Your Best Year Ever, Chapter 14: Visibility is Essential

0:01Well, hey there. It means the world to me that you've made it this far into the book. Clearly, you've got some exciting things in your future. I can't wait to cheer you on and have it your best year ever. I bet if you've made it this far, you really do feel like it's added a lot of value to your life. I mean, you wouldn't be listening this far if it hadn't. But would you be willing to share this with someone you know, somebody you care about? If so, just take a quick second, hit the share button, and then send it to someone in your life that you want to have their best year ever. Chapter 14. Visibility is Essential.

0:40It is good to repeat and review what is good twice and thrice over. Plato. Planning is bringing the future into the present so you can do something about it now. Alan Lakin. General Jimmy Doolittle is most remembered for his daring bombing raid over Tokyo just four months after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. But Doolittle's most significant contribution to aviation happened many years earlier. In 1922, he became the first pilot to fly across the U.S. in less than 24 hours. He'd planned to fly by the light of the moon, but bad storms kept him in total darkness for several very dangerous hours.

1:19Luckily, he had a turn and bank indicator installed on his plane. Although I had been flying almost five years by the seat of my pants and considered that I had achieved some skill at it, This particular flight made me a firm believer in proper instrumentation for bad weather flying, Doolittle said. Flying with instruments was new and rare at the time, but without the indicator he might have been forced to bail out or just luck it through, as other pilots were forced to do. There had to be a better way. Progress was being made in the design of aircraft flight and navigation instruments and radio communication.

1:53If these sciences could be merged, I thought flying in weather could be mastered, he said. The right mix of instruments could give him the direction he needed in the dark. It took several years, but he figured out that a combination of radio and gyroscopes could let him fly safely regardless of visibility. And he proved it in 1929 by flying a plane with a totally blacked-out cockpit. I'd like to suggest several important parallels in achieving our goals in Doolittle's story. The first is that we often try reaching our destination without enough support. Without proper instruments, when we face bad weather, which we invariably do, we're forced to bail or just trust our luck that we'll make it.

2:35We usually don't, which is why there are all those sad statistics about New Year's resolutions. As Doolittle found, when it comes to experiencing our best year ever, we need the right mix of instruments. This chapter provides the dashboard you need to connect your annual goals to your daily tasks. You can't just write goals and motivations. You have to review them to keep them top of mind as you preview what actions you'll take to achieve them. Laubarro University professor Cheryl J. Travers tracks students who not only wrote down their goals, but also journaled about their progress. She found that they came to greater self-awareness about their goals and their progress, including discovery of how pursuing one goal impacted their pursuit of the others.

3:17They were able to better analyze what was holding them back and what it would take to keep moving forward. Reviewing your goals and motivations will keep you ideating, self-checking, and analyzing. And that will up your resolve and stimulate creative problem solving as you plot what to do next. I break this joint review-preview process along four separate horizons. Daily, weekly, quarterly, and annual. Let's start with daily. Daily Horizon One of the main challenges we face with reaching our goals is losing track of them. We get distracted and sidetracked by life, and they slip out of focus. We can lose months of the year before we realize we're not making progress.

4:02A daily goal review process can fix that problem. It starts with a simple list of your goals, a goal summary. When I designed the Full Focus Planner, I placed this right up front for easy and regular viewing. But you could do this in any analog notebook or in a digital solution like Notion, Nozbe, or Evernote. You could even frame your goals and hang them on the wall. I use a mix of analog and digital tools. You'll need to find whatever works best for you. To gain the full benefit of the daily view, you should scan this list each day. I know it sounds like a lot, but it takes only a minute. After all, you only have eight goals or so, right?

4:39I do this as part of my morning routine. Many people feel stuck or fail to make progress because they can't make the connection between their yearly goals and their daily tasks. All their hopes languish on a wrinkled sheet of paper in a drawer somewhere. I saw this in corporate strategic planning all the time. Massive strategy documents would be created with significant goal commitments, but there was no mechanism to translate those annual and quarterly commitments to daily actions. In the end, the big binder would wind up crammed on a shelf between other big binders, rarely consulted and mostly forgotten.

