Having a goal gives you a sense of purpose, creates motivation and helps you decide what to work on next. Often we’re told to challenge ourselves and set the bar really high; this encourages us to set even bigger goals. This is great, until you get hit by the feeling that your goals are unattainable and the whole process of working towards them now seems incredibly daunting. When this happens productivity goes out the window and the idea of quitting can appear more and more attractive. The secret to overcoming this feeling is to take a different approach towards how you treat and tackle a goal. Instead of working towards a due date, work on a schedule. To do this, we must dissect and break down the goal into its individual components.
In ‘The 4-Hour Chef’ author and productivity guru Tim Ferriss (also one of my favourite writers) takes you through the process of meta learning – i.e. how to learn new skills extremely quickly. Tim introduces the acronym, DiSSS, which can be used to learn just about anything. The funny thing is that learning something is a bit like having a goal. After all, when you take up a skill your goal is to learn something new right? We can apply DiSSS to goals and break them down into their component parts and schedule them for maximum efficiency. DiSSS stands for:
- DECONSTRUCTION – What are the minimal learnable units, the LEGO blocks, I should be starting with?
- SELECTION – Which 20% of the blocks should I focus on for 80% or more of the outcome I want?
- SEQUENCING – In what order should I learn the blocks? (or in this case, in what order should I work on each block?)
- STAKES – How do I set up the stakes to create real consequences and guarantee I follow the program?
To illustrate how this applies to goals I'm going to use the example of writing an essay because it's easy to understand and most people can relate to it. Your essay brief might sound something like this: 4,000 words on productivity due in 2 weeks. For some people, this might sound like a pretty intimidating goal. But when we break it down and schedule the time to complete the essay, it becomes a lot more achieveable and far less daunting.
Here we go:
DECONSTRUCTION – What would you consider to be the most essential steps to writing an essay? They'd probably look something like:
- Do some research and gather your resources.
- Plan the essay.
- Write an introduction.
- Write the body.
- Write the conclusion.
- You’ll then want to do a second draft.
- And a third and final draft.
Each of these seven components are necessary steps that need to be taken to achieve the goal.
SELECTION – Parkinson's Law states: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. This basically means that no matter how much time you allocate to a task, you will do enough work to fill that amount of time. Imagine you only had 24 hours to write this essay. What steps would you absolutely have to do in order to get the essay completed? You’d probably have to skip the research and planning and jump straight to writing the introduction, body and conclusion. Once you finish there may not be time to work on a second and final draft. The seven steps identified above can be reduced to three absolute essentials. The three that are left are the 20% that are going to contribute to 80% of the outcome. That’s not to say you shouldn’t work on the other steps, but SELECTION creates a sense of priority amongst the individual components.
SEQUENCING – When writing an essay, it makes sense to conduct the research before you start drafting the essay. Then when you start, it’s most logical to write the introduction first before continuing with the body and conclusion. Organising the individual components into the correct sequence will create a workflow which you can then scheduled into a calendar. In this example, the sequence is fairly obvious. But imagine your goal is to create a website, what do you need to do first before anything else?
STAKES – Finally you need to set the stakes. Obviously the due date for the essay is a big one. But what about the grade you'd like to achieve? For an extra incentive why not make a bet with a friend and if you don't reach your target grade you have to undergo some consequence. Creating stakes is where the motivation comes from and it's what keeps you focused on your end goal. A friend of mine had the goal of moving out within 3 months, so I encouraged him to create some stakes. He decided to start paying his parents rent if he didn't move out within his target timeframe. Stakes create motivation!
Now that the goal has been dissected and the components have been prioritised, everything can be built into a schedule. This means simply going through the sequence and setting aside blocks of time for each component. Working backwards from the due date is a good start. In this example you may want to have the essay done at least two days before it's due, working backwards from here you might allow 2 hours for the final re-draft on one day, an hour for each paragraph on previous days and 4 hours for research at the beginning (and so on). Once you get everything into a schedule you'll be amazed by how much stress goes away as you can clearly see that your time has been set aside for this goal and at how achievable it now looks. Putting this plan in place boosts your productivity as you spend less time working out what to do next and more time doing the work.
Action Steps (30 minutes):
- Start be clearly defining your goals for the next 3, 6 and 12 months. Make sure they're SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely).
- On a piece of paper jot down all the steps you can think of that will help you towards your goal.
- Highlight the above steps which you absolutely need to complete. Which steps could you potentially skip? Which steps are going to contribute the most progress towards you reaching your goal?
- Now reorder the selected steps into a logical sequence. Which steps do you need to complete before advancing onto others?
- Add some stakes to the process. When do you want to have goal completed by? What will do you if you fail (think about consequences)? Tell other people and make sure they hold you accountable.
Good luck!