by Ray White
Goals (in priority order)
Date
(If I could only accomplish one thing in life, it would be…)
1.
(Assuming I will accomplish #1, if I could only accomplish one more thing in life, it would be…)
2.
(Assuming I will accomplish #1 and #2, if I could only accomplish one more thing in life, it would be…)
3.
(Assuming I will accomplish #1 through #3, if I could only accomplish one more thing in life, it would be…)
4.
(Assuming I will accomplish #1 through #4, if I could only accomplish one more thing in life it would be…)
5.
Re-read your top three to five goals and take the following actions:
1.Put an O by each milestone that you own. It is your goal and does not come from your parents or someone else’s expectations. It is what you want to do, not what you think you should do.
2.Put an S by each milestone that is specific enough for you to understand exactly what you want to accomplish.
3.Put an M by each milestone that is measurable. You will be able to objectively know if you accomplished it.
Re-write any goals that don’t have an O, S, or M next to them.
It is important to be excited about your goals. How do your goals align with your Higher Purpose? How do they make someone else’s life better? Do they make you feel excited and a little scared? Are they difficult and challenging? Are they something you really want, or just something you think you should want? Do they fit your life today, or are they creating the life you want? Go back and edit your goals. Make them a little bigger and a little scarier so they get your blood pumping. Connect them to your Higher Purpose and definition of success. Delete any goals that you don’t feel compelled to accomplish.
Once more, sit back and contemplate your list. It can be changed and updated, but only through a conscious choice and process. Make sure these are goals you are confident you will be happy pursuing and putting 100% effort into.
Share them with friends and family and get their input. But in the end, it is your decision, and they have be goals you believe in and are willing to commit your life to accomplishing.
Step 4: Activity – Board of Milestones
We started with a dream board that included everything we wanted or even dreamed we wanted. Now we will create a Board of Milestones. It will only contain pictures that represent our three to five top goals. Visually being able to see where we are going is more effective than just reading the words.
Follow the same process as the Dream Board. You can even re-use the same pictures.
Every day review the pictures of your milestones. Picture what you want to accomplish and then think of the steps you need to take to get there. Specifically think about what the next step is.
Board of Milestones – A visual representation of my top goals
Step 5: Activity – Build a list of supporting actions to accomplish your goals
You now have a list of the three to five goals that will have the most impact on living your definition of success. Next, we will take each goal or milestone and write a list of actions or next steps. For example, if your milestone was “By March 1st 2016, be part of an organization where I can donate at least 4 hours a week to help children have better lives,” then what actions do you need to take? You may want to:
1.Make a list of charities and organizations you could contact
2.Research and learn about each organization
3.Contact and meet people who work at those organizations
4.Choose three and volunteer at each one to find a good fit
5.Choose your favorite and determine how they can best use your four-hour-per-week commitment
Also, for every action, you need to know a clear next step. For example, your first action is to make a list of charities and organizations you could contact. Your next step might be to do a search on Google, ask your friends, or talk to someone at your church.
You should now have a list of three to five prioritized goals or milestones that will have the most impact on living your definition of success. For each of those goals/milestones you have five actions you can take to achieve them, a date by which you will complete those actions, and a next step so you know what to do to keep the process moving forward.
Mind Map
If you are struggling to compile all the different opportunities and the different directions they could take you, try drawing a mind map.
Mind Mapping is a visual representation of information and thoughts that include a central idea surrounded by connected “branches” of associated topics. It is a process of brain storming, where ideas are added to the “map” radially around the central node without implicit prioritization or hierarchy. Although it may sound complex, mind maps are very easy to create and usually come naturally, as they are more of a non-linear form of note taking.
Mind maps generally start as hand-written rough notes and begin with your main theme – in this instance, start with where you are today. Write your current job in the middle as the main idea and create “branches” to next level nodes that represent other jobs you might want to have. Each of those jobs might have an additional branch or topic. For example, if you are currently a mortgage analyst but you like teaching people, then write “Mortgage Analyst" in the middle. Your first branch might be Mortgage Trainer, another branch might be High School Teacher, and another branch might be College Professor. A branch from High School Teacher might be Math, History, or Science to represent the subjects you might want to teach. You could also have a branch for Principal to represent growth from teacher to high school administration. You can have as many branches as you want and can follow your thoughts out until you have considered every possibility. Your mind map will look a lot like a spider with many legs. (See Mind Map below)
Mind Map
Once you have all your thoughts down on paper, you can apply ratings to each bubble based on how much it fits with what you want to do. Choose your three highest ratings and evaluate which direction you want to pursue most. Save your mind map, so that if one direction doesn’t work out you can try something else.
