#024: How to Effectively Plan and Execute Audacious Goals for the New Year. December 9, 2013

Transcription

1 1 #024: How to Effectively Plan and Execute Audacious Goals for the New Year December 9, 2013 Introduction The 5 am Miracle - Episode #24: How to Effectively Plan and Execute Audacious Goals for the New Year [Intro Song] Good morning and welcome to the 24th episode of The 5 AM Miracle. I am Jeff Sanders and this is THE podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast. My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy. In today's episode I discuss how you can plan your

2 2 new year with incredibly audacious goals that will both scare you to death and help you make more progress than ever before. But first, let s begin with the Tip of the Week! [Musical Interlude] Today s Tip is how to optimize the holiday season with your family while maintaining your health and sanity. I originally got the idea for this topic after I received an from Cat. Cat says, I'm loving the podcast so far - particularly your tips for productive daily habits for personal development and productivity. With the holidays fast approaching, I'm wondering how your schedule varies from that of a regular week day? I'm getting set to have 2-3 weeks off, which is wonderful, but travel, parties, and staying with family who are not as productive, healthy or self-motivated all contribute to this being a time when it can be challenging to maintain a powerful

3 3 regiment. Do you have any suggestions that can help us listeners to avoid gradually falling back into bad habits while at the same time minimizing the risk of alienating or offending holiday-loving family and friends? Great question Cat! The holidays are a tough time for many people, simply because their normal routines don t exist and they have to modify their behavior on the fly. I just recently returned from a trip back home and I personally experienced a few of the challenges you outlined in your question. So, let me provide a few suggestions that should help minimize any travel pains you may be going through or are about to experience. Also, no matter what the current date of the year is when you are listening to this episode, these lessons will apply whenever you visit family or friends, or travel to new destinations, or when your normal routine is just thrown out of whack. 1. Have a plan.

4 4 You don't want to walk into any vacation or holiday without a written plan for what you want to accomplish, even if that just means working out a few times and having daily smoothie. When I travel I always clear my schedule completely and then only add in the few things I know that absolutely have to be accomplished. For me that includes a daily smoothie, exercising at least once, and socializing with others as much as possible. 2. Share your plan with others and recruit them to join in. I always try to convince people in my family to workout with me and eat healthy over the holidays, and they do join in when I tell them upfront what my plans are. This holiday season I am still working through an injury, so our traditional 5k on Thanksgiving Day did not happen, but I still managed to exercise anyway. Also, before the holidays started, I told my family I was traveling with my Vitamix blender and that I was prepared to bring all of my own food, if necessary. SIDE NOTE: You may have noticed that most of my

5 5 preparation for the holidays revolves around my diet and workout schedule, and there s a good reason for that: my health matters to me and the temptation to destroy my body over the holidays is greater than any other time of the year. If you experience a similar temptation, plan accordingly. 3. Keep your schedule flexible, but always have some structure in place. You don't want to have a "free day." What you want are ideas about how to optimize your time, even if that just means going to a party. The easiest thing to do is plan nothing and just wing it, but that s not how I roll. I prefer to have a loose structure in place so that I know where I m needed most and when I can squeeze in some personal goal achievement time, which can definitely be hard to find. To sum this up, my best advice for the holidays is to approach everything with a flexible mind, but always have a backup plan as to how you can utilize your time effectively. I hope you found that helpful. Now it s time for

6 6 the Feature Segment! [Musical Interlude] At the time of this recording, the new year is about 3 weeks away. So, now is a great time to plan out not only what you would like to accomplish in the upcoming 12 months, but also exactly how you are going to live differently AND better, every single day. I also want to mention right up front that this episode is a crash course in productivity, life planning, and personal goal achievement. You may want to listen to this episode two or three times to make sure you digest all of the concepts. Alright, back to the content. As with most New Year s resolutions, the goal is not to fail in the first 2 weeks. If you are already planning on joining a gym on January 1st... Don t do it. You will only be feeding the statistics that tell other people that resolutions (and gym memberships) fail. Instead, I am going to outline how I approach the New Year, and hopefully you will have a few new