5:16The daily view is designed to make that connection between goals and tasks. As I scan the list, I look for relevant next actions. I ask myself the question, what is it that I could do today that would move me down the field toward the goal? That's why I call this a review-preview process. It's looking backward and forward. I'm connecting my goal list to my task list, my past commitments to my future actions. And I don't let that list get complicated or lengthy. As I teach in my free-to-focus course and book, I limit my tasks to what I call my daily big three. So I never have more than three significant tasks to complete in any one day.

5:56But most of those three tasks are chosen specifically to help me achieve my goals. A lot of people start out their day with 10 or 20 tasks for a day. By close to business, they've only checked off half the items and they feel like a failure. They're creating a game they can't possibly win. Who's got time for that kind of demotivation? If you really want to make progress towards your most important goals, you need a fast and easy method to chunk down big goals into achievable daily tasks. That takes us to the weekly horizon. Weekly Horizon The weekly horizon goes a bit deeper and takes a bit longer, about 20 to 30 minutes.

6:35There's a triple focus of the weekly view. The first part is a mini after-action review. You'll remember the stages from step two. But instead of going through the process for an entire year, you just want to recap the past week. Review your progress. List your wins and your misses. Next, list the lessons you learned and what you could do differently or better. How will you adjust your behavior? Write that down, too. Committing to the change on paper or screen will help you find clarity and build the necessary resolve. The second part of the weekly view involves a more thorough review of your goals.

7:10Instead of scanning a list of goal statements, I want you to walk through the goal statement, your key motivations, and any relevant next steps. You want to stay intellectually and emotionally connected to your motivations. We identified those in step four. That wasn't an academic exercise. Ultimately, the purpose of that list is to review it so you can keep your why in view. This is the secret to continuing to move forward when you want to quit. A weekly review keeps those key motivations present in our minds. When we're in the thick of it, they can be hard to recall. But when we're reviewing our rationale week in and week out, the reasons become so internalized, we know what's at stake.

7:54The third and final part of the weekly review is to get a sense of what needs to be accomplished for the upcoming week. A preview. As we saw with the case of General McClellan, it's critical to break down big goals into actionable next steps. Otherwise, you'll fail to make the progress required to reach your goals. It's now time to turn those next steps into objectives you must accomplish in the coming week. I call this my Weekly Big Three, and it's the best way I know to get traction and maintain momentum on those next steps. The Weekly Big Three represents definitive outcomes I must accomplish to move closer to my goals.

8:32How does this relate to my Daily Big Three? I use my weekly Big Three to dictate my daily Big Three. Taken together, the process works like this. Goals lead to next actions, lead to weekly Big Three, lead to daily Big Three. Here's an example so you can see it in action. Let's say your goal is to restore a classic Volkswagen Beetle for your daughter's 16th birthday, which is October the 18th. It's March the 1st. That's not a lot of time, but it's doable. and the pressure is on because you want something super special to celebrate this milestone in her life. The most important next actions are probably purchasing a card that fits your budget and having it shipped to your house where you can begin working on it.

9:14So how are you going to proceed? You might map out a complete project schedule, but you don't need to. The first step is buying the bug. That much is clear, and this is where the weekly review helps you connect your goals to your daily schedule. To move towards your goal, during your weekly review, you might identify the purchase as one of your weekly Big Three objectives. Depending on the rest of your priorities that week, you could then schedule time to talk with your spouse about the budget on Monday, research on eBay and AutoTrader on Wednesday, and purchase on Thursday. Each one of those tasks would be part of your daily Big Three.

9:49All the way from the goal down to the individual daily tasks, the idea is to direct your actions so you're always gaining ground. The daily and weekly reviews make that possible. I designed my full focus planner to offer an integrated goal-to-daily task solution to make this process simple and straightforward. But regardless of the tools you use to implement it, the review process works like a roadmap to goal achievement if we're intentional. Back to our Empire State Building analogy. Each weekly Big Three is like a story in the skyscraper, and each daily Big Three is like a set of steps necessary to reach that floor.

10:25The exciting thing is this. It all adds up. Step by step, floor by floor, you can make your way all the way to the top. Well, hey there. First of all, thank you. You're nearing the end of your best year ever on this podcast, and I'm thrilled to have been with you on this journey. And I truly hope you found immense value in what you've heard. And remember, while listening provides insights, having the book in hand lets you constantly refer back to it, ensuring that the lessons stay with you throughout the year. There are detailed exercises in the physical book designed for you to take a deep dive into the content.

