Write Scribe

Today I’m sharing an approach to goals that can help you to succeed them faster than you might think, even today. Goals are often far away, distant things. This makes them intimidating and seem hard to achieve. But this post will show you how you can change this by bringing your goals closer to you today.

"Become the change you seek" - Ghandi

Here is my program for learning how to become the change you are after.

1. Put your goal in the here and now.
2. Think in terms of doing.
3. List the habits you would have.
4. Put the habits into practice.
5. Start small, iterate and increment.

Read on to learn more about the program…

Put Your Goal In The Here And Now

Get started by putting your goal in the here and now. For a long time one of my goals was "I want to be a writer". But one day a year or so ago I You’re a Writer that made me change this to "I am a writer."

From that day on my outlook was changed and I started writing. Just writing down your goal in this form isn’t always going to transform you, though. That’s what the other steps in this article are for. But you’ll already be a long way down the road to success when you change your mind set from a wanna-be to become someone who can, and is.

So, take step one and write down your goal in the present tense as if you had it already. Dave Navarro also has some good tips in his post about thinking from your goals.

Think In Terms Of Doing

Many people describe their goals in terms of being something or someone. This makes the goal harder to realize and limits your thinking. When you think in terms of being you compare yourself to someone else, someone that you’re not. You set up a negative thought process as you think of all the things this imaginary someone has that you don’t.

Think in terms of doing things, instead, and you open up a whole world of possibilities. You can carry on being you, instead of trying to be this one-dimensional creature of your imagination.

Instead of thinking about what you aren’t, focus on what you can do, right now. Do things you enjoy and start enjoying your goal right from the go. If you focus on "be", you can feel frustrated as long as you have not achieved the state of "being" that you dream of.

Continuing the writing goal example, "I am a writer" can be rewritten, "I write." See how easy that goal is to succeed? Could you achieve a goal like that today? I bet you could, but if you’re a real over-achiever (and you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t), you’ll want to continue with the next step.

List The Habits You Would Have

Now you know the power of doing, go ahead and detail what you want to do. Ask yourself what someone who succeeds in your goal does, every day. As Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit."

Make a list of the habits of someone who succeeds at your goal. I recommend you list no more than seven. That is more than enough to get you started. If you have no idea what doing your goal entails doing, then it’s time for a little research. Use Google, or ask someone who does it already.

It can also help to refine your goal to make it easier to create a short habits list. "I write" could be specialized to "I write stories", or "I write magazine articles", "I write user guide’s for photocopiers", whatever your pleasure.

Put The Habits Into Practice

Now you know what you should be doing just go and get doing it. Put your habits into action every day. It’s fine to do them badly when you start, you’ll get better as you practice. You should also update and refine your list as you learn what works and what doesn’t work for you at the stage you’re at.

Iterate And Increment

I already said that you don’t have to do your habits well right from the start. It might take you some time to get good at doing them. If you just started your first novel, you can’t hope to write as easily as another who has twenty best-sellers under their belt already. There might even be some habits you don’t even think you can do at the moment.

Don’t let this worry you, just get started on what you can do. Remove the others from the list, or replace them with something else. Practice your basic habits and you can always add the others when you are ready.

You can’t escape the fact that you have to be a beginner before you can become an expert. The important point is that you can enjoy doing what you do just as much when you begin, more even, than an expert.
So, do what you can now. Add steps as you go, keep refining your habits list.

Let’s recap the steps for turning your dreams into reality today.

1. Put your goal in the here and now, make it accessible.
2. Think in terms of doing, rather than being or having.
3. List the habits you would have, when you are successful at doing your thing.
4. Put the habits into practice, without this the rest won’t get you anywhere.
5. Start small, iterate and increment, remember you have to pay your dues.

What dream are you going to make into reality today? Share your thing and success habits in the comments.

Resources

If you enjoyed this post you might like these additional resources.