7 7 ideas on how to structure your goals and make some magic in the coming weeks. So, let s get started! Why You Desperately Need Audacious Goals in the New Year It s probably no surprise to you that I was not alive when astronauts first landed on the moon, but honestly, I really wish I was for one reason: landing on the moon was the one of the greatest goals every set by anyone. In my opinion, the act of accomplishing the moon landing in 1969 was not as impressive as the boldness and desire to attempt the goal in the first place. The reason might be obvious, but let me just outline exactly why the goal of a moon landing was so incredible. #1: The goal was incredibly hard and everyone knew it. #2: Landing on the moon would require huge resources of money, time, energy, creativity, and a

8 8 lot of hard work. #3: Accomplishing this goal could not be accomplished any one person. It would require many people working together over a long period of time. #4: Everyone on earth was constantly reminded of the goal every single night after sunset. People could see it, visualize it, and believe it was possible -- even if only in theory. #5: If the landing was successful, it would have vast implications for many industries, technologies, and enterprises long into the future. In other words, the impact would be out of this world! (sorry for the lame joke!) Simon Sinek s WHY There is a famous TED video and now book from Simon Sinek talking all about the power of WHY. If you haven t watched the video, it s very short and powerful. I will link to it in the show notes. Also, the book, Start with WHY, is awesome and I highly recommend it. Simon s argument is that when everyone is committed to the WHY behind a project, the how is less important.

9 9 Frankl s Search for Meaning This same concept is discussed thoroughly in Viktor Frankl s book Man s Search for Meaning. Frankl refers to a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche that says He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. What This All Means All of these concepts are pointing to the same underlying lesson, which is that when you have something enormous to live for, it guides your every action and motivates you when nothing else will. The moon landing is simply a powerful WHY or an ingrained sense of purpose. For many people, doing great work requires them to think outside themselves, to dig deep and push harder because someone else s well-being is on the line, or there is something new, exciting, and powerful motivating to be achieved. Parents are driven to help their children because they love them unconditionally. CEOs are motivated to grow their company because their job is almost always at risk. Artists are inspired to create better work out of a need to share their talents with the world.

10 10 Pastors serve their communities out of desire to live out their higher calling. Astronauts land on the moon because they are literally changing the history of all mankind. These motivating factors are a part of a strategy I call the North Star Approach. The North Star Approach The North Star Approach is a strategy where you set a goal that may sound too big to ever accomplish in two year, let alone one. You want it to be so big that you smile and cry just a little at the same time. I always choose one insane goal per year to be my North Star. I let this crazy dream guide my decision making and goal setting throughout the upcoming months. I then continually ask myself throughout the year, are my daily choices leading me closer to my North Star goal or farther away? With one specific and daunting goal in mind, all my decisions throughout the year have context -- they have meaning and a sense of purpose. Even if I never truly accomplish the North Star Goal,

11 11 odds are that I have made significant progress throughout the year and accomplished many big goals along the way. You might be thinking about a famous quotation from Les Brown that fits the scenario I am describing here: Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you ll land among the stars. As corny as that may sound, I have found it to have a lot of truth. We all need to shoot for the moon. We need a dominating goal to drive our everyday choices. We need a powerful force to guide us and direct us towards a bigger destination than we believe we have the capabilities for. Don t Sell Yourself Short Losing 10 pounds this year is a terrible goal. It s weak. It lacks purpose and it won t motivate anyone to do very much. Joining a gym the day after you have recovered from your New Year s party hangover is a terrible time to change your life. If you want to join a gym, do it today. Believe me,

12 12 they ll take your money and happily give you a tour of their empty facilities. On the other hand, losing 75 pounds in order to run a 100-mile ultramarathon over the Rocky Mountains by Christmas that s a goal worth striving for. It s completely crazy and worth every ounce of time, energy, and money it would take to see it through. Don t sell yourself short by setting goals anyone could achieve. Set your sights higher and watch yourself rise to the challenge. It WILL happen. It always does. How to Plan Your New Year Now that we have covered the big WHY behind the big goals you re about to achieve, how should you go about living your life on a daily basis in order to guarantee this North Star Goal actually has a chance of success? Great question. #1: Identify Your WHY Use the next few weeks to clearly establish your

