3 Steps to Achieving a Goal
Most people leave lots of goals, hopes, and dreams unrealized. We may look at others' success and think that there's something special about them that we can't duplicate. And in a way, that's true -- everyone is different. But one thing I've learned over the years is that what we do matters a lot more to our success than the particular set of talents we were born with.
Last year, in my post about my furnace breaking down, I wrote:
I was working on a new membership website. It was a big project, but not so enormous that it should have taken more than a few months to complete. But I kept getting sidetracked by other little projects, and in the end, it took me over a year.
By the time I was finished, I realized that if only I had worked on it every day, even just a little, I would have finished months earlier in the end.
(After I'd spent most of the day dealing with the furnace, I made sure to carve out a few minutes to work on a big project rather than let myself put it off till tomorrow).
Something my brother, Thor, wrote the other day reminded me of that:
A lot of people pay good money to learn how to set an effective goal. Forget all of that right now, because if you learn to put action first, you will achieve more than the 80% of people who are still trying to write the perfect goal.
...
When I asked my son if he set a goal to earn a 4.0, he said, "No, I just did what I needed to do." You do need a plan to become your best, but you don't need a plan to get started. You have a sense of what you need to do. Without spending any more time thinking or putting it off, start doing it. Refine what you are doing later.
So true!
Some would-be marketers get addicted to learning, but never have the guts to start doing. Or they dive in, don't get rich overnight, decide that whatever they were trying doesn't work, and jump back out just as quickly.
To achieve a goal you need to first identify what this goal is. Write it down on a piece of paper and hang it it your house in the spot where you could easily see it. And make a small step every single day to achieve that goal.Which reminds me of another phrase my brother has used: "Easy to do. Easy not to do." It's easy to do something every day to work toward a goal. And it's easy not to -- to put it off, to flop down on the couch and watch TV or play a computer game instead. Or to keep studying, hoping that someday you'll know everything you need to get rich quick.
You're better off getting rich gradually by doing something every day than waiting for the perfect chance to succeed with a single burst of activity. That's almost never how it happens. When it looks like someone has gotten rich quick, it's usually because the cumulative results of years of hard work finally paid off over a short period of time.
My brother has a lot of good ideas about how to use goals successfully. For a few more tips, check out the rest of his post at the link above.
July 25th, 2012 at 10:31 am
Perhaps Nike has been onto something all these years--"Just do it." With most goals, be it exercise or a business project, moving a little bit--even if that movement is slow--is movement in the right direction.
July 28th, 2012 at 8:18 pm
I completely agree with the premise of this post. Many people can get so hung up on creating and planning out and writing down their goals, that they get hung up on this step. That is just plain crazy to me! The whole point of goals, after all, is to help us get the motivation to get up off the couch and get moving.
Sadly, I think we have probably all been a victim of this problem. It makes me wonder if maybe sometimes we know that a particular goal will mean making a lot of changes in ourselves. Only this time we can actually tell our mind that we are indeed getting started, because writing down the goal is the first step in the process.
The bottom line is that we need to know ourselves better. Many times we do not need to start with goal setting, no matter what the experts say. Instead, we should just get started. A perfect example of this was the post made by Thor, whose son told him that he did not create any kind of plan to getting a good grade. Instead, his son relates, he just went out and did it!
July 31st, 2012 at 5:44 am
Three points:
1) Get it working. Get it working right. Get it working fast (or better).
2)Take imperfect action.
(Sorry, I can't cite who first said the above two.)
3) I've tried the "fifteen minutes a day" approach to getting some long-term projects done and found it doesn't always work for me. By the time I open the software and the documents and review what I've done and what comes next, it's time to shut it all down again. Some tasks, like building a website, are accomplished better when given a couple of consecutive hours of uninterrupted effort. It works better for me to schedule those hours weekly on my calendar. I use Google Calendar to send me email reminders.
October 9th, 2013 at 3:29 pm
To achieve a goal you need to first identify what this goal is. Write it down on a piece of paper and hang it it your house in the spot where you could easily see it. And make a small step every single day to achieve that goal.