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In This Chapter

In This Chapter

Seeing the connection between goal‐setting and time management

Putting your goals on paper

Living and planning large

Finding the fastest route to achievement

Today, more than at any time in history, you have limitless opportunities, especially if you’re living in the United States. However, having so many choices can lead to confusion, distraction, and wasted time. Achievement in anything in life takes focus, diligence, and patience. So the question arises: Can getting a handle on your most precious lifelong dreams and desires help you get more done on a day‐to‐day basis? Absolutely! Say, for example, you and your spouse have always dreamed of taking six months to travel the world while you’re still young enough to hoist a backpack. Such a focus may motivate you to put in extra hours or accelerate your sales quotas at work to build up the necessary funds and time for that adventure.

Even long‐range goals can shape the way you use your time in the here and now. Suppose your goal is to retire to a modest cabin in the Smoky Mountains and spend the rest of your life writing the Great American Novel. Even if that goal is 30 years away, your priority now is more likely to be on investing your income and perhaps taking some writing courses rather than on building a 4,200‐square‐foot home and learning to ski – or it should be, anyway, because the preparations you need to make first and foremost are the ones that’ll enable you to build that cabin and have the money and time to write.

Everyone has dreams and goals for the future. But in order to accomplish more in less time, to create a sense of urgency and command efficiency, having a clear sense of goals and purpose is critical. In this chapter, I guide you in the process of committing your goals to paper; categorizing, balancing, and breaking them down into manageable chunks; and allowing that powerful action to spur your productivity.

Understanding Why You Need to Put Your Goals on Paper

Some studies calculate that only about 3 percent of goal‐setters document their aspirations. And I can assure you that these folks are the ones who have the most money, influence, power, prestige, freedom, and time to work toward their dreams. Why? Because, as numerous studies suggest, people who clearly define and write down their goals are more likely to accomplish them – and in a shorter time frame and more direct fashion. People who don’t clarify and write out their goals invest more time and accomplish less.

When you take the time to write down your goals, you clarify them and sharpen your vision for attaining them, which allows you to do the following:

✓ Take control of your life. By identifying what’s most important to you and putting it on paper, you tell your brain that this isn’t a dream to be ignored as a hope‐to, wish‐to, or would‐like‐to. It’s really something for which you’re willing to invest time, effort, energy, and emotion.

✓ Map out the most direct route to achievement. When you put your goals in writing, you’re setting your sights on the destination before you begin. Your life goals become the framework for how you prioritize and manage your time. You begin the process of planning and strategizing about the steps you can take to achieve that goal. Your brain starts to look for the best, most direct route and the route with the lowest time investment.

✓ Limit detours. Ever hear the saying “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”? Problem is, if you head off on just any road, you’re likely to end up in a place you don’t want to be. By documenting your goals, you can more easily gauge whether an effort is likely to bring you closer to or further away from them. With your goals in front of you, you make fewer wrong turns and invest less time in trial‐and‐error dead ends. If you know that “be an outstanding father” is at the top of your written list, then overtime, extra assignments, travel, and other actions that take you away from your kids won’t distract you as easily; you know you’re more likely to achieve this goal by spending time with your kids, going to their games, taking walks, throwing a ball, playing dress‐up, going to the park, or writing a note.

✓ Stay motivated. Written goals fuel motivation, inducing you to perform at a higher level and at a faster rate in order to achieve.

Establishing Your Fabulous 50

As you put together your list of goals, you need to consider the five core aspects of wants that I cover in this section. My mentor Jim Rohn taught them to me when I was in my 20s. These five questions dramatically reduced the amount of time I needed to achieve many of the goals that are now crossed off my goal sheets, and these same questions can help you expand your thinking so you can have more, be more, and achieve more.

As soon as you finish reading this section, read no further until you get your goals on paper. Your task after reading this section is to come up with at least 50 goals that you want to accomplish within the next ten years. As you brainstorm your list of goals, keep a few points in mind to make your goal‐setting effective:

✓ Make sure your goals line up with your wants. Don’t evaluate goals based on what you think you need, deserve, or can realistically achieve; attack it by what you want. Your success is determined by how you invest your time each day.

✓ Think big. “Go big or go home” is a philosophy I encourage my clients and workshop participants to embrace. Many shy away from setting big goals for a range of reasons, from fear of disappointment to concern that they may not have the drive to pursue them.

If you approach your dreams conservatively – going after what you think is reasonable or realistic – your odds of getting beyond that are slim to none. But if you let your imagination go and pursue the big dream, the odds of reaching that level of joy and fulfillment are in your favor. Big goals and big dreams cause you to stretch, strain, and go for what you really want in life. They connect with the best use of your time and energy.

✓ Pick a time somewhere in the future and work backward from there. For any goal that stretches further than ten years, break it down into smaller goals with shorter time frames to increase your focus, intensity, and commitment. See the later section “Assigning a time frame to each goal” for details.