13 13 North Star goal and the powerful reason behind it. This doesn t have to be complicated, and honestly, you probably already know what it is. #2: Find Your Big Rocks Another great way to visualize your year is with Steven Covey s rocks illustration. It s a great way to understand what matters and what doesn t so you can figure out what you will spend the most time on and what you let slip away. In this illustration, Covey talks about how you can fit in the big rocks first (which are your highest priorities or what I m calling your North Star), and then schedule the less important stuff later (which are the smaller rocks, pebbles, or sand). The goal of this illustration is NOT to show you how the puzzle pieces fit together, leading some people to believe they will have time to get everything done. The goal is to guarantee that the projects that matter the most to you are accomplished, while the other stuff may or may not get done, and that s okay. #3: Clear Your Schedule

14 14 Take some time to dig into your calendar and cancel everything. This will also not take very long. Whatever you had previously planned -- get rid of it. The only tasks and events that should stay on your calendar are the ones that directly or indirectly move you towards your North Star Goal. This doesn t mean you have to quit your job and skip a family vacation because you want to run a marathon, but it does mean that you will have to think about your calendar through the filter of your North Star Goal. Does this task, event, or new idea work with your dream or will it hold you back? Is this task you re considering good or great? Is it worth your time right now, or is your conscience telling you to work on that goal you committed to? #4: Maintain the Right Balance In the pursuit of your new goal, you won t be giving up everything. So, decide ahead of time what you will eliminate completely, what you will minimize, and what you will work on full-throttle. For example, if you wanted to run that 100-mile

15 15 ultramarathon I talked about earlier, you could eliminate certain unhealthy foods from your diet, minimize your time watching TV, and spend the bulk of your time exercising and preparing healthy meals. #5: Anticipate Distractions Focusing on what matters really only means one thing: not doing everything else. You will be distracted. It s a guarantee. In fact, I can guarantee that at multiple points throughout this podcast episode you got distracted and missed something I said. It s not a big deal. Heck, I ve already been distracted and I m the one recording this thing! We all know that distractions are a part of the process, but the best high-achievers plan for distractions and anticipate eliminating the most devious ones. As a personal example of this, my wife likes to bring home sweets. It doesn t happen every day, but it happens often enough that I have to have a plan as to how I will avoid the temptation to eat an entire pan of muffins (and yes, that has happened before).

16 16 #6: Find the Right Support People All big goals, like a moon landing, while require other people to help out. If you plan on accomplishing something huge, plan now to involve the best, most supportive people. I have written in my blog about How to Deal with Friends (and Family!) Who Demean Your Dreams, and I will link to that post in the show notes. You always want to surround yourself with people who believe in you and your goal. These are people who will encourage you when times are tough, and celebrate with you when you succeed. Sometimes those best people are hard to find, especially if you are really stretching for a something incredible. #7: Plan to Cross a Finish Line Before you begin work on your North Star goal, make sure you know exactly what crossing the finish line will look like. If you have a health & fitness goal, for example, sometimes it can be hard to know when you are done.

17 17 So, always focus on a quantitative goal whenever you can. In other words, find a way to measure your progress and know how far you are in the process. It s amazing to me how effective this strategy is with ongoing motivation. I recently finished a project to replace all of the images on my website with new ones that had the proper copyright licenses. Throughout the project I kept track of every image I corrected and every one I had left. However, I didn t start that way. I thought I could just jump in and finish the project without monitoring anything. And, technically, I could have done that. BUT, by measuring my progress I was significantly more motivated to finish because I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I knew exactly how much further I had to go. How to Execute Your Plan Execution is the name of the game because it makes the difference between a goal and an accomplishment. We want to eventually move all important goals into

18 18 the past as completed projects. A great example of how to balance planning with execution, that will ultimately lead to those big accomplishments, comes from the book Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. In the book they talk about the elephant and the rider. The elephant is the action guy. He s the one making things happen but without any forethought as to why the action is happening at all. The rider is the planner. He s the guy with to-do lists, calendars, and schedules, but he never follows through. The rider is incapable of ever taking action. However, when the elephant and the rider find a healthy balance and work together, they can effectively plan their route and get moving quickly. That s the goal with execution. Plan enough to get moving with confidence, and then go! Now, let s talk more specifically about how to effectively execute your audacious goals for the new year.

