The first step toward achieving your goal is to know where you’re headed. The problem is that often people think that’s all they need to know. They forget one crucial piece of the puzzle: a map only works if you know both your end and your starting point. Said another way, you cannot get to where you want to go if you don’t know where you are.
You need a road map. You need a starting point. You need a finish line. You need to know the guideposts and mile markers along the way. You need a plan of attack. You can talk about the things you want for your life every single day. I’m sure you can even find friends who will go to coffee with you and daydream and brainstorm, but none of that matters if you don’t actually develop a real plan to get you where you want to be. People don’t get lost because they’re not sure where they want to go. People get lost because they start out on a path and don’t keep checking to make sure they’re still headed in the right direction.
How often do you set out on a road trip without a map or directions? The only time we do that is if we don’t care where we end up—we just want to take a drive and listen to music and see what we find. But if we actually have somewhere we want to be, if we actually have a destination in mind, we always have a map. Why? Because a map can get us there faster and more efficiently. Because when we see something from a ten-thousand-foot view, we’re able to plan for and anticipate things that might pop up along the way. It’s much harder to have any kind of real strategy when you’re on the road.
I have used this road-map strategy for every major work project or personal goal I’ve taken on over the last fifteen years. It’s how I landed all my major clients in the event industry. It’s how I booked press for myself without a publicist and used that exposure to propel my career. It’s how I trained for a 10K, then a half marathon, and finally a full marathon. It’s how I wrote my first book and got my first book deal. It’s the strategy and intention behind everything in my life from products to relationships, and I’m convinced there isn’t anything it couldn’t work for. It’s not complicated; it only has three components. The trick is to approach these elements out of the usual order we expect them to be in.
See, we’re taught to start at one, then get to two, then end up at three. This is incredibly confusing if you don’t know what step two is. And how are you supposed to know what the steps are if you’ve never taken them before?
I’ve found that if I flip the order and start with the finish line, then contemplate where I’m starting from, I can more easily define the steps in the middle that will take me from one place to another.
Here’s how I do it:
THE FINISH LINE
First of all, you’ve got to start at the end. Counterintuitive, perhaps, but super effective in figuring out what direction your path should go. By now we’ve done enough work together that you should already have one clear and defining objective, one goal you’re focused on right now. That’s where you start.
To give you an idea of exactly how I’ve used this road-map strategy, I’m going to share a personal goal of mine from the past. I wanted to have a cookbook. I was a food blogger at the time, and having a cookbook felt like the ultimate goal! That was my finish line. I figured out my very specific what by zeroing in on my very specific why. I wanted a product for my fans that would commemorate my family recipes and be a first product offering that was in line with my brand at the time.
THE STARTING POINT
Now that you know where you want to go, you need to practice some self-awareness and be really honest about where you’re starting from. What assets, resources, and habits do you currently have that are going to help you with your journey? How can you expand on them and use them for exponential growth? What habits do you have that might derail you or push you off course? How can you be intentional in planning around those in advance so they don’t sneak up on you? What good habits could you develop to replace those negative ones? My starting place for my cookbook was great. As a food blogger I knew photographers and designers and a food stylist to help me make it all look incredible. What I didn’t have was a literary agent or experience in the cookbook space. I was super honest with myself about what I did and didn’t have access to, and then I got to work!
THE GUIDEPOSTS + MILE MARKERS
Now that you know where you’re going and you know where you’re starting, the next step is a brainstorm of every single thing you can think of that might help you get closer to the goal. And a great brainstorm always starts with great questions.
For instance, how could I get a cookbook deal? At the time I had no idea, so I headed over to Google (I swear to you, the answer for literally everything exists on the internet for free), and I asked that exact question. There were all kinds of answers, and I wrote down each and every one in a big idea soup—that’s what I call my written brainstorm sessions, because they always look like a big messy bowl of possibility. Anytime I’m creating a soup, my goal is to find at least twenty ideas for how I’m going to get there. I put down anything I can think of, and since it’s a brainstorm, I don’t debate whether the idea is good. I just write it down.
Write a book proposal, get a literary agent, grow my social media following, establish myself as an expert in this field, research book proposal, hire graphic designer, hire photographer, do recipe testing, and so on.
The problem with stopping at this soup, besides the fact that it’s overwhelming, is there are too many possible directions to head. We want to create a clear direction, and this brainstorm page, while awesome to get your wheels spinning, is likely to create a lot of stops and starts and unproductive attempts. So, in order to move forward, we’ve got to get it organized. The question is, How do we do that? The answer is, surprisingly, with another question.
Look at your brainstorm and ask yourself, of all the ideas you’ve got there, what are the three major things that, if you actually achieved them, they would—without question—get you to your goal? Getting from twenty ideas down to three might seem impossible, especially since so many of them would be helpful, but I’m convinced that if you force yourself to come up with only three, those three will be the guideposts you’ll need to get you back on track if you get lost along the way. How do you choose your three? Go to your end goal and ask yourself, What is the step that comes just before this? Then choose two more guideposts working back from there.
The thing about a guidepost is that it’s something you cannot easily achieve without taking a bunch of other steps to get you there. People often hesitate to write these down, because they seem nearly as impossible as the dream itself. Their brains immediately start coming up with all the reasons that it’s going to be impossible to achieve. Maybe they’re like, “Sure, sure, sure. I can write down the thing, but eventually reality creeps back in, and my negative self-talk creeps back in, and I don’t know how I’m going to get there, and gosh, I’d like to do this thing, but I don’t . . .”