Mind maps are a great tool and can be used to generate, visualize and structure ideas to aid in problem solving and decision making. Another great aspect of creating a mind map is that you don’t need anything more than a clean sheet of paper, a pencil and your imagination. You can add colored pencils or pens to add dimension and creativity to your mind map. Colors can help you differentiate topics or levels within your mind map.
Fundamental Steps for Creating a Mind Map
1.Get a clean sheet of paper (turn it sideways) and a pencil (colored, if possible).
2.Start by putting your main theme in the center of your page to give you the freedom to spread out in a number of directions.
3.Connect major categories to your central node. Categories can represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items related to your central theme.
4.Add as many major categories as you can think of – remember, this is a brain-storming process.
5.Connect sub-categories to each category. Sub-categories are simply ideas/thoughts that are related to the next level up category.
6.Use curved lines to connect your nodes. This adds a level of creativity and enforces the “un-structured” format of your mind map.
I hope this helps you with your idea generation. Enjoy the process and let your ideas flow.
The Change Process
What if something changes? One of the most challenging aspects of pursuing goals is staying on track. There are so many things we want to do and accomplish, and we get more ideas every day. So how do we stay on track and reach the goals that really matter to us? The answer is in building and maintaining a rigorous process for making changes to our goals. If we are headed to New York, we don’t want to get sidetracked to Georgia and never reach New York. If we find that Georgia is becoming more and more of an
important goal, we will want to make a conscious decision to either switch our goal to Georgia or skip the Georgia opportunity and go to New York.
The change process:
1.Clarify your new goal, its measurement, and timeframe.
2.Evaluate the goal’s fit with your Higher Purpose and definition of success.
3.Honestly and thoroughly evaluate its impact on your current list of other goals.
4.Make a conscious decision to pursue the new goal, postpone the new goal, or skip the new goal.
5.Adjust your current list and priorities to include the new goal with a reasonable date for accomplishment, or ignore the new goal and move forward with your current plan.
Let’s imagine that your final list of goals includes starting your own business. At some point, a friend mentions the benefits of going back to school and getting a graduate degree. Rather than immediately adding “get a graduate degree” to your goals list, you would evaluate that goal’s impact on any higher level goals. For example, will taking the time to get a graduate degree interfere with starting your own business? Your answers could be that:
A.
It will sidetrack the process of starting your own business.
B.
It will provide some benefit to starting your business.
C.
It is not related to starting a business; it is just something you want to do.
D.
It is a necessity to start the business.
E.
It is more important than starting a business.
If your answer is A, then getting a graduate degree should not be put on your goals list; or, at the very least, it should be added with a long-term date several years after you have started your business.
If your answer is B or C, then you have to weigh the costs and the benefits, and determine whether the value of getting a graduate degree is worth the time and effort you have to put in. Please be honest with yourself and ask others to help keep you honest. The biggest mistake we see in this step is underestimating how much time and work it will take to accomplish the new extra goal. The result is, you end up with a list of goals that is unwieldy, unclear, and lacks prioritization.
If your answer is D or E, then move starting a business down on your list and consider extending the date. Delete your #5 goal so you don’t have more than five goals. Add getting a graduate degree to the top of your list. If you are not willing to move starting a business down on the list and to delete a goal, then don’t add getting a graduate degree. Trying to do both at the same time is a sign that you are unable to prioritize and could easily lead to neither being accomplished.
What do we do if we miss a goal or a date?
Another way we get derailed from our goals or milestones is by missing deadlines, or going days or weeks without taking some action we were supposed to take, such as exercising or eating right. This is extremely common. Our lives get busy or we have mental blocks that prevent us from doing what we know we should do. The easy solution is to start again and keep starting again until you reach your goals. A more challenging solution is to truly evaluate the underlying mental block that is getting in our way. It could be a fear of failure, a fear of success, poor organization or prioritization, or a lack of belief in the goal. Work with your friends and family, or even seek professional help, to identify the challenge and make adjustments in your life to overcome it. Often just five minutes of raw honesty with yourself can get to the root of the problem. If you can’t identify the mental block or challenge, then keep pushing and keep starting again. Don’t let a lack of success derail your success. Each day find some way to accomplish something on your action plan.