19 19 #1: Work with a Short-Term Vision In the book, Rework, the authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson talk about how much they hate long-term planning. They discuss how bad human beings are at estimating time. We might think a project will take 2 months when it really will take 8. We think setting a deadline will help keep us focused but it really just stresses us out. Instead, they recommend a different approach, and this is one I absolutely love and have used for years. Here s how it works: forget deadlines. Don t set them unless you absolutely hate to. I know I just talked about having a goal with a 12-month deadline, but frame that in your mind in the big picture sense. You want to think about goals chronologically instead of arbitrarily. What I mean is that almost every deadline that has ever existed was arbitrary. Someone just made it up! And WHY? Was there a good reason for the deadline or did it just seem reasonable in the moment? The reality is that you only want to establish deadlines when they absolutely matter.

20 20 Deadlines are effective if they are used properly, not when they are abused and overused. So, as you go about executing your plan, focus only on the next task at hand. Don t worry about when it will get done, just work on it until it IS done. Then, move on to the next task. I also recommend a great strategy during this process, which is to keep track of how long each task took in real time. In fact, you could even record a guess as to how long you think a specific task or project will take, and then compare that to the reality. The goal here is to improve your ability to estimate how long projects take. This skill is helpful because it allows you to more intelligently schedule what you could realistically accomplish in any time period. Though you won t be setting too many deadlines, you will know intuitively that project A should be finished in a week while project B will take more than a month. In more practical terms, I work this system by creating a new project in Nozbe, my task manager. Then, I list out every single step I can think of that

21 21 will get me from beginning to end in chronological order. At first, I only list major milestones. As time progresses, I fill in the smaller tasks that will get me from one milestone to the next. Throughout this process, there are no unnecessary or arbitrary deadlines. I simply work on the first task listed, because I have previously decided that it was the most urgent AND most important task to work on next. #2: Schedule Reflective Time As you are working through the individual tasks and milestones for your North Star goal, you will notice that you original list isn t perfect. This always happens and it s not a problem. What happens is that the list of tasks is incomplete, out of order, and filled with steps that may not work just yet. The best strategy here is to intentionally schedule reflective time to take a bird s eye view of the project and make sure the overall steps make sense AND that they are in the correct order. I have a weekly review time scheduled every Friday afternoon when I reflect on what happened during

22 22 the week, what went well, what didn t, and where I m heading for the next week. I also use this time to look at my projects and make sure the steps are still in the right order and that I am still making aggressive progress. I recommend you schedule reflective time every day on your commute home or just before bed, every week like I just mentioned, every month to make sure you know what major events are coming up soon, and every quarter to monitor your annual progress, which will ensure you are on track to completing your biggest goals for the year. #3: When to Just Stop At some point during the year you may find yourself working on a weak goal, one that is just not bold enough, daring enough, or strong enough to motivate you to fight through the hard times. This could be a sign that the goal is just not a good one and you may need to let go of it and push for something much harder. If you initially created a goal that was realistic and not scary as hell, you might find yourself giving up prematurely. At this point, the best course of action is to let it go.

