I'm a great fan of goal-setting.
As Jim Rohn teaches: "Imagine a sailing ship out at sea. It has its sail up and the wind is blowing it along. It will go wherever the wind takes it.
"Now imagine that the ship has a captain and the sail is set. That ship will now go where the set of its sail takes it.
"Life is like that. If you don't have goals then you will drift through life like the first ship, going wherever life takes you.
"But if you set yourself goals then, like the second ship, you will be in control of where your life takes you."
But sometimes achieving those goals can seem daunting to us.
Eating An Elephant
"How do you eat an elephant?" is a question sometimes asked at management seminars.
It confuses many people but the answer is simple: "One bite at a time."
Setting Objectives
If, like eating the proverbial elephant, goals seem daunting and impossible then the answer is to break them down into smaller bites. Those smaller bites are called Objectives.
By way of an example, we want a Mastermind Group (I'll cover these in another post) to support aspiring property multi-millionaires, and we have chosen to create this internet forum to host it, and we want it to have at least 1,000 members to provide the broadest possible spectrum of knowledge. That's some goal!
But let’s break it down into smaller, more manageable, objectives:
1) Choose forum software and hosting;
2) Get web-programmer to install software;
3) Decide on forum/sub-forum structure and configure;
4) Invite members to join forum.
Looked at like that, it's not such a daunting task. But 1,000 members is still a huge number, that's a big goal. So we break it down and say that we want to bring on new members as follows:
- 5 new members each week for the first 6 months;
- 10 new members each week for the next 6 months;
- 20 new members each week for the next 6 months.
Looked at like that, we should have achieved our goal of 1,000 members by the end of month 19. Now I feel I have set myself an objective that I can achieve.
Which brings me to the definition of:
SMART Objectives
This is an acronym. It stands for:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timely
...which, of course, is precisely what any objective should be.
If you look at what I have described above, you will see that is exactly what our objectives are with this Summit Forum. We sincerely hope that you will help us achieve them too, by becoming an active member of our forum.
Take Away
The thing to take away from here is that very little is unachievable, regardless of how daunting it may at first seem.
If you want to map your path through life (whether in terms of building a property portfolio, your personal relationships, education, or anything else) then what you need to do is break the overall goal down into a number of smaller objectives, and then focus on them.
Feel free to comment here and let me know what you think, and how this works for and helps you.
Wishing you success,