✓ Make your goals measurable. When you establish a measurable, quantifiable goal, you know you can’t fudge on whether you achieved it or not. You either hit the target or you don’t. You also know where you stand at any given time. Goal measurement naturally falls into two categories:

• Number‐based goals: Measuring your progress toward a goal is pretty easy when the goal is number‐based. You know when you’ve acquired a million dollars or lost 30 pounds, for example. The bank statement or scale is pretty simple to read. As you craft financial and other goals that are associated with numbers, be specific. Do you want to earn a certain annual salary? To put away a certain amount of money each year? To run a certain number of miles by September?

• Non‐number‐based goals: To measure a non‐number‐based goal, focus on how you’ll know when you’ve accomplished it. For example, will some organization’s seal of approval establish you as a world‐renowned archeologist? Will being elected president of the chamber of commerce constitute being a business leader in the community? Will having your children expressing greater thanks for your efforts as a parent equate to being a better dad or mom?

As you identify and record 50 goals you’d like to achieve in the next 10 years, contemplate the following five core questions to guide your goal setting.

Using what works for you

Individualism is key when crafting your goals, and it applies to both what you record and how you record it. You can put your goals in Evernote, enter them in an electronic spreadsheet, post them on a visual whiteboard, or even use them as wallpaper for your phone.. whatever is easiest for you and triggers the constant reminder. Or maybe you find that your thoughts flow best when you write them down by hand. The important thing to remember is that whatever method best enables your mind to flow freely and inspires you to craft your goals is the one you should use. Don’t let others sway you in how to craft and define your goals or what your goals should be.

Consider this little‐known fact about yours truly: I have written ten books, and all have been written by putting pen to paper. This archaic approach may seem ridiculous in today’s high‐tech publishing environment; dictating my thoughts into Dragon or some software would certainly be easier and less time‐consuming than writing everything by hand. But not for me. For whatever reason, the direct connection among my hand, pen, eyes, and brain enables me to create a better book. Inspiration comes to me frequently while writing thoughts down, so I stick to my routine and get someone with more time to type my writing into an electronic file.

What do you want to have?

The question of what you want to have focuses on material acquisitions. What possessions do you yearn for? A swimming pool? A sailboat? Do you fantasize about owning a sports car? Do you dream of a formal rose garden landscaped into your backyard? Someone to cook and clean for you? Your own private jet? Winter vacations in the Caribbean? If your home environment is a priority, imagine the place you want to live. An expansive ranch overlooking the Pacific Ocean? A Fifth Avenue penthouse? An off‐the‐grid abode that runs on solar and wind power? A villa in Tuscany?

Although possessions are important to consider, they’re typically a means to an end: They enable you to create the lifestyle that you want to have.

One of the best goals I set and achieved was to own two houses, one as my primary residence and one to which I could retreat. Achieving that goal also motivated me to better invest time during work hours so I could enjoy spending long weekends at my second home. Our second home also created an opportunity to become involved with a church that connected us with two birth mothers we would not have otherwise known. I’m a father because of divine intervention – because of the original goal was simply to have a vacation home.

What do you want to see?

When you ask yourself what you want to see, think experiential acquisition. Travel is likely to be a key focus. I’m certain you can easily come up with at least ten places you want to see. Have some world wonders fascinated you? The Pyramids of Egypt? The Great Wall of China? I travel internationally a few times a year on business, and it only fuels my desire to see more parts of the world and expand my awareness of how other people live.

Your desire for new sights may lean toward unfamiliar geography – the desert lands of the Southwest if you’re a New England native or the Rocky Mountains in winter if you hail from a lowland home. Perhaps your see goals are more personal. You may have always wanted to visit the country your ancestors came from or even visit the small town in the Midwest where your great‐grandparents met and raised a family.

What do you want to do?

Most likely, many of your goals are connected with the question of what you want to do at some point in your life. Whereas the possessions you want to acquire help create your lifestyle, the action‐oriented question you consider here focuses more on bigger events and feats outside the daily realm. Because this category is vast, I have my clients consider three main aspects of this question:

✓ Activities: You may want to include some once‐in‐a‐lifetime experiences, such as snorkeling with sea turtles or hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro. What about a goal of regular exercise four times a week? Or maybe you want to see a particular artist in concert.

✓ Skills: For example, have you always wanted to speak Spanish or Mandarin Chinese? Do you wish you could play the piano or electric guitar? Have you put off a new experience – snow‐skiing, surfing, fly fishing – because you thought it was too late to learn? Whether these skills can enhance your career or financial state or are simply actions that bring personal pleasure, cast a wide net and list the ones that intrigue you most.