23 You don t have to persevere for a bad goal. This strategy is a great one and it hits close to home for me. Let me give an example: A few years ago when I was reading Tim Ferriss s book, The 4-Hour Workweek, I ran across an idea that struck me as pretty radical. Tim said that if he starts reading a book and he doesn t like it fairly quickly, he will stop reading it and move on to another book. Now, this may sound trivial to you, but to me it was like hearing Santa Claus didn t exist. I always believed that you should finished what you ve started, no matter what. Well, I was wrong. Not every goal should be accomplished. Not every task needs to be checked off the list. Not every dream should be fulfilled. In fact, many of all the goals you have set in your life could probably have been avoiding altogether and you would be better for it. I know, that sounds radical, but it s totally true. Learning to discern the difference between a goal worth pursuing and one worth giving up is a learned skill that needs to be improved with time. Call it wisdom, or mastery of achievement -- knowing when to say when is a very important attribute for any high-achiever. 23

24 24 #4: Think Small. Then, Think Smaller. A final strategy that I think will help you as the year progresses is to think in terms of tiny pieces. You are probably familiar with baby steps, which is the popular way visualize breaking down projects and tasks into tiny actionable pieces. However, I want to combine this strategy with the implementation of using it with a task manager, like what I do with Nozbe. On any given day I have a list of tasks in Nozbe that dictate exactly what I am going to be working on and there are two important aspects that dictate which tasks make it on the list and which ones don t. First, the tasks are extremely specific and comprehensive. The natural tendency is to write down something general or vague, like read a book, or go on a run. If you said you wanted to read a book, but you didn t know which one, or for how long, or where it would happen, or at what time, you are more likely to skip the task altogether. The best method is to write down exactly what you intend to do.

25 25 When you plan to read exactly 10 pages from David Allen s Getting Things Done book while sitting on your couch, right after your morning smoothie around 7:00 am, you are extremely likely to follow through and read the book. The goal here is to know specifically what you intend to do because it allows you better estimate the amount of resources you will need and what the best time of day would be to complete the task. By the way, Nozbe has the ability for you to label every task with this kind of specificity, because Nozbe is built on David Allen s GTD system, which requires tasks to be that specific and intentional. Second, the tasks are qualified through Steven Covey s Task Management Matrix that I discussed in episode #19. I won t rehash this whole system here, but just know that I schedule tasks that are in Quadrant I or II, which means they are likely to be urgent AND important, or at least important. I do my best not to schedule things that don t matter. Third, my daily task list in Nozbe is never short or long.

26 26 Instead, it is intentionally ambitious and realistic at the same time. What this means is that I try to schedule what I consider to be an appropriate amount of work each day -- never too much or too little. Scheduling too many tasks in a day always leads more stress and I feel like a failure at the end of the day. Scheduling too little generally results in me taking more time on a task than I should have, or just wasting time later in the day on meaningless activity. Wrap Up Wow, we just covered a lot of content in this episode! To quickly summarize the main points, here is another fun checklist! 1.Identify your North Star (or moon landing) Goal, whatever term connects with you more. 2.Clearly articulate the WHY behind the goal so you are confident this is something worth pursuing -- more than anything else. 3.Schedule time on your calendar for the Big Rocks --

27 27 those projects that absolutely must get done. 4.Get moving! The only way to finish anything is to start and don t quit until you ve landed on the moon, metaphorically speaking of course! :) [Fade In Music] Announcements Just 2 quick announcements here at the end of this episode. The first, if you have not yet joined The 5 am Club, you can easily do so today for free. When you join the club you will get a free copy of The 5 AM Miracle ebook, which shows you exactly how to wake up each morning with vigor and make enormous progress on your biggest goals. To join The 5 AM Club AND jump start your morning - visit 5amMiracle.com. My 2nd announcement is that my next podcast episode will be an interview with Brett McKay, the founder of The Art of Manliness.

28 28 We discuss, among other things, what it means to be a man in today s world. If you have a question you d love me to answer here on my podcast, please leave me a voic message at JeffSanders.com/podcastquestion. Final Thoughts Also, I would be grateful if you would rate my podcast in itunes with a full 5 stars. That helps tremendously with keeping my podcast visible so that people who have never heard of it can discover it. Just head on over to JeffSanders.com/itunes Also, if you would like to see all of the resources I mentioned in this show, please visit the show notes page at JeffSanders.com/024, as in Episode 24. Well, that's it for this episode of The 5 AM Miracle. Until next time remember, you have the power to change your life, and the fun begins bright and early. [Fade Out Music]