4116: How To Create An Action Plan by Brian Tracy on Goal Setting

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[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_01] This is Optimal Living Daily. How to create an action plan by Brian Tracy of BrianTracy.com and I'm Justin Malik. Welcome back to Optimal Living Daily or the OLD podcast where I read to you from some of the best articles I can find and get permission from covering personal development or self-help, minimalism, productivity, and more. So with that let's get right to it and continue optimizing your life.

[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_01] How to create an action plan by Brian Tracy of BrianTracy.com. Everyone has goals but some seem to accomplish them far more than others. That's because people who accomplish goals at a higher rate than the average person are those who use a systematic, proven method of goal setting and goal attainment.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_01] The answer is simple. You need an effective action plan. Here are six steps that you can take to create an action plan that works. Number one, seek clarity. The first step in creating an action plan is deciding exactly what you want. Clarity is the most important single quality of goal setting and perhaps the most important single quality of success.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_01] Instead of fuzzy goals like more money, better health, and happiness, be specific about how much money you want to earn in a specific period of time or what level of health and fitness you desire. You need to set goals that are multidimensional and for every part of your life so that you function like a well-oiled machine.

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_01] You need goals for your health, career, finances, relationships, personal and professional development, and your community and spiritual growth. This will immediately put you in a separate category of people because most people have no idea what they really want. Most people are unconsciously preoccupied with the fear of failure which blocks them from setting clear, specific goals.

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_01] If you don't set clear, specific goals, then you can't fail to achieve them because they're so vague. Number two, write down your goals. Only 3% of adults have written goals. Everyone else plans to write them down someday. Success begins with planning. A pad of paper, a pen, and a few minutes of your time. You can start with the three-goal method.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_01] In less than 30 seconds, quickly write down your three most important goals in life right now. Whatever three goals you manage to write down is probably an accurate picture of what you really want in life. When you actually write a goal down, it is as if you are programming it into your subconscious mind and activating a whole series of mental powers that will enable you to accomplish more than you ever dreamed of.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_01] You begin to expect to achieve the goal and you start to attract people and circumstances into your life that are consistent with the attainment of your goal. Number three, set a deadline. The next step is to set a deadline. If it is a large goal, set a series of sub-deadlines. And what if you don't achieve your goal by the deadline? Well, set another deadline. Remember, a deadline is a guesstimate of when you will achieve it.

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_01] You may achieve your goal well in advance or it may take much longer than you expect, but you must have a target time before you set off. A deadline acts as a forcing system on your subconscious mind toward achieving your goal on schedule. If you want to achieve financial independence, you may set a 10 or 20-year goal and then break it down year by year so that you know how much you have to save and invest each year.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_01] There are no unreasonable goals, only unreasonable deadlines. Number four, make a list. Now, make a list of everything you could possibly think of that you'll have to do to achieve your goal. After having a written goal, one of the things that hold people back is not taking the time to lay out a list of all the little things they'll have to do to get there. Identify the obstacles that you'll have to overcome.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_01] Identify the knowledge, information, and skills you'll need. And identify the people whose help and cooperation you will require to achieve your goal. The more comprehensive your list, the more motivated you will become, the more intense will be your desire, and the more you'll believe it is possible. Combine all these things into a plan organized by priority and sequence. Priority is what is more important and less important.

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_01] Sequence is what you have to do before you do something else and in what order. List every single step that you can think of that you will have to follow. As you think of new items, add them to your list. The 80-20 rule says that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your activities. The 20-80 rule says that the first 20% of the time that you spend planning your goal and organizing your plan

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_01] will be worth 80% of the time and effort required to achieve the goal. Number five, create a plan. Now that you have this comprehensive list, schedule it into a comprehensive plan. Plan each day, week, and month in advance. Plan each month at the beginning of the month. Plan each week the weekend before, and plan each day the evening before. The more careful and detailed you are when you plan your activities and tasks,

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_01] the more you accomplish in less time. The rule is that each minute spent on planning saves 10 minutes of execution. Then as you go through each day of your plan, select your number one most important task for the day. Again, you can set your priorities with the 80-20 rule. Ask yourself, if I could only do one thing on this list, which one activity is most important? Put a number one next to that activity.

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_01] Then ask yourself, if I could only do one other task on this list, which one would be the most valuable use of my time? Then write a number two next to that task. Keep asking this question until you have the top 20% of your tasks organized by sequence and priority. And now, you have an action plan. And number six, take action. Your next step is to take action, keep track of your progress, and make adjustments along the way.

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_01] Make sure you're doing something every day to move you in the direction of what you really want in life. You just listened to the post titled, How to Create an Action Plan by Brian Tracy of briantracy.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary.

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[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_01] That's dell.com slash deals. Thank you to Brian Tracy Tracy, a super popular writer and speaker who has overcome a lot of adversity. You can check out briantracy.com to read more. Step one was seeking clarity and deciding exactly what you want. He talked about fuzzy goals and people not knowing what they want. This is something to take note of.

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_01] It's really easy to have a New Year's resolution of eating healthier or getting fit. But neither of those is actually attainable. There is no measurement of what those actually mean. And I think that's more common than we think. Maybe getting fit for you is completing a triathlon, but for me, maybe it's doing 10 pull-ups. It can be anything, really. So being specific is really important. And then writing it down is another important one.

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_01] It's come up before, definitely on my brother's podcast, Optimal Health Daily. He's always talking about writing it down and how that's been shown to actually improve odds of success. It's super small, but can have a really big impact. And of course, we have to take action. Something I talk about pretty frequently here is that I'm really happy you're here absorbing this content with me.

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_01] But if we both only passively digest this information, but never take small steps even to implement any of it, well, it's likely not going to have much of an impact at all. But instead, if we can just take one tiny step today and another one tomorrow, then after a year or so, we'll be looking back at the hundreds of steps and can see how far we've come. So thanks again to Brian for this one.

[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_01] Have a great rest of your day and week, hopefully with lots of steps. And I'll see you tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.