I had a goal to finish this book in August and publish by December 31st. Unfortunately, the research and writing took me longer than I expected. I also had higher priorities of spending time with my family and making sure I gave 100% to my paying job. Given my two higher priorities, I set a new date for delivering my first draft to the editor. I didn’t give up on the goal; I adjusted my expectations based on my other priorities.
Prioritization: $100 Rocks
Our list of things to do always seems to be getting longer rather than shorter. In order to reach our goals, we want to make sure that we are focused on accomplishing the tasks most related to achievement of our goals. One method of prioritization is the $100 Rocks. As an analogy, picture two rooms. One is filled with rocks and the other is empty. Every day, in order to reach our goals, we have to move as many rocks as we can from the first room to the second room. Every rock has a value on it, from $1 to $100, which corresponds to the impact that rock will have on achieving our goals. If we can only move five rocks a day, we want to make sure they are the rocks that most help us reach our goals. We can go into the first room and pick up two $5 rocks, two $25 rocks, and a $30 rock. Now at the end of the day we have moved five rocks and made $90 of progress toward our goals ($5 + $5 + $25 + $25 + $30 = $90). The other option is to pick out five $100 rocks. This time we have moved the same number of rocks and made $500 of progress toward our goals. The fastest way to reach our goals is to take a few extra minutes to pick out the $100 rocks. Once the $100 rocks are gone, we pick out the $99 rocks, and then the $98 rocks, etc.
So what are $5 rocks and what are $100 rocks? It is up to each person to define what will have the most impact on achieving his goals. But some of the lower-value rocks that often get in people’s way include reading nonessential email; answering texts or instant messages; playing games on our phones; surfing iFunny, Facebook, or our digital distraction of choice; watching television; or handling projects that are urgent but not important to reaching our goals. We are not saying you shouldn’t do these things; just keep their value in perspective and don’t do them instead of moving your $100 rocks. We all need to take a break and relax, but we will feel better about ourselves if we make progress toward our goals first. If we move enough $100 rocks, then we can relax and spend some time on $20 rocks.
We often find ways to procrastinate by dealing with $5 rocks because we are not sure how to tackle the $100 rocks. We need and want to read through our emails, find out what is happening on Facebook, organize our desk, and track the progress of our favorite stock or sports team. Understanding those are lower-value rocks when measured against achieving our goals will help us allocate the appropriate amount of time to them on our schedule.
Activity: Prioritize Your List
1.Make a list of everything you have to do today. You can also do this for the week or the month.
2.Give everything a rock value based on how important it is to reaching your goals. For example, if your goal is to be healthier and that includes an exercise routine, then exercise would be a $90 rock while cleaning off your desk would be a $25 rock.
3.No rock values can be the same. You have to make a decision about each item relative to the other items on the list.
4.Start with the highest dollar rock and work your way down. You don’t have to complete each task; you just have to make progress on it and know the next steps and timeframes before you start another task.
Prioritization: Urgent vs. Important
Another way to prioritize is to look at what is urgent vs. important. Important means they have a direct impact on accomplishing our goals. Urgent means they are in our face and are begging for our attention. When our phone pings because we received a text, email, or some other notification, that feels urgent. It makes us want to stop whatever we are doing and see what we are missing.
Covey describes the four quadrants as:
1.Important but not Urgent – includes long-term planning, taking care of our health, taking time to prioritize, and other investments in our happiness and success.
2.Urgent and Important – includes “fires,” projects that we had put off but now the deadline is near, trips to the emergency room, and family or work crises.
3.Urgent but not Important – includes smartphone notifications, some email, many unschedu
led phone calls, someone else’s crisis.
4.Not Important and Not Urgent – includes checking sports scores or stock prices, the majority of email and texts, smartphone games, and watching videos.
The first two quadrants include items that are important to our reaching our goals, so we want to spend most of our time on those types of items. The challenge is that we often distract ourselves with items in quadrants three and four. We get caught up watching a series of funny videos or texting with our friends about our plans for Friday night.
It seems easier to sit down and watch television then it is to spend time exercising or working on that big project that is not due until next month. If we can classify our list of to-do items based on how important they are to reaching our goals and understand how to reduce the sense of urgency connected to the non-important actions, we can be more productive and accomplish our goals. We can also relax more when we eventually do allocate time for the not important and not urgent distractions in Quadrant 4, because we are confident we have completed everything that is important.
The lesson is not that you can only work on things that are important. It is not to get distracted by the urgent items and to do the important things first, so you will eventually have time and can fully relax doing what is fun.