Men With Pen’s post Would You Become Someone Else To Achieve Your Dreams?

Dave Navarro’s post The Wrong Way To Think About Your Goals (And How To Fix It)

This post describes how haiku productivity has simplified my days, removed distractions and helped me get things done. Now, I’ll admit I’m a bit of a “to do” junkie, and I’ve tried many systems with more or less success. Haiku productivity is the first that has got me really focused on achieving the things I want to and avoiding distractions.

The post starts by giving you a short definition of haiku productivity so you’ll know what I’m talking about. Then I’ll show you by example with some of my own haiku limits. One thing haiku productivity excels at is managing distractions, so I’m going to talk about those. Finally, I’ll share my very minimalist and simple haiku limit tracking trick that really works.

So, after this minimal introduction let’s start with the main act…

Haiku Productivity

I learned the Haiku productivity idea in a post on the Zen Habits blog. A haiku is a minimalist Japanese poem that uses only 17 “syllables” (it’s not quite the same thing as syllables but close enough for our purposes). Haiku productivity is inspired by this idea of minimalism and aims to reduce the “stuff” cluttering up your life as far as possible.

Instead of setting as many goals and tasks as possible you do the opposite, set as few as possible. As an example, Leo at Zen Habits describes his haiku productivity limits: only one goal or project at any time, no more than five lines in an email, etc.

Setting limits

To a Gemini who has trouble staying focused this sounded like a good idea. I made myself a list of haiku minimums to achieve, scrubbing my list of waiting projects to select as few as possible to focus on.

Where the haiku approach really excels is in dealing with distractions, which is why it’s a good idea to set yourself some distraction limits.

Limit distractions

I love reading. Don’t you? If you do you know how hard it is to tear yourself away from your favourite blogs and feeds. However, reading doesn’t pay (I guess that makes it a bit like crime, in a way?), I wanted to reduce my habit to do the other stuff that pays instead, whilst still enjoying reading a little.

I set myself a limit of ten RSS feeds and over the course of two or three days I gradually pruned my RSS reader down to this limit. I also set a limit to read no more than six blog posts each day, either directly from the feed or by clicking through to linked posts.

Haiku limits turn fighting your favourite distractions into a fun game you can try to win each day. I think this is one reason they are so effective. However, I came up against one problem the haiku productivity blogs didn’t solve.

Enough already?

It was a simple problem. How do you know when you’ve read enough blogs, or emails, or whatever? Counting RSS feeds was easy, just set it once and that’s it. But what about an activity like feed reading, that can be done in several goes during the day?

Now the old, non-haiku, me could have gone off in search of the perfect haiku limit and task tracking system. I could have subscribed to newsletters on the topic, bought books, even attended training courses. But not the new, haiku minimalist that I had become, no the new me wanted simple. Got to be simple…

Haiku pebbles

My simple solution to this problem is a bunch of little pebbles. I use little rounded ones that I found near my home. You can use acorns, or coloured marbles, or little plastic farm animals or anything else you like.

All you have to do is gather the number of little pebbles that matches your haiku limit. In my case I use six pebbles for blog posts. Put these in a little pot on your desk, or wherever you read blogs. You’ll also need a second little pot, you’ll see why in just a second. I painted and used two empty yoghurt pots for the job.

Now, each time I open a blog post to read I take a pebble from my haiku limit pot and put it into the other. When there are no more pebbles, I stop reading.

At the start of a new day I tip the pebbles back into the first pot and I can read again.

Well, that’s my simple system and it has controlled my blog reading habit these past two and a half weeks. Maybe haiku will help you, too? If you want to track several haiku limits you just need more pots, or different coloured pebbles.

Remember, haiku productivity is the art of setting limits to remove clutter from your life. Set them for the projects in your life and for distractions, too. Use a simple haiku pebble system to track your progress and feel happy when you “win” the day.

If you enjoyed this post maybe you’ll enjoy some of my haiku poems?