✓ Career: How do you want to seek fulfillment through your career? Be honest with yourself and sort out how you’d like to measure that success. Do you yearn to be recognized as the top authority in your field? To win an international award? To write an influential book?

What do you want to give?

Andrew Carnegie, the great steel entrepreneur, met his goal to amass a fortune in the first half of his life. His goal for the second half was to give it all away. Many of the public libraries in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom exist today because of his philanthropy.

An important way to balance all the want, see, and do items on your Fabulous 50 list is to include give goals as well. What are you willing or interested in giving back? How do you want to share your good fortune with others? Which causes are near and dear to you?

Your give list may include specific monetary goals – “give 10 percent of my income to charity” – but you may find more fulfillment by tying in your giving goals to your other interests. For example, if your career aspirations involve writing a bestseller, supporting a charity that champions literacy, or volunteering to teach adults to read may be goals that touch a chord with you. If you dream of traveling to exotic destinations, you may participate in a humanitarian mission, bringing medicine and other important supplies to people in a developing country. If you care deeply about environmental initiatives, maybe you want to look into ecotourism or green volunteering opportunities.

Who do you want to become?

To a degree, what you want to have, see, do, and give determine the person you want to become. But you should still envision and write down how you see yourself developing while you achieve these goals. The real value of goals isn’t what you achieve – it’s in the accumulation of knowledge, skills, discipline, and experience you gain through learning, changing, improving, and investing yourself as you work toward your goals. Often, those newly discovered or carefully developed traits are the only lasting acquisition that stands the test of time.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not suggesting that you become someone other than who you are; rather, I’m encouraging you to earnestly and honestly evaluate the characteristics and disciplines best suited for your ambitions. To identify the areas you should focus on, take a look at all the goals you’ve written down so far (if you haven’t yet read the preceding sections, complete them before moving on here). Then ask yourself the following questions when considering your goals as a whole:

✓ What personal characteristics do you need to change or improve? Do you need assertiveness training to deal more effectively with your boss or co‐workers? Do you need to work on interpersonal skills? Does your anger get in the way of your success because you get frustrated so easily?

✓ What disciplines do you need to work harder at practicing consistently? Are you able to delay gratification and do what you need to when it needs to be done? Are you able to save regular amounts from your current paycheck, or are you waiting to make more money before you start the savings process? What if that extra money never shows up?

If you’re struggling to identify areas where you need to work on personal development, take at look at people who have achieved what you want; then evaluate your characteristics and disciplines as compared to theirs.

Appreciating personal growth

Consider this true‐life story: I made my first million by the time I was in my early 30s, but I can wholeheartedly say the value I gained from attaining that goal wasn’t the money (which, unfortunately, I lost a pretty good chunk of through some poor investments I made). Of deeper and lasting value are the personal characteristics and skills that I gained through the process of strategizing, acting, and investing my time on my way toward the goal. Because I’d changed as a person as a result of the process, the steps toward reaching that goal again weren’t nearly so challenging, and the characteristics I developed through the process enabled me to meet other goals as well.

I grew with each new goal I worked toward. To reach my goals in real estate sales, I had to increase my focus and discipline. When I decided to go into coaching and speaking, I had to develop better behavioral analysis and leadership to get others to follow my coaching and teaching. And to reach my goal of writing books that would help readers achieve success, I had to gather new skills in organization, critical thinking, and patience due to all these editors in the publishing business.

Labeling and Balancing Your Fabulous 50

After you draft a list of the 50 goals you want to achieve in the next 10 years, your next task is to assign a category and time frame to each of them. Creating categories for your goals and establishing time frames to achieve them sharpens your focus and increases your intensity, which can reduce the time required to achieve your goals. It also allows you to quickly and easily see whether your time investment to the various areas of your life as well as the size and difficulty of your goals are appropriately balanced.

The objective isn’t to spread an equal number and depth of goals among the six categories; the aim is to identify whether one or two of the categories is light compared to the others and to determine whether you need to pay more attention to those areas of your life to develop them. In the end, the purpose is to create a well‐rounded system of goals that addresses your whole person and that you’ll have the motivation to actually work toward.

Assigning a time frame to each goal

I firmly believe you can have anything you want; you just can’t have it all at once and all right now. Just because you establish a goal to lose 20 pounds doesn’t mean you’ll wake up tomorrow with 20 pounds missing from your body. Realizing your goal involves a process that requires specific activity and time.

The vast majority of people who set financial goals to acquire wealth or financial independence achieve those over time. In many cases, if the amount is comparatively large, it requires 20, 30, potentially even 40 years to achieve. It requires consistent application toward the goal.

I recently did a full review of my financial goals and the progress I have made toward them. It was gratifying in that review to know that in my present savings and investment return pace, I will cross the goal completion line in less than seven years, well within my plan. It’s a wonderful feeling, knowing that financial freedom is within my reach.