11:06It's a tool that you can use repeatedly to recalibrate, refocus, and get your best year ever, every year. And here's something exciting. For those of you who buy the book before December the 31st, 2023, there's a special bonus I want to tell you about. So head over to yourbestyeareverbook.com, input your order number, and in return, I'm going to give you a free ticket to our biggest virtual event of the year. It's called Your Best Year Ever Live. Now, this isn't just another event. It's a chance for you to delve deeper into the book's content and expand on it and make sure that you actually apply it to your life.

11:45So imagine leaving that event with a full set of goals for the upcoming year, plus a solid plan on how to achieve them. Normally the tickets for that event, they go for$197. But with your book purchase, you get in for free. That's right, absolutely free. It's my way of saying thank you and ensuring that you have everything you need for an incredible year. So if you're eager to make the most of the insights and you don't want to wait for the remaining podcast episodes, grab your copy from Amazon or Audible. Don't miss out. Secure your book and your free ticket to your best year ever live at yourbestyeareverbook.com.

12:22I hope to see you there. Quarterly Horizon. As I mentioned in step three, I recommend setting goals by quarter so you space them out of the year and also to prompt action immediately instead of waiting until later in the year as a more distant deadline finally comes into view. Quarterly goal setting naturally leads to a deeper review and preview every three months. The full focus planner has one at the end of each quarter. I recommend doing an after-action review, same as with the weekly review preview, only focused on the entire quarter. Beyond that, the main purpose of the quarterly review is to analyze your goals and decide if they're still relevant to your life, and then make any adjustments if not.

13:04I like to take a full day for my quarterly review, but if time is tight, I can usually do this in an hour or two. In the quarterly view, at least five actions are possible. Rejoice, recommit, revise, remove, and replace. First, you can rejoice. Let's say you've reached an important milestone in pursuit of one of your goals. Pause to recognize and celebrate it. I firmly believe in celebrating your wins. You don't have to wait to achieve the entire goal. In fact, the bigger our goals, the more important it becomes to celebrate small wins along the way. The creation account in Genesis tells us God looked at everything He created and called it good.

13:44He didn't wait until the whole creation was done. He did it at each stage. That's a good model for us too. Recognizing and rejoicing in our progress helps us stay emotionally engaged for the long haul. Celebrating triggers your brain's reward system, which according to endurance athlete Christopher Berglund, is a prime motivating force to help you keep pushing and achieve your goals. Being self-congratulatory isn't about ego or hubris. It's about harnessing your reward circuitry and tapping your dopamine pipeline. Winning helps keep us in the game, so we need to be serious about rejoicing when we score.

14:21Second, you can recommit to the goal. This can be hard when you feel like giving up and walking off the field. But when you realize the game isn't over, literally anything is possible. You never know what may happen. The only thing you can know for sure is that if you quit now, you will lose. My daughter Marissa had a sales goal she was trying to reach, but had given up before the end of the month. She thought there wasn't enough time to hit the target. I challenged her on it and asked what it would take to reach the goal. It was a bit like the story of Miura and Dorfman from Step 1. She had a limiting belief blocking her progress, but there was still time on the clock.

14:58She still had a chance to affect the outcome of the month. The moment she recognized that liberating truth, it gave her a new sense of ownership and possibility. She recommitted to the goal, marshaled her team, and beat it with only minutes to spare. The key in this situation is to refocus on the original goal and reconnect to your why. In other words, list what's at stake. This is why I emphasize this step when setting the goal and in the weekly preview process. What will you gain? What will you lose? Once you have these in view, you can consider new strategies or find additional resources. But you have to decide deep in your heart I'm going for it.

15:39Regular mistake people make at this stage is getting married to their strategy. Don't conflate goals and strategies. Your goal is the what? Your strategy is the how. There's nothing sacred about your strategy. You can change it at any time if it's not producing results. If we're married to our strategies and they fail us, our goals will suffer. But if we're committed to our goals, we can confidently pivot on our strategies as often as we need to hit our targets. My daughter Megan and I wrote our book, Mind Your Mindset, precisely to help with the challenge of pivoting. If you're no longer committed to the goal, your third option is to revise it.

