer to a large-degree is yes.

Probably the most important point to mention regarding personal growth is that it requires relentless discipline.

So, what is discipline?

Discipline is your ability to control your feelings and overcome your weaknesses. It is your ability to focus on what you think is right, despite temptations to abandon it.

Unfortunately, this is just human nature.

We all have two sides to us, the positive side that wants to dream big and be productive, but the dark side that wants to break it all down and just be lazy. 

The great enemy of discipline is the temptation to procrastinate and indulge in activities that bring you a quick dopamine fix. 

This usually happens when you’re feeling tired or unhappy, or in other words when your brain is running low on dopamine. 

It is during these moments of weakness that you are most likely to abandon your disciplined schedule.

Discipline, like focus, is a muscle, it’s weak at the beginning, but grows stronger with practice.

We’ll be discussing tactics on how to improve your discipline as we go on throughout the course.

The big benefit of having a focused and disciplined system in place in which you prioritise and schedule your tasks and activities according to your long term goals is that it will eventually lead to helping you create positive habits.

And developing positive habits really is the key to success.

Once you have a schedule in place, it’s important to try your best to stick to it in order to ensure that your daily activities align with your long term goals, and when you practice those activities on a regular basis they then become positive habits, and your development towards mastering those activities speeds up.

However, it is worth noting at this stage that you need to try and remain flexible when it comes to this.

Developing a schedule of activities, and having the discipline to stick with it until that schedule becomes an automated series of positive habits takes time and it can be difficult to do. 

Too many people approach positive habits with an “all or nothing” attitude, making it all too easy to fall into nothing.

Instead try and adopt an “all or something” approach. 

This approach is about setting yourself small goals at first and gradually building yourself up to your ideal weekly and daily schedule over time.

So don’t beat yourself up if you struggle to get everything in order immediately. It could potentially take you months until you’re able to have your ideal schedule in place.

Unfortunately for us, this feature of our brains that helps us develop positive habits can often backfire and result in us learning habits that hinder rather than help us.

Negative habits are just as easy to form as good ones. In fact they are usually easier to learn.

Success is just as much about learning how to perform when things are going bad, as it is on how you perform when things are going good.

The first step to kicking your negative habits is being able to identify them and being open to breaking them.

Again set yourself small goals.

So if your goal is to go from smoking 20 cigarettes a day to quitting altogether. Rather than going cold turkey straight away. Aim to smoke 10 a day for the first month. Once you hit that goal, aim to smoke 5 a day the following month. So that you reach your goal gradually, rather than suddenly.

We tend to revert back to negative habits when we’re tired or stressed. Because a chemical called cortisol floods into our brains and shuts down the conscious part of our brain that usually tells us that these are in fact negative habits and that we shouldn’t be doing them.

All negative habits consist of 4 parts:

Your emotional state, a trigger, the reward, and your self-talk.

We’ll be discussing tips on managing your emotional state and your self-talk in more detail later when discussing mindfulness, and learning how to rationalise your feelings, but for now let’s look at the trigger.

The more often a habit is practiced the stronger the brain will associate the trigger with the dopamine reward. 

So ideally by cutting yourself off from the trigger for a long enough period of time, say a couple of months, you should be able to rewire your brain to forget about the reward.

More often than not these days the trigger to your negative habit will come in the form of a distraction from things such as social media, your mobile phone, your emails, or any other weird and wonderful content out there on the internet. 

So it’s a good idea to have a strict rule in which you limit the amount of time you spend online.

As already mentioned a large part of the reason for this is that most people don’t tend to have a focused system in place to chasing their dreams. 

If you don’t know what you want in life you are significantly more likely to get side tracked.

You want to be focusing your time on your purpose and your goals.

Remember this is the garden that you want to grow. Throughout your life though you will be harassed by distractions. These distractions are like weeds trying to destroy your garden.

Here are some useful tips to help you avoid falling into your negative habits in your day to day life:

1. Firstly, improve your focus by getting in the habit of scheduling your day in advance. Make sure you have your daily goals scheduled so you know what you need to do that day (Even better if you have this prepared from the night before).
2. Secondly, schedule in enough time in your calendar for rest, health, and fun activities in order to enhance your emotional state. We’ll be discussing this in more detail later on.
3. Thirdly, get rid of the trigger to your negative habit. For example, if you’re trying to cut down on procrastination keep your phone out of sight when you’re working. Your mobile phone is probably one of the key things that’s going to tempt you into getting distracted.
4. Fourthly, keep your external environment tidy and organised. An example of this would-be things like keeping your home and desk organised, as well as your laptop, email inbox, and internet browser bookmarks. So block out sometime in your calendar to tidying and organising these things.
5. Finally, try the “if/then” mind trick. This final tip involves having an “instead” action to employ any time you’re tempted to expose yourself to your trigger. For example, suppose you keep being tempted to check your phone while you’re working. Make a mental rule for yourself, such as “IF I am tempted to look at my phone, THEN instead I will practice my self-care routine", this could be something like: going for a walk, drink a glass of water, having a soothing shower, listening to some uplifting music, and making yourself a healthy snack.

Using Exercise File 15 start off by writing down what your main negative habit is that you want to quit.

It might be procrastinating online, smoking, alcohol, eating too much sugar, etc.

Then identify what emotional state influences that habit? It could be when you’re feeling tired? bored? angry? stressed? And think about what your if/then self care recovery plan could be whenever you find yourself falling into a negative emotional state.

Then identify what exactly triggers you into acting on that habit? And how you can remove those triggers from your daily routine. For example if you want to give up sugar it could be not stocking up on any unhealthy snacks in your kitchen cupboard.

What you’ll find is that this exercise of eliminating your negative habits and instead focusing on developing your positive habits is ultimately what will help you evolve your personal growth more than anything else.