Being Realistic and Audacious

Being Realistic and Audacious

There are just a few things that really matter in goal setting: be realistic and audacious, and remember to focus on the widely important. We all know that the world is notoriously full of people with good intentions. Some of these people succeed, but some don’t. You can maximize your chances of success, and the first step is to clearly define your goals.

Being audacious: You should develop an audacious goal. All people have a dream and you have a dream for yourself. Can you imagine yourself in ten years` time? Concentrate on what you really want. Done? Unless you see yourself as the future President of the United States, think again and try a little harder. Think about the objective you want to achieve, imagine the success, imagine how you will feel in that moment and how you will behave.

Always use your mind as a positive driver and believe in yourself. That will be your audacious goal. Now use that vision to create a realistic but audacious three or four-year goal. Define your key values, your key features, your goal. Explain why is this goal so important to you.

Once you set your goal comes the interesting part: make your objective become true. Indeed, when you look around, you realize that many people fail miserably as they try to fulfill their goals. People sometimes feel so overwhelmed by their daily routine that they can get paralyzed and lose focus on what really matters, on the widely important. What are the main steps for your success? Prioritization is the key!

Every time you plan something, define clearly your goal and remember to write a list of the key activities that need to be implemented.

Always try to develop a mental attitude that will help you to go the extra mile. Develop a scoreboard to help you execute your goals. Create a set of lead measures and deadlines to monitor your progress. Keep track of your strengths and weaknesses. Remember that every single process has at least one lesson to be learned. Photo : Elena

If you want to become a Senior Manager, you will probably need management training. Do you want to enter a business school? You’ll need to set some criteria in order to select the right one, to check the latest rankings, to check if there are scholarships available, and so on. You may need to meet some academic requirements or take a test like the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). There are a number of aspects to consider and you’ll have to prioritize. So you’ll need to come back to your audacious three-year goal and list the key activities you need to undertake in order to get started. Think of these activities in terms of importance and put them in order.

Divide and conquer: Now that you have created a list of actionable activities, break them into parts – this will be the micro-activities that need to be executed. Micro-activities will be your milestones, and you will always tend to them while performing your micro-activities.

Set your deadlines: Once you have your detailed list, start to assign deadlines to each of your activities. Having a time constraint will force you to commit to your activities. Strictly follow your schedules once you set them.

Lead measures: Measuring is such an important activity that it should become your obsession. You need to identify some metrics to measure your activities and to understand how close you are to your goal.

Over-achieve: To succeed you need to be firm and committed. Keep yourself hungry every day. You have to strive for delivering more results and value. This is something you do for yourself. Try to surprise yourself over-achieving your objective, increasing the expectation on your lead measures.

Learn your lessons: Whatever happens, at the end of each activity, remember to practice reviewing the lessons learned from any of your initiatives. Try to look at all the propositions in a rational way. Explain to a friend what actions you undertook. Underlay your success and the weakness of the process. Use all the information to improve processes and hold yourself accountable.

Reward yourself: The person you share most of your life is yourself. Have you thought about that? Then learn to reward you own success when you get things done. This will keep motivation high. It can be a concert, a weekend break, a movie, just a beer with your friends. Congratulate yourself for every achievement.

Note: Always make proposition actionable. Some propositions are likely to be executed in a straightforward way, some other not. But what is the fundamental difference between them? In many cases it simply depends on the ability of the person to but the proposition into action.

Example: Goal – Train for Boston Marathon. Not actionable proposition: I will start to look for a gym. Actionable proposition: I am going to the gym and I will schedule my activities with a trainer.

Solution: Start by defining a concrete desired goal and then work backward. In this way you can map every step of the process into actions and clarify each intermediate goal you want to achieve.

Remember that every step needs to be actionable, with clear results and objectives. Consider again the activities you need to perform to achieve your goal, and make them actionable.