"The difference between a dream and a goal is a plan."“By the yard it’s hard, but inch by inch, anything’s a cinch.”
Probably one of the most important steps in working towards your goals is laying out a detailed plan of attack. The key to this plan is the word “detail.” I don’t just mean to look at some steps to work toward your goals, I am talking about planning every step you can think of on the way. These steps must become benchmarks, or mini goals that you are working toward. Then as you reach a mini goal you can see that you are headed in the right direction. Here are three reasons why you must have a detailed, step-by-step plan:
1. It tells your mind that you are winner.
The game of life is all about your mind. If you get one victory by hitting a benchmark, your mind goes wild and craves another victory and you become more determined to achieve the next victory. This is the psychology behind Dave Ramsey’s Debt Snowball. He suggests listing all your debts smallest to largest, pay minimum payments on all, and on the smallest account put as much money in it as possible to blow it out of the water as soon as possible. If, for instance, you have 10 accounts that total $100,000, you focus on a credit card that has $1,500 and you pay it off in three or four months. Then you have $85,000 and 9 accounts. It’s still a daunting amount, but you’ve gotten rid of an entire account; you see that this can happen and it is happening and you’re gaining momentum (there’s a reason he calls it a snowball).
Jim Rohn talks about if you want to get healthy you say to yourself, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” So you eat a apple and feel good about yourself, but then when you get up the second day and have that apple, you’re on top of the world because you have accomplished a small step to good health that you resolved to do the day before. He then says if you eat an apple the third day you are unstoppable.
2. It focuses your efforts.
Instead of looking at the daunting task before you, you have a small goal to which you can throw all of your energy and efforts. Ramsey again says, “What you focus on, you win at.” If you go towards an smaller goal with laser-beam focus, you will master that skill on the way to accomplishing that goal. Consider, once again, your health. If you look at what a healthy lifestyle is and add one aspect of that lifestyle, such as eating a nutritious breakfast, then eventually that will become a habit (traditionally 30 days), then eating breakfast is second nature and you can add one more thing, such as going for a quick walk before your breakfast. Therefore you aren’t overwhelmed with the amount of things that need to change.
3. It helps you to track your progress.
Think again about the Debt Snowball. If after the four months you saw that you had only paid $1,500 that would be discouraging. One hundred-thousand dollars is a mind boggling amount, and you have spent one quarter knocking down 1.5 percent. Looking at it that way is an uphill battle. However, if you consider that you have reduced your debt accounts from 10 to 9, then you have knocked it out 10 percent.
My wife and I are reality TV/self improvement junkies (more me than her). We love The Biggest Loser, and Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition. In both of these shows the people trying to change their lives are given a goal with a time-period. The Biggest Loser, to me, has the best formula. Contestants are weighed once a week. The successful contestants are always trying to hit a certain goal every week. They don’t look at the fact that they need to lose 200 lbs to win, they only look toward the next weigh in and say, “I want to lose eight pounds this week.”
When Rachel and I decided to knock out our debt we made two things to track our progress. One was an excel spreadsheet that listed our debts, how much we owed on each one, how much we had paid on each one, and a grand total. As we paid one off, I would strike through the name and use the hide function for the totals. There was something victorious about hitting those two buttons with my mouse. Rachel drew a thermometer and every $500 was a degree and we moved our way up the thermometer – it’s a lot like a fundraiser. We would fill in an amount and put a date by it when we fulfilled it. Now that we have gotten rid of all debts but one, we now have only the thermometer, but with it we are constantly making goals deciding things like, “We should be here by October” pointing to a place on the thermometer.
Working towards goals is a lot easier when you break down your goal into small achievable steps. What about you, what goals have you made, and how did you break it down into manageable pieces?
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