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Achieve Goals: One Step a Time Kishore C.S. (December 2001)
Do you have any
personal 'collection' you are proud of? A book collection, stamp collection,
coin collection, CD Collection, Audio cassette collection. I am sure you do.
You started the habit of collecting one by one and before you knew, you had a
'big collection'. How did this happen? One item at a time. Yes, I am talking
about the practice of growing big by small steps
A Thousand
mile journey starts with a simple step.
Rome is not built in a day
I found this
simple concept very useful and applied the same principle to many of goals
also. All great things are not achieved in one simple leap. There are always
simple but significant small steps that lead to it.
How do you read
1000 page book? A page a time or a chapter a day.
How do you get
100 CD Collection? A CD or two a month
How do you get
10000 cash savings in your bank? Amount of 1000 a month.
Use this simple
principle in getting towards your goals which cannot be achieved in a simple
big step.
I found this very
useful. Now I am happy about my personal website.
A collection of
120+ articles, added at a rate of 4/5 per month.
A total
collection of 500+ webpages, added at a rate of 10 per month.
That is what
makes big things happen.
What did I
learn from this?
Many times we are
bogged down by 'Mammoth' Goals in our life. We are intimidated by the goals
and feel we can never achieve them because it takes lot of effort and time.
Only way to achieve them is to break down the goals into smaller tasks that we
can achieve one at a time. If you are interested in a book which has 20
chapters and you feel you will never get time to read that book, you should
plan to read one chapter a day. Then in a month or so, you would have finished
reading the book.
I remember how I
ended up with a collection of 100+ books. I bought 3/4 books every month
and before I realized my collection was big.
So break any big
task into small tasks. It will always be possible to do that. Break it on
either convenience of executing task or in a logical way. For example, reading
a book can be divided into 1 chapter per day OR 30 minutes of reading every
day (~20-30 pages per day depending on your speed of reading).
As I pointed in
time management presentation:
Many of the tasks
do not need just action, but need preparation. Preparation like gathering some
information, getting the tools together, getting ready for action or sometimes
it may be even some mental preparation.
Many times we
postpone a task when 'what' and 'how' of a task we want to do is not clear.
Finding out answers for these questions is important. Once we start answering
these questions, our tasks become clear.
I remember
reading a book which explained this concept. "Suppose you are walking by
a river and notice someone drowning, you immediately jump in (assuming you
know swimming) and rescue the person. In this situation 'what' and 'how' are
very clear. Because of this action is immediate. In case you don't know
swimming, you will be 'thinking' how best you attack the situation."
Summary
Next time you
find yourself postponing a task or goal, the following are likely causes
- You have not
broken the goal into smaller tasks. Do it
- You don't have
enough information to start on it
- You are not
clear in your mind 'what' and 'how' of the task. Get answers for these.
Don't blame
yourself for missing your goals. Understand dynamics of 'goal achievement' and
practice simple steps to overcome the same.
I sure find this
useful and am sure you will also find it useful.
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