In This Episode…
In this episode I continue my deep dive into the excellent book by Gary Keller – The One Thing. Yesterday I got to the bottom of his goal setting approach he calls “Goal Setting To The Now“. It is a powerfully simple approach that I thought I’d try out for myself. This episode shares the following experiences:
- A reminder of what Keller’s “Goal Setting To The Now” process is.
- How I ran my own business aspirations ( to fulfil the purpose I identified in a previous episode) through this approach.
- The questions that arose as a result of trying this for myself.
- How I tried putting my aspirations to play acoustic blues guitar through the same process.
- The potential modifications to the process that might be necessary to make it work for me.
Episode Show Notes…
00:15 – Background to this episode. I reviewed “The One Thing” by Gary Keller a couple of days ago. I’ve been exploring his three layer iceberg model for extraordinary success ever since.
00:44 – After looking at the Priority layer in this model yesterday, today’s episode is all about how I applied his goal setting approach.
01:13 – Keller call’s his goal setting approach “Goal Setting To The Now”. It is a simple process that looks far into the future to something you want to achieve “Someday” and then walks back in time to right now. By doing so, you can work out what the very next thing is that you need to do.
01:33 – Once you have the “Someday” goal identified, you ask yourself this question:
Based on my someday goal, what is the one thing I can do in the next 5 years?
Gary Keller, The One Thing
01:44 – Then you have your 5 year goal. You then repeat the same form of question, but this time asking what you need to have in place in the next year to achieve your 5 year goal. You repeat this for these time frames:
- Someday
- 5 years
- 1 year
- 1 month
- 1 week
- 1 day
- Right now
02:10 – I might be a little pedantic, but I questioned whether “to do” in that question should be replaced by “to have achieved”. The latter seems more concrete on results rather than process.
02:32 – I thought I would try this approach out to support the purpose I identified in episode 149. This is to help people learn and laugh and laugh and learn.
03:45 – Here is what came out of the process:
- Someday goal – to be regularly invited to speak on the same stages as existing speaker superstars.
[NOTE – this isn’t actually a driver for me and I have only chose this because a) it is a someday goal and b) it sets the standard for the level I want to be at. I don’t necessarily intend to seek out that as the goal – merely be that good].
- 5 Year goal – To be delivering paid keynote speeches 50 times a year
- 1 year goal – to get a speaking agent to promote me AND/OR to have delivered my keynote 100 times to have fine tuned it (probably for free or at least very low fees).
05:55 – This is where things started to diverge for me. I wasn’t sure which of these was most important for the one year goal so I kept both in. [NOTE – this of course defies the principle of The One Thing but I am just exploring how to make it work at this stage].
- Monthly goal – To have booked 10 of those 100 “test” sessions.
- Weekly goal – to have my sales and promotional material online
- Daily goal – to have written my sales and promotional material
- Right Now – To have reviewed my existing sales and promotional material
06:40 – Here are some thoughts that came from this process:
- 06:43 – This process works really well at the start of my journey but how do I manage this on a rolling basis as I start to make progress towards the earlier goals?
- 07:29 – There are lots of other activities that will also need to be put in place to achieve my Someday goal for example ongoing research, writing a book or two for credibility and this podcast. How do those activities fit in with everything else?
08:34 – Maybe a future “One Thing” might be to hire a team to support me in the activities.
08:42 – Having realised there are probably some parallel paths, I thought I’d try out the approach on my desire to play acoustic blues guitar.
10:00 – Having worked through the Goal Setting To The Now process, I realised there were many things missing that would have to be in place AS WELL in order for me to achieve my long term goal.
10:44 – I mused over whether a variation on the Wheel of Life might be useful here to combine with this goal setting process.
11:05 – I mulled over that and applied it to learning chords on the guitar. I was quite pleased with the result.
13:29 – In summary, Keller’s “Goal Setting To The Now” is brilliant. It is a great framework and philosophy to start planning your success. However it is messier in reality than the book leads you to believe. But it works.
Until tomorrow
