How to make your wish come true and why figurative goals are better for your business.

A couple of months ago, Paul Jarvis wrote a newsletter with the title "Motivation vs. Action.” To Paul Jarvis, motivation is not part of the action. He believes that being motivated means one has the intention to do something, which unfortunately doesn’t mean one actually does it. If you wait for motivation to do things, you might never finish what you intend to do. 

 Even if you’re motivated, you might still say that you have millions of other things on your plate and that you’ll do *it* once your time frees up a little. If you ever wonder how other people manage to get a lot done, it’s probably because…

…people who get into shape enjoy the pain of the exercise.

…people who build successful corporate careers enjoy the politics and procedures.

…people who are successful in their relationships are able to handle conflict and cope with loss.

…people who are able to build successful businesses are comfortable with uncertainty and failure.

…people who travel to cool places and do amazing things are comfortable with the risks, potential disasters, and setbacks.

That’s how Mark Manson summarised it. 

If you think about it, Mark is right. That still doesn’t mean that people who don’t enjoy all aspects of the process cannot accomplish incredible things. It just means they must plan differently. 

If someone were to ask me what I believe is the recipe to accomplishing projects, I would say figurative goals, a realistic deadline, and social pressure. 

Let’s say someone wants to write a book. Let’s say you want to write a book. You’ve seen others do it, but you can’t figure out how, and whenever you try, you can’t make it work. 

If you’d follow my recipe, you wouldn’t say you want to write a book. You’d say you want to write a first draft of 50K words. Then, you would set yourself a goal somewhere between 30 and 60 days. You are motivated now, so goals that are far ahead will make it hard to remain motivated. Once you have a figurative goal and a deadline, divide the word count by the number of days you have to reach your goal. 

Suddenly, your plan is not to write a book; your plan is to write 1,6K or 830 words a day for the next one or two months.  

But who will make you accountable? 

Who will cheer you on whenever you’ll want to give up? Exactly! The friends who know about your plan and who’ll remind you what you said you’d do. Making your plans and your deadline public is what will help following through with your plans.

Now the question is, what is the plan you’ll finally follow through with?