3 Step Framework to Bring Your Goals into Razor Sharp Focus
By: Andrew Burns
Tags: Personal Development, Goal Setting, Goals, Procrastination, Productivity

3 Step Framework to Bring Your Goals into Razor Sharp Focus

Have you ever had a goal slip away from you? You had the intention- maybe you even wrote it down. You started out on the path towards it, took the first steps, but somehow it got lost? Your normal routines got in the way, your attention got pulled away, and somehow that goal evaporated?

Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash

Later you remember that intention, but it is from afar, indistinct. The shining, burning desire you originally felt has gone. You smile at how mercurial the things you think you want can be. Perhaps you tell yourself that this thing just wasn’t that important. Or, if it was important, it will come around again. Perhaps you tell yourself, with a shrug, goal setting just isn’t for you.

Here’s the thing though: that intention was important. Important enough for you to think about, to put into motion. Goal setting most definitely is for you- you did it after all. You set yourself the goal. You were full of intent and excitement for the possibilities.

The problem then was in your execution. The How. How you tried to achieve your goal let you down. You took your eyes off the prize. And once you couldn’t see it anymore you forgot how much you wanted it in the first place.

Life is always going to get in the way whenever we have a new ambition we want to achieve. It’s not like we had loads of spare time before this ambition raised its head, right? We weren’t sitting around idly, twiddling our thumbs and waiting for opportunity to knock. So it’s no wonder we found ourselves knocked off track. It is no surprise that our fledgling ambition found itself jostled out of the feckless spotlight of our attention.

If we want to achieve these goals we have to nurture them. We have to make space for them. We have to coax them back into the light when our other priorities have got in the way.

Easier said than done for sure. Here is my framework for keeping your eyes on the prize, for keeping control of that attention spotlight of yours and keeping it trained on the thing that you very definitely do want to achieve.

Make it real/Give it flesh.

Spend some time fleshing out your goal. Make it as real as you can. Wispy, indistinct goals are much easier to lose sight of. How do you make it more distinct? Write it down. Be very clear about what done will look like- when will you feel like you are finished? What will the final act be that allows you to mark this goal as achieved?

People do tend to resist this way of thinking quite a bit. And I get that. If your goal is to learn to speak Italian for example, it can be hard to know what done looks like. But the truth is, if we don’t have a distinct target we will never, we can never hit it. Instead we will lose interest and our attention will wander away to something more tangible.

Trust me. Take your “learn Italian” vague, indistinct, wispy, insubstantial goal and give it flesh. Give it an end point. “Get Italian GCSE” (or whatever the high school level qualification might be in your country) is a much clearer goal. It gives you an endpoint and suddenly the path forward and the first steps for you to take become much clearer.

Draw a map

Now that clear path has presented itself, you can make a plan. Even though the path is sharp and clear now, doesn’t mean it still will be later on, so do your planning now. How will you get from here to there? What obstacles do you foresee? And how will you get around them?

Again, there is resistance to doing this work, this thinking. You might think that the path forward is obvious. Or perhaps the opposite, that your goal is so far off, so alien to you right now that making a plan and imagining the obstacles you might face will be forced and unreal.

So don’t do it- that’s okay. But you probably won’t achieve your goal. It will disappear on you like so many have before. Or, alternatively, you can commit to your ambition, to the future you wish for yourself, and draw yourself this map.

Take a pen and a piece of paper and map it out. What are the milestones? What are your time constraints? Where is the time for this project going to come from? What’s got to give for you to achieve this?

Break your goal down. There is a cascade of intention here. That’s a good thing by the way and you must embrace it to reach your goal. If I want to achieve x then first I must achieve y. If I want to achieve y then first z must be completed. Keep this chain, this cascade going until you have the first thing, the very next thing, in your hand. That my friend is the first step on your path while z-y-x is your map, the steps that lead you to your ultimate intention.

The map itself is unimportant really- only you will ever see it and it will of course evolve over time. But the exercise is the key. You are telling your brain, carving it into stone, writing it in vapour trailing behind a plane across the sky, that this is what you are working on.

Review

You have to regularly review your progress. Once a week you have to sit down with your carefully crafted intention and your hand drawn map and ask yourself where you are at. What progress have you made and what steps will you take in the week to come.

People are inclined to skip this part too. If they did move forward then the review is a waste of time because they are on it and can just keep going. If they didn’t move forward (I was just too busy this week…) then the review is a waste of time because there is nothing to review. They will get to it next week when they have made some progress. You and I both know next week will never come.

The review is critical whether you feel on track, completely derailed or anywhere in between. We already talked about the map, our plan evolving over time. This is when that evolution happens. The review is to appraise, to be critical, to be clear about what we have achieved to that point. Are we on the right track? Do we need to course correct?

The other opportunity our regular review affords us is to be critical of the goal itself. When we talk about goal setting we often think in terms of horizons, and it really is a very nice metaphor. When we set our goal we stuck a flag out on the horizon- our target. Now, as we approach our target, our flag, we realise new horizons are revealed to us. We can still keep going for our target, claim our flag for sure. But as new horizons, new opportunities, new possibilities come into our view we must be open to recalibration, to adjusting our course based on what we know now. The review keeps us on track for sure, but also reveals to us new paths that we simply hadn’t imagined before.

If we want to achieve our goal we have to keep our eyes on the prize. Otherwise it can just evaporate on us. First we have to make that goal real to us, give it flesh, own it. Then we have to map out our route towards it, utilise the cascade of intention until we have our very next action in our hand. The first step on our path. And then we have to review regularly, check in with our map routinely. This not only gives us the ability to appraise our progress, to course correct and keep us on target, but also, perhaps, to course correct on our destination as new horizons come into view.

Keep your eyes on the prize. There is no other way to get what you want.