16:16This is totally valid. After all, when you're planning, you have limited knowledge. Maybe you've realized that you set the goal in the delusional zone instead of the discomfort zone. Other facts or circumstances that you could not have known about may come into play, and they may be out of your control. You do have to be careful when revising a goal. You don't want to do it just so you can stay in your comfort zone and not stretch. But you also don't need to put yourself in a no-win situation just to prove a point. Personally, I would rather recommit if I can possibly achieve a goal and revise if I can't.

16:48When I can't recommit and I don't want to revise, the fourth option is to remove. Grab an eraser. Hit delete. Don't let that shock you. It's a last resort, but sometimes necessary. I'm all for achieving our goals, but the Sabbath was made for man, not the other way around. This is your game. I never met the goal police, but I'm certain they don't show up when you strike a goal off your list. If a goal is no longer relevant, it's no longer compelling. If you've tried to revise it and you can't, remove it. If you don't, the goal will just sit there and accuse you. There's no need to pay an emotional tax like that on your own list.

17:27If you've decided to remove a goal, I recommend you replace it with another you want to achieve. What if you miss a goal? Don't obsess about it. Timing is tricky under the best circumstances. It's doubly so with major goals. I don't always reach mine by the deadline. If you're pursuing big goals, it's normal to miss the target sometimes. The important thing is to stay in the game. Wrapping up, I recommend looking at the five quarterly review options as a decision tree. Rejoice if you've reached your goal or milestone. If you're not done, then recommit to achieve it. If you can't recommit, then revise the goal so you can achieve it.

18:03If you can't revise, then remove the goal from your list. If you remove it, then replace it with another you want to achieve. Annual Horizon This view is the easiest to explain because you've already done it. Congrats! The five steps of your best year ever comprise the annual view, reinvigorating your sense of possibility, getting closure on the past year, setting goals for the next, identifying your key motivations, and executing your plan by breaking it into actionable next steps. By maintaining visibility of your goal through quarterly, weekly, and daily reviews and previews, you are guaranteeing that your daily actions accrue to your annual goals and add up to achievement.

18:48Why celebrate? Before closing this chapter, I want to come back to the subject of rejoicing. High achievers sometimes struggle with this one. I used to. After a win, I rarely stopped to celebrate before jumping into the next project. But remember the observation I quoted earlier from psychology professor Timothy Pitchell. We experience the strongest positive emotional response when we make progress on our most difficult goals. Well, that's only true if we stop to notice. When we achieve our goals to reach milestones along the way, we need to take the appropriate time to celebrate. Celebrating your wins validates your work, and it's also a key component of living a full, meaningful life.

19:32After running a race in Greece called the Novarino Challenge, ultramarathoner Dean Karnasas was surprised at how the townspeople came out to celebrate the winners. They dropped their work, closed their shops, and started dancing. These people were all willing to put aside what they were doing and join together, Karnasas says. If we always make decisions with our heads instead of our hearts, we'd probably live much more orderly lives, he reflects. But they would be much less joyous. How many people spend their entire lives striving for something with their nose to the grindstone, only to wake up one day and realize they haven't really lived at all.

20:10When we skip the celebration, we cheapen our efforts. And we also shortchange our lives and the lives of those closest to us. That's why it's critical to dance across the mile markers. Bring your family into it. Bring your friends into it. But take time to celebrate. Reinforce it. Let it sink into your nervous system and power you across the goal line. To give you a leg up, I've included a reward prompt in the sample goal templates included with this audio book so you can identify up front how you will celebrate when you accomplish your goals.

20:45Hey, hope you enjoyed this chapter from your best year ever. My hope is that it's added a ton of value to you and that it's inspired you to go out and accomplish your dreams. But before you go, I'd so appreciate it if you would take just a couple of minutes and go review the book. That would really, really help us. You can do that on Amazon or Audible. And if you're anything like me, you probably always look at the reviews before you buy something. That's why they're so important. So leaving a review helps other people just like you know whether they should buy the book or not. So just go to Amazon or Audible, search for your best year ever, and leave your, hopefully, five-star review.

21:25Thanks so much.