Creating a plan for how you will take action upon your vision is the fourth step. By aiming high, directing your energy, having a strategy, and making daily wins, you’ll have a great plan forward.
Luckily, this page contains the best ideas & top research on how balance a plan. We will break down the science between making creating good strategies. Whether you’re looking to become more organized on taking coherent action, this page should cover everything you need to know.
I. Aiming High: Exceeding Expectations
II. Directing Your Energy: More Wood Behind Fewer Arrows
III. Having A Strategy: A Kernel Of Strategy
IV: Daily Wins: Constant Progress
I. Aiming High: Exceeding Expectations
By aiming high with your intentions, you’re much more likely to exceed any expectation you would set regardless. Being intentionally ambitious, having representative expectations, and finding a tolerance for risk will take you to new heights.
Intentionally Ambitious
Your desire to succeed can be shown by being intentionally ambitious in your goals. The danger we have is not by aiming too high, but rather falling to short. Even when setting our aim low, we simply achieve our mark and nothing more.
Setting a goal too high and falling short is the best option. Not only would you exceed a goal set too low, but you’ll be able to gauge how much further you have to push yourself to make the ambitious goal a reality.
Representative Expectations
Seeing the outcomes from your expectations can be quite mind opening. You may have set humble goals originally and after you put the work into the goal, you realize that you have a new sense for what amount of work will represent a certain outcome.
Doing what you normally do will only result in the same outcomes. However by making big changes and aiming high, you’re able to creatively think about how you’ll reach that goal and be inspired to keep going.
Risk Tolerance Not Risk Aversion
Building a tolerance for risk allows us to take more risk in our lives for substantial change. Avoidance of anything that resembles risk is what keeps us stagnate. Your goals should inspire you to take action everyday. They should excite you.
Have a healthy amount of risk towards your goals. Without risk of failure, you are at a greater risk of progressing at all. Make goals that scare you and most importantly, make goals that are ambitious enough to see great success.
II. Directing Your Energy: More Wood Behind Fewer Arrows
Focus will direct your energy to what matters. You have to get comfortable with making choices even if they aren’t the best choices initially. You’ll learn why there is power in choosing, why you should focus on a few things at once, and why it’s important to direct your energy.
Power By Choosing
Choice is power. By choosing, you are able to act. Making decisions can be one of the most difficult things we do in our lives. Making a choice is not a final decision, it is the start to action. Rather than analyze each individual choice we could potentially make, we should rather strive to act upon an individual choice.
The simplest choice is almost always the best. You don’t need data or more opinions to make an initial decision, but rather shoot for simplicity rather than complexity when deciding.
Focusing On Few
Too many directions can often lead to inaction. Our focus should be decided on a handful of areas rather than many. By focusing on a few, you are able to make much more meaningful impact towards your goals in these directions.
You’ll be able to give your undivided attention on a few. You cannot do the same with many. Provide yourself the gift of few and work deeply in each of them.
The Same Direction
Going towards the same direction is the goal. By choosing only a few potential directions to go, you are more likely to be on the path to success. Each path you take will empower the others while you progress.
If you know how to aim already and now you’ve got a few arrows to shoot, it’s time to put more wood behind those arrows.
III. Having A Strategy: A Kernel Of Strategy
You need to have a strategy. Not having a strategy or having a bad strategy is the difference of being able to execute your plan effectively. You’ll need to know about three main concepts every strategy has to make a good strategy that lasts.
Determining A Diagnosis
Every strategy must have a diagnosis that gives a clear picture as to where you are right now, what challenges you’re facing, and what opportunities are present. The simpler it is to understand the challenge, the more likely you’ll be able to execute upon it.
Taking a step back of your current strategy is the first step. You have to know what you’re doing right now to know what difficulties you’re facing. This will help you guide your next steps with a policy.
Guiding With A Policy
You’ll need an approach to overcome the challenges you’ve outlined with your diagnosis. You can make a policy as for the direction you need to take to succeed. This policy will guide each of the actions you take to get one step closer.
A policy should be rooted in your personal philosophy. These are your constraints as to the future you and your desired vision.
Coherent Actions
A strategy is nothing without action. Your actions speak louder than words and thus a set of coherent actions is how your guiding policy will be executed. Your actions should use all of the resources available to you and coordinated to support your goals.
Each of your actions will have constraints. You’ll be constrained on time, resources, energy, and much more. What you do to make the most of your actions with this is up to you.
IV: Daily Wins: Constant Progress
Every day is an opportunity to win. Each win is a vote towards your future identity. Making constant progress is about staying in motion & taking ownership of how you feel. By taking control of your motion & emotion, your desired outcomes will compound in no time at all.
Staying In Motion
Small wins throughout each day will lead to large wins for the week. A small win can be one of the many things you plan to accomplish that day. The smaller the win, the more momentum that you’ll bring to your next consecutive win.
Each day you should have no more than six important things you want to accomplish. You should prioritize those items in the order of their true importance, and only concentrate on the most important task until it’s finished before moving on to the next task. At the end of the day, make a new list with the most important tasks for the next day.
Driving With Emotion
Your wins will make you feel good. The better you feel, the more you’ll feel up to taking on more and pushing yourself further than the day before it. Your emotions drive you to take action, and getting even one win will push us to continue forward.
You get to choose how you feel about each win. If a win doesn’t feel satisfying, it’s likely that you want more or you’re not winning in the way you initially hoped. By managing our mindset and our emotions, we know how to best drive each day with our emotions.
Compounding Outcomes
Taking every win you can and feeling great at the end of the day pushes you closer to your desired goal. Each day where you win adds up to a week of winning. A week of winning then becomes a month of winning, and so on. You start to compound outcomes because of it.
You control each day. You control what you’ll do that day, and how you feel about that day. This is the most important thing you can focus on to see your investment pay off in the long term.