Four Steps to the Rest of Your Life
You have to dig deep to find the awesome and the real. You have to dig through a lot of ideas before you find the good ones. A lot.
The best stuff isn’t just sitting there at the top of your brain waiting to come out. After you think you’ve come up with every idea you have in your head -- that’s when the best stuff suddenly shines through and you have your moment. You’ve found your spark.
The same is true whether you're digging for ideas for the next great marketing campaign, or your next great career move.
Seth Godin's altMBA introduced me to the following process and I'm paying it forward to you. Ready?
FOUR STEPS TO THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
Relish the freedom of the blank page. Scribble out every dream and goal and wish-I-had-time-for-that idea.
With your complete dreamstorm down on paper, start labeling the red flags: vague, grandiose, or trivial.
Relish the freedom of the blank page. Fill this one with what’s left from your slashed and scribbled dreamstorm.
Pick one and work it. Pick the next one and work it. Repeat as needed until you’ve worked each of your finalists to the marrow.
For that first step, don’t edit. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big goal or a trivial to-do. It doesn’t matter if it’s something you can do today or would take ten years to accomplish. Fitness, parenting, work right now, work in the future, career path, marriage stuff, hobby stuff. Write it all down. Sifting all the cruft out is what gets you to the real real.
For #4, you're going to work each of those goals from multiple angles to really get down to the core of what you want and how you're going to get there.
WHY WORK YOUR GOALS FROM MULTIPLE ANGLES?
Using both the Zig Ziglar goal-setting model and the SMART goals method will force your brain to think differently about one thing you think you’ve got all figured out. Yup, clearing more cruft.
And with these two models, you might find that a goal that hit all the marks on SMART might not get all the yeses in the Ziglar questions (happier, healthier, more prosperous, more friends, peace of mind, more secure, relationships w/others, hope).
Possibly the most amazing thing that happened when I practice this the first time was that as I dug deeper into defining my goals, their benefits, etc., other new ideas popped into my mind. I was removing the cruft to get to the crux of my central self and what it truly wants. Very excited to see what develops of some of those goals in the medium- and long-term. At the time, those other ideas seemed wholly unrelated to the ones I was writing. But maybe not...
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO WORK YOUR GOALS?
Run through a SMART exercise on your goal. Write out the dream you’d like to achieve. Get into the Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Certain aspects. Write out your final goal -- what it looks like in present tense when you’ve achieved what you set out to do.
Now go back and dissect it again, using the Ziglar method. State the goal. Ask yourself:
Is it really MY goal?
Is it morally right and fair to everyone concerned?
Is it consistent with my other goals?
Can I emotionally commit myself to finish this goal?
Can I “see” myself reaching this goal?
Done? Now define the benefits of reaching this goal. And ask yourself if this goal will make you happier, healthier, more prosperous; will it win you more friends, give you peace of mind, make you more secure, improve your relationships with others, or give you hope?
Now comes the hard work. What obstacles will you face? Don’t leave yourself out of that list. Define what skills or knowledge will be required, and what people or groups you’ll need to help you. List out your critical action steps. Set a deadline.
Now all you have to do is go out and do it, right?