Today I finished writing my 3 month goals, and I noticed that this process exceeded the 5 hours that I delegated towards the task. The reason that this planning / goal setting process took so long is strictly because I not only made plans for the next 3 months but I made those three month goals based off the results I would like to see in the future.
When planning for future success you must realize that you cannot only plan the business side of things but you must also try your best to account for your life as well. As this can be a daunting task it’s something that you must and will do if you want victory. Everyday you will be faced with challenges and decisions, and ideally you would like to make the most informed decision in order to see the best results and/or to accomplish a goal that you’ve set. this is why you must have written plans that you can look at when need be in order to stay on pace and make better decisions.
What I normally do is write down very realistic goals, those that are reasonable and achievable. and then I take those goals and I write an upside to that and and downside to that. Let’s say my goal is to gain $100 dollars in profit today. the upside would be to gain $150 dollars the down side would be to collect $99 or below. The sole reason I am doing this is for motivation and accountability. If I’m at $99 bucks that should motivate me to pick up the pace to reach my goal. If I’m at $150 dollars obviously I’ve well exceeded my goals now I need to 1) raise the bar a little higher 2) Analyze my actions and think about what I did that enabled me to do better than planned.
Planning for the future is very important because you can try to forecast any road bumps that you might run into in the long run. Believe me you need to try your hand at seeing the future because I promise you although you are making a very detailed 3 month plan there will be much more excruciating problems in the future. The good news is that with time and effort you can work at trying to prevent this stuff from breaking you down by eliminating the problem before it happens. I love investing, I have been very good at investing and I hope it stays that way. But without planning for the future my portfolio would be a piece of crap right now. Let’s say I buy a company that looks good for the next three months, but due to my lack of planning I failed to see that this business was in a dying market. During the next three months I do great and then suddenly a 50 point drop in the stock, then 70, then 90 and eventually they go bankrupt. With planning I would’ve been able to see that Dvds were soon to come and the VHS market was already very much dead. If you plan for the future today will be even more delightful.
Quick note: You might be saying I don’t have that much going on in my life to make a detailed plan like that. Or I’m single or whatever. Take it from me this 3 month plan could be the difference in you making $30,000/yr to making $300,000/yr. Wouldn’t you say 3 months worth of detailed planning is worth it.
Concisely you will not be able to make great decisions in the spur of the moment. Because you aren’t capable of giving proper weight towards specific tasks unless you actually sit down and put your mind towards getting the best result. Without planning You might think it’s better to have a baby now and bypass work. Then down the road you see that this was not the most logical step to take and had you sat down and planned your actions you would have made a much more informed decision. Also with a detail plan you do not have waste a lot of time thinking because you can already trust your written plan. The only thing that you need to think about is when it comes to to rewrite your goals or alter them a little because you see a way to optimize your results.
May 31st, 2008 at 12:18 pm
[…] thinking about success and making my goals for the future I have come to see that with success comes an increase in work, responsibilities and problems. If […]
July 12th, 2008 at 9:27 am
How important is planning? Well look at every significant achievement in history…nuff said!
How about an old proverb “Failure to prepare is preparing for failure”
As long as you realize that hard work is the necessary crux with good planning and persistence thrown in for good measure, then I believe that anyone can make significant accomplishments.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:33 am
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