A goal without a plan is just a wish
Part 2 of How to frame your dreams
I want to start with a huge thank you for the motivation by reading my part 1 article. The most beautiful part of writing is sharing the same thoughts and feelings with you. It is a priceless experience; I am truly thankful from the bottom of my heart!
As I promised last time, we’ll explore building an actionable plan to make our dreams come true. I’ll start with Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle Framework Why, How and What.
Before I introduce a bit Simon Sinek and the Golden Circle, I’d like to mention the power of the questions briefly. Questions are magic tools that can provoke creativity and innovation, and it also shows your dedication, commitment and build bonds between people and even among your brain neurons.
That’s why I strongly suggest you ask powerful questions starting with yourself :)
As most of you know, Simon Sinek is a business personality and motivational speaker who is also the author of many books; he first introduced the Golden Circle Framework in his best seller book “Start With Why”.
Even the title gives you the message with hidden questions.
- Do I know why I want to achieve X?
- Am I sure what I want?
Since we focus on personal planning to achieve our goals, starting with “Why” would make sense. However, if you ask me the ultimate self-exploring question: My answer will be “Who Am I”, which I mentioned in my article in “Get Ready for 2022”, Please look at the five questions article to have some inspiration.
WHY?
You might wonder why I picked the question “Why” before “What”. Sometimes we can not aim for a perfectly reasonable goal for ourselves. Even we think the goal is obvious, in reality, it might not the best fit our personality, or the goal is not that “SMART”, we can not find the way out. To avoid misleading from the beginning, the question “Why” helps a lot. It makes sure that the goal naturally resonates with our personality and is perfectly defined. If “Why” is clear, the rest will be more straightforward; you will be one step closer to the goal.
Let me give an example about myself; in my five questions article, I mentioned that I had some longshots in my personal life that I needed to adjust. I had been aiming to write a book; this was a dream I had had for a couple of years. However, I could not make any tangible progress; I guess I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.
Then I asked myself why I wanted to write a book: Simple; I like to share my thoughts because I also learn while I share. Because writing gives me a chance to activate my strong muscle, connecting dots. Because I like to tell stories.
All my aims and motivations are real, and I am so lucky that I have alternatives to realize my ambitions. Therefore, you are reading this article because I design a different path.
Tip 1: Decode your WHY: The cause, the reason, the answer to the question “Why” should create sparks in your eyes. The reason should be the inspiration itself. WHY gives you options to explore, strength to move forward, WHY is your mission.
WHAT
If you have a solid, inspiring WHY, WHAT will come to you naturally in both personal and professional life.
In your personal life, whether you’ll find your ultimate personal goal like a north star in a dark night or you’ll save your childhood dreams from where you’ve buried them.
In your professional life, if your company had already addressed WHY started to live the mission and embraced it with all people, your life would be easier. You’ll look for the perfect incremental value that can serve a shared mission. It could be a new product idea, design a perfect journey for your customers or fixing a process for your coworkers. You’ll name it with your teams.
However, in your personal life, things might get tricky. Because — most of the time — you have a team of one. It would help if you had total clarity and understanding about what you want to do and achieve. As discussed in the previous article, putting our dreams in a frame would help us determine the “WHAT”.
Now, let’s use a very well known business framework SMART target in our personal life.
As stated in Wikipedia, The first known use of the SMART term occurs in the November 1981 issue of Management Review by George T. Doran. The principal advantage of SMART objectives is that they are easier to know and understand when they have been done. SMART criteria are commonly associated with Peter Drucker’s management by objectives concept.
There is a couple of different explanations for the SMART goals; below, you can find my preference for a personal goal setting:
Specific: Target a specific area for improvement (i.e., I want to travel the world”)
Measurable: quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress. (i.e. I want to see five countries)
Achievable: state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources. ( 5 countries with an affordable budget)
Relevant: Keep the connection with your ambition, reason WHY ( i.e. want to explore the different cultures)
Time-related: specify when the result(s) can be achieved. (i.e. in one year)
Tip2: You can do the same exercise with many other personal goals, new year resolutions like losing weight, speaking a new language, developing a new skill etc.
HOW?
My personal fav!! “HOW” has a huge potential to learn from each other. Each of us tries a method, adds our personal touch to our way of doing. So the shared experiences get richer.
Now, you know what you want to achieve, and you feel bonded to your “WHY” which means you are also fully motivated. Then it is time to design the best method to accomplish. This methodology should keep you on pace, helps for allocating your resources and give you an idea of prioritization so you make the right move at the right time.
I want to introduce another framework to you, AGILE. It is basically a way of working with a set of principles. Of course, Agile WoW deserves better research, so in this article, we’ll use focus on basic features we can quickly adapt from agile into our personal life:
- Write down every single task/todo that will carry you to achievement
- Order them in regards to their importance, impact and resource needed.
- Manage your expectations, put some critical, constructive and reasonable milestones. This helps you to measure your improvement ( related to SMART goals)
- The most valuable resource is time; try to use your time productive. Try to keep the rhythm.
- Visualize your plan and your progress.
- Create some routines and apply them. Such as every morning, walkthrough on your todos, next steps, and visualize the output.
- Be open to for asking help; there is no harm to ask for some support from your trusted people, families and friends.
- It’s ok to fail or make mistakes because mistakes are learning opportunities, do not lose energy for being upset. Put your energy into finding the blockers and fixing them.
- Most importantly, reward yourself. You’ve dedicated yourself to a mission, to a goal. You’ve made a great effort; reward yourself for being a better version of yourself.
Tip3: Always take notes; never give up your routines.
Congratulations!
You’ve read more than 1000 words about how to make plans. And I hope you had at least one helpful idea for yourself which will carry you one step closer to your goal.
I am wishing you the best in your journey to your north star!
“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
