We love tactics and things, am I right?
Humans love a good step-by-step map and the latest, shiny gadget. These “sure things” feed our need for certainty. Nothing makes us happier than getting the next thing that we’re positive, in that moment, will bring us the success that we imagine.
So why aren’t we all rich, rocking a six-pack, and living the life of our dreams?
I mean, that’s what’s advertised. Everything from beer commercials to late night infomercial real estate courses to the latest app or widget on your iPhone is all about getting clarity that the land WITH is better than the land WITHOUT.
But is it?
For somebody, I’m sure of it.
For you or me? I don’t know.
Until we get a little more clear, we don’t know if it’ll actually be our best life or we’re just mirroring the compelling image in front of us.
Imagine that you were playing in a football game.
Now, imagine that you didn’t know:
- Where you were on the field.
- Which goal you were trying to score in.
- What position you were playing.
- What down it was.
- What time was on the clock.
- What the score was.
What do you think would be the likelihood of you winning that game?
Pretty slim.
You could spend a whole lot of energy PLAYING the game, imagining that you’re doing the right things, only to find out that you’ve been after the wrong goal the whole time.
You wouldn’t play a football game that way, but that’s how most people go through life. They have a vague “big goal” – “Win the game”, but don’t have any idea of what that actually looks like, where they are now, or what the road to get from point A to B is going to entail.
There’s a few that do make it. They happen on a plan that gets them where their mind’s eye wants them to go. Or maybe they’re adaptable to what life hands to them and so their goals merge with their circumstance.
But most fall far short of their dream life because they don’t have a lot of clarity on what that actually is.
Here’s how we change that.
Step One – Getting Clarity on Point A
When I’m coaching clients, one of the first things I have most people figure out is what their life is like now. That sounds simple – Of course you know what your life is like, right? You’re living it.
However, how often do you really take stock of things and measure what you can?
- How’s your physical shape? Physique, health, performance, etc.
- What’s your financial and resource status? Income, net worth, debt, etc.
- How’s your relationships situation? Romantic, friendship, family, etc.
- What’s your day-to-day life like? Stress, achievement, enjoyment?
- Where do your skills sit? Education, life, and network?
You can slice it up further, but once you’ve got some of this stuff out of the “general idea” ether and on paper in front of you there’s often gaps that you’ve been avoiding or have simply slipped your observation.
Step Two – Imagine Point B
Next, take a look at where you want to go. This should cover both the big long-term vision and the relative short-term objectives. I find it useful for myself and clients to set an “end goal” that is a little more flexible/vague in a lot of qualities and then tighter short-term targets.
Define what you can with precision:
When I consult with people in either the fitness or entrepreneurial arena I always ask where they’d like to go. Nine times out of ten I get some vague answer like “I want to be healthy and rich and retire early”. That’s pretty useless, honestly. I know how I would define it, but it might be totally different than how you would and the same with the other 7 billion people on this planet.
Let’s try to make this a little better.
“I want to maintain a 34” waist and stay under 220 lbs because I feel best there and have $5 million invested in ten years”. Ok, now that gives us more to work with.
We have a clear set of variables that can be solved for. We know, depending on your Point A that we figured out in Step 1, how far away from that Point B we currently stand.
Now, a caveat to this.
As I said above, I like to be a little more loose with the longer term objectives. I think it’s valuable to have a solvable target to hit, as it becomes what I call a “North Star” to help you make decisions toward.
However, know that it’s likely that by the time you get there, even if you never deviated from the path… it might not be what you think it is.
Your desires might change. I’m 42 years old. I have a good idea of what I want and am shooting for at 52. That being said, when I was 32 I wanted something different, and 22 year-old Isaac definitely wanted different things than now. Your long-term wants and needs will likely change.
The promised land also might not be quite what you imagined or your priorities might shift. You might discover that what’s most important to you now, keeping a 34” waist, isn’t quite as big a deal to older you. That’s fine, it’s still a reference point.
Finally, life might change the value of what you’re going for. For example, inflation goes up and so the dollar goes down. The aforementioned $5 million might not be what you need for the lifestyle you want.
The point is to have a real target to shoot for while accepting it may change over time. In the shooting world there’s an old maxim of “aim small to miss small”. If you aim for a small target like the bull’s eye and miss, it’s likely you’ll still get on the board vs if you just pointed at the whole thing and pulled the trigger.
Now, in the shorter time frames you can get a lot more specific.
When I’m working on my own stuff or helping clients I like to break things up into maximum 90-day periods, often shorter. There are a couple of reasons for this.
First, the human brain doesn’t really conceptualize the future all that well. We’re wired to survive in the moment where threat/opportunity recognition is key. Quite frankly, left to its own devices the brain doesn’t give a rat’s ass if something is bad for it ten years from now if it works today.
For example, the body will make all kinds of movement compensations that lead to disaster in the long run. If you get a foot injury it’ll shift your gait to one side to help you walk. Over the course of years, that would wear out the knee on that side and you’d be screwed, but the brain is willing to make that trade because back in the Sabertooth Tiger times if you couldn’t walk… you died.
Next, and we’ll get into this more in the next section, having a series of shorter goals leading to your big goal allows more course correction and opportunity for learning. You probably don’t have the resources or skills yet to achieve your long-term objective, but you do have what you need to take the next logical step towards it.
Step 3: Clarify the Path
Now that you have a couple of end points, it’s time to connect them.
This is where your shorter-term strategies come in. As I said above, what we’re going to do is a series of shorter jumps that build up to the long journey. We’re going to be utilizing that human short-term hyperfocus as a feature, not a bug.
Narrow down exactly what you want to accomplish in your next short time period. If you can’t, dig in until you can.
Next, slice that up even more into action steps.
Maybe you want to build a new website, so you know you’ll need to get a framework built, different pages, shopping carts, or whatever.
On the physical end you want to drop 20 lbs in the next 90 days. Well, you know to be on track you’ll need to lose a little over 1.5 lbs a week to stay on track.
These micro-steps are your objective check-in targets to keep you on the right track.
What we’re really going to do to accomplish them is to set up process goals. A process goal is something that you can do on a regular basis that most likely results in your objectives being achieved but you can do without depending on others or circumstances.
For example, in your weight loss journey you know that you’ll need to do some strength training, adjust your nutrition, get some cardio in, and recover. These are things you can largely control. What you can’t control is what the scale actually says.
Step 4: After Action Report
An After Action Report (AAR) is used by the military after a mission to debrief and codify takeaways from chaos. After your short-term goal is up, it’s time to use a version of an AAR to evaluate the results and get clarity on the next steps.
- Was the objective achieved?
- If not, why not?
- What went well?
- What didn’t go well?
- What did you lack?
- What proved to be essential?
- What was unnecessary?
- What course corrections might have revealed themselves over this process?
- What’s the next step from here to move you to the big goal?
You’re never going to know everything that will happen. Life’s always going to throw you some curveballs. That’s just the way of it and, in my experience, a big part of the fun of it. That’s the problem with buying a canned plan built for someone else and following it blindly.
It’s almost certainly doomed to fail.
What you can do is build as much clarity around your journey as possible. That will let you define your own success and take real, marching steps towards it. Clarity puts you back in the driver’s seat.
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