I love new beginnings.  I love the start of a new day, week, month, quarter, and, most especially, a new year. 

I love that each new beginning is an opportunity to improve. 

Now that you know this about me, you can imagine I am getting excited about the start of 2024.  

But before I can focus on the new year, I want to finish this year strong.  I want to finish a couple of goals before the year ends.  

This is why I sat down this past weekend to do a process called ROAR (Results Oriented Action Replacements)

The purpose of ROAR

The idea or purpose behind ROAR is that no one has free time.  If you tracked what you do in a day, you would see that you are always doing something, even if that something is playing a game on your phone, scrolling social media, or binge-watching Netflix.  You are always doing something.  

With that in mind, if I want to power through some goals before the end of the year, I need to find or make time to work on them. This is especially true at a time of year when I see my social calendar fill up a bit more than usual with seasonal events.    

This is where ROAR comes in.  ROAR is a process where you evaluate where you reallocate your time so you can put it towards your goals.  

Imposter sy

The idea or purpose behind ROAR is that no one has free time.  If you tracked what you do in a day, you would see that you are always doing something, even if that something is playing a game on your phone, scrolling social media, or binge-watching Netflix.  You are always doing something.  

With that in mind, if I want to power through some goals before the end of the year, I need to find or make time to work on them. This is especially true at a time of year when I see my social calendar fill up a bit more than usual with seasonal events.    

This is where ROAR comes in.  ROAR is a process where you evaluate where you reallocate your time so you can put it towards your goals.  

• Self-doubt:  you constantly question your abilities and feel you are not as competent as others perceive you to be.
• Perfectionism: You set unrealistically high standards for yourself and fear failure, often leading to procrastination
• Overworking: you may overcompensate by working excessively hard to prove your worth 
• Downplaying success: you attribute your achievements to external factors such as luck rather than acknowledging your hard work and skill. 

Imposter sy

The idea or purpose behind ROAR is that no one has free time.  If you tracked what you do in a day, you would see that you are always doing something, even if that something is playing a game on your phone, scrolling social media, or binge-watching Netflix.  You are always doing something.  

With that in mind, if I want to power through some goals before the end of the year, I need to find or make time to work on them. This is especially true at a time of year when I see my social calendar fill up a bit more than usual with seasonal events.    

This is where ROAR comes in.  ROAR is a process where you evaluate where you reallocate your time so you can put it towards your goals.  

Imposter sy

The idea or purpose behind ROAR is that no one has free time.  If you tracked what you do in a day, you would see that you are always doing something, even if that something is playing a game on your phone, scrolling social media, or binge-watching Netflix.  You are always doing something.  

With that in mind, if I want to power through some goals before the end of the year, I need to find or make time to work on them. This is especially true at a time of year when I see my social calendar fill up a bit more than usual with seasonal events.    

This is where ROAR comes in.  ROAR is a process where you evaluate where you reallocate your time so you can put it towards your goals.  

Imposter sy

The idea or purpose behind ROAR is that no one has free time.  If you tracked what you do in a day, you would see that you are always doing something, even if that something is playing a game on your phone, scrolling social media, or binge-watching Netflix.  You are always doing something.  

With that in mind, if I want to power through some goals before the end of the year, I need to find or make time to work on them. This is especially true at a time of year when I see my social calendar fill up a bit more than usual with seasonal events.    

This is where ROAR comes in.  ROAR is a process where you evaluate where you reallocate your time so you can put it towards your goals.  

Imposter sy

The idea or purpose behind ROAR is that no one has free time.  If you tracked what you do in a day, you would see that you are always doing something, even if that something is playing a game on your phone, scrolling social media, or binge-watching Netflix.  You are always doing something.  

With that in mind, if I want to power through some goals before the end of the year, I need to find or make time to work on them. This is especially true at a time of year when I see my social calendar fill up a bit more than usual with seasonal events.    

This is where ROAR comes in.  ROAR is a process where you evaluate where you reallocate your time so you can put it towards your goals.  

Start with the end in mind

Before you start ROAR, identify what you want to accomplish.  What is it you need more time for?  

I call this the desired result.

Pull out a blank piece of paper and divide the paper into four quadrants.   In the middle of the paper, write down your desired result at the cross-section.  As you work through the exercise, this will keep you focused on what you want. 

Your desired result is likely a goal. 

Next, think about what you need to do to accomplish this goal.  How much time do you need to achieve your goal? 

For example, if your goal is to run a 5k race, how often do you want to run a week, and for how long will you run?   Maybe four days a week for 30 minutes? That is 2 hours.  But you also know that you want to eat better along with the running.  Now, you need time for meal planning and meal prep.    

If you have a goal to launch a new program or product, what tasks do you have left to do before you finish this goal?  How much time do you need to complete the goal before the end of the year?  

Given you don’t have spare time, we need to figure out what you will eliminate to make time for this goal. 

The four questions of ROAR

Keeping your desired result in mind, there are four questions you need to ask yourself. 

You do not need to ask yourself these questions in order.  It is best to bounce around the questions.  

1. In the first quadrant (top left quadrant), write out the following question:  What actions do you need to stop doing?   These would be actions you are currently doing that you want to stop completely. 

Examples:

                Going to Starbucks for a daily latte

                Sleeping in 

• In the second quadrant (top right quadrant), write the following question: What action do you need to start doing? You are not doing these actions now that you need to start doing to make your desired result a reality.

Examples: 

                Creating a weekly meal plan 

                Doing meal prep at the start of the week

• In the third quadrant (bottom left quadrant), write the following question: What actions do you need to do less of?  You are currently doing these actions that you still want to do but want to do less of them so you can spend that time elsewhere. 

Examples:

                Watch less Netflix a week

                Spend less time scrolling social media 

• In the fourth quadrant (bottom right quadrant), write the following question: What action do you need to do more of? You are already doing these actions to make your desired result a reality, but you must do more.  

Examples:

                Run more often

As you look at these questions, you will see that they are geared toward identifying how to exchange time from one activity to another.  

Let’s reallocate the time

The next step is to allocate the time you will stop and do less to the actions you want to start or do more of.  

                For each item you will stop or do less of, allocate the number of hours you will gain. 

                Then, allocate the number of hours you need for each item you will start or do more of. 

Add the total number of hours you will gain and compare it to the hours you need to accomplish your desired result.  Have you allocated enough?  

Tweak until your reallocation of your time is achievable and realistic.  

Words of advice

The four questions are often easier if someone does it with you.  It’s easy to give vague answers, but you must be specific.  Perhaps you want to procrastinate less.  However, this is not specific enough.  What is it exactly are you doing when you procrastinate?  That thing you do when you procrastinate when you procrastinate is what you need to do less of.  Yet, when doing it alone, it is easy to say procrastinate less and not get specific. 

Because it is hard to challenge ourselves, having someone help you with this is helpful.  

Once you have the activities you want to reallocate, using other techniques (such as habit building, strategy work, or linking) to build the neuro connections to do the desired actions over the old ones is helpful.  A trained coach can help you with this.

ROAR is an effective way to realign your time.  

This is a process I do regularly so that I can identify what is working and what is not and then make tweaks.  I find that when I do this regularly, I can work towards building better habits one at a time vs. trying to develop too many habits at once.  

Feel free to book a free strategy session with me to learn how to make this work for you. 

Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.

Harvey MacKay

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