For Success: Focus on Your Preferred Future
by Brent Dees
Published on this site: December 1st, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
Imagine if every morning when you awoke, there was a card
table with a mound of jigsaw puzzle pieces on it. And your
job every day was to put those pieces together to create a
finished puzzle. And tomorrow morning when you awoke, there
would be another new mound of pieces to add to today's.
Only, you have no idea what the final picture is supposed
to look like, because they didn't give you the box with the
finished picture on it! How would you proceed? How would you
know how far you had to go to get done? How would you know
when you were done?
This is life without a plan, life without a Preferred Future.
And the law of this life is this: "If you don't know
why you're doing what you're doing, you'll never have enough
time to get it done."
Our personal life and our work are both a series of choices
– choices of activities that we will perform next. The
activities that we choose to perform determine our results.
And the choice we have is between a future or a Preferred
Future. If the culmination of the activities we perform is
automatically a future, why not have those activities culminate
in a future we choose to have? In a future we prefer?
If life is like assembling the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,
why not have the final picture be something we'd like it to
be?
We can. And we do that by starting with a goal that's almost
too big to achieve.
When a city needs to lure or retain a sports franchise, they
need a big-dream goal of a new stadium, not an incremental
goal like fixing up the old stadium by adding logos!
There's no way that a new stadium can be completed in a day,
a month, or even a year. It takes about three years to finish
a project of this size. When it's first talked about, it's
hard to believe it will ever happen. But every day another
piece of the puzzle is put in place and eventually the picture
on the box becomes a real-live stadium. And the impossible
dream comes true.
Remember, now, that the stadium, even though an almost impossible
goal, is not really the final goal. The ultimate goal is to
get a new team in town (or keep your present one). Even that
goal likely has a larger focus such as keeping your city financially
healthy by creating a positive living environment.
Each of us has goals like these, too. But without action
steps or plans, these goals are merely dreams.
Have you ever wanted to earn more money? Have you ever told
yourself, "If I just earn 15% more, I'd be okay?"
While this seems a reasonable and doable goal, it's actually
difficult because your options are limited. Usually something
like "I just need to get a raise!"
If, however, you set a goal to double your income in three
years, you have to start to think differently to achieve that.
And you'll also have to stop doing something you're currently
doing to reach this Preferred Future. As you look at the obstacles
along the path to this Preferred Future, you'll discover that
these obstacles are actually the action steps you'll need
to take to reach your goal.
There are seven areas of your life – each of which needs
to have its own Preferred Future. The first six are: Spiritual
(Legacy, purpose), Physical, Family, Social (friends, community),
Intellectual, and Financial. Once you have achieved balance
in these six, you can then focus on the seventh area of your
life, your Career. And when you have a Preferred Future there,
and begin to achieve it, you will discover that the success
in your career is helping you achieve your Preferred Future in the first six areas of your life.
The secret of achieving your Preferred Future is this: "Focus
on your Preferred Future, but respond to the present."
When you do that, you automatically identify your highest
priorities, for example, and you will find yourself doing
not the easiest thing on your to-do list, nor even the next
thing, but rather the thing that will help you achieve your
goals. Here are the five steps you'll need to follow to reach
your Preferred Future.
- Clearly define your Preferred Future. I want to
make money is not clearly enough defined. I want to double
my income so I can pay off my debts and retire by age 50
is a clearly defined result. Getting a new job is not clearly
enough defined – being in charge of the hydraulic engineering
department is. If you don't know what the final picture
looks like, there is no way you can successfully assemble
the pieces of the puzzle.
- Know why this Preferred Future is important to you.
Knowing why the result matters to you, will allow you to make decisions
and judgments along the way that will help you get there
sooner. Is that new job important to you because of the
money, or because of the status in the eyes of your peers?
If you don't know why, you might make the wrong choice for
the wrong reason, and the goal is always to do the right
thing at the right time for the right reason. You can't
do that if you don't know why your Preferred Future is important
to you.
- Identify a small step that will open the door.
Just like you can't build a stadium overnight, you can't
reach your Preferred Future easily. But every journey has
its first step, and each step leads to the next. And while
all the steps are not the same and some are much harder
than others, you have to finds a place to start and then
begin. You journey nowhere without moving your feet.
- Monitor your progress. As you progress, look at
what you're doing. Keep a record. Make a daily plan. Make
a monthly plan. Make a quarterly plan. Make a yearly plan.
Make a three-year plan. And take notes. Determine what worked
and what didn't. Decide what you would do differently and
what you would do better. If you don't keep track of where
you are, you won't have any idea of where you're going.
- Modify your actions based on what you've learned.
When you have the information on what worked and what didn't, change you action
steps accordingly. When you know what you'd do better next time,
do it. And consistently revise your plans. If a sailor doesn't
change course, he can never reach his goal. The better the
sailor, the more frequently he monitors his actions and
the more frequently he changes course.
When you focus on your Preferred Future, you are applying
the pre-eminent law of body-building, and of life. That is,
what you focus on gets stronger.
When you create a clearly defined Preferred Future and focus
on it constantly, you will discover that every day you are
choosing the most important puzzle pieces in your life that
will best help you to build your Preferred Future.
Brent Dees, president of Focus Four, is a small business
coach who teaches entrepreneurs how to set and achieve business
and personal goals so they can work less and make more. http://www.focusfour.com
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