Chapter 6: From Goals to Projects
Introduction
This section is so broad that I decided to give it an entire chapter, something that may surprise you. After all, what is so difficult about it? We take everything we want to do and achieve in life and stick it all in our goals folder, you say. That is how it often happens in practice: people study my system or another, similar one, attack their goals folder with unbounded enthusiasm, and get to work, the taste of success already in their mouths. It is almost as if someone announced a competition for the Most Goals of the Year.
This happens because we are curious to see how much we can achieve, and therefore take on an absurd amount of different projects. Afterwards, however, we are left with nothing to do, as we simply do not know what to do.
We need the goals folder because the strategic goals and plans it holds are linked to our future, helping us impact our routine and better our lives.
To some degree it is a map of our future, where we can look over what is presently happening and build potential plans.
It is not simply a folder; it is the rudder guiding the ship of our lives. Wherever you turn it is where you will end up.
Let’s say you want to study Spanish. That is not a task you can pick up and do; instead, it is a symbol on your map, something like a small island. You decide if you would like to sail there or not.
In other words, you need to learn how to lay out your course, which is why you need to understand how to work with this folder. However, before we discuss a system for working with your goals folder, I would like to talk about how it is set up.
Setting up your goals folder
Your goals folder is home to a few subfolders: new goals, monthly goals, and completed goals. It also should have a few folders for each aspect of your life. I have 14 of them, but you may have more or less depending on your situation.
Working subfolders:
Life aspects:
Prioritizing your goals folder
There are a few things you need to understand to correctly work with the different aspects of your life.
First:
You will not be able to change everything at once, and perhaps there will be nothing you can improve right away. Do not jump on everything at once. Be patient and remember that this is like learning how to paint: it happens step by step. First you learn how to see contours, then light and shadows, and finally you pick up paints and try mixing them. Skipping any of those steps leads you right into amateurish chaos. Goals are not a catch-all for creative ideas; your folder is built to help you build a future for yourself.
Second:
Once a month I go through the different aspects of my life using an algorithm that helps me see the big picture. In this way I understand what is worth my attention and what should be left on the back burner. This algorithm is like a ladder that takes you from the first rung to the fourth rung. The only way is to step up to the second rung, after which you can move ahead to the third rung, and only then can finish at the fourth.
For example, one of my friends broke some glass at his home and could not figure out what to do. I helped him, but then it hit me: why was it easy for me and so difficult for him? Certainly, I had some experience, as I had previously worked at a door and window manufacturer and therefore knew what needed to be done, but it had to do with more than just my personal experience. The project was tough because it was made up of multiple steps, or rungs. There were five separate steps even for this simple project:
1. Remove the glass and clean the frame
2. Take accurate measurements
3. Spend some time finding a place to buy the glass
4. Buy it and figure out how to get it home
5. Learn how to install it or have someone else do the installing
Most people have issues when they come up against problems like this one because it is often hard to consciously put together a clear plan of action—and this was just one project. Life is made up of many just like this one, which is why our goals folder includes many aspects of our lives.
Obviously, we need a way to evaluate the different areas in our lives, thereby giving us an overview we can glance at to see what needs attention right now and what can wait; what is going strong and what needs to be changed.
What happens when we talk about a particular aspect of our lives?
When New Year rolls around we often write out some resolutions and hope that by the same time a year later we will have somehow accomplished them. They may be losing some weight, exercising, or taking a vacation somewhere, but the list usually just gets rewritten the following year. The problem is not our naiveté, it is our inconsistency. Learning how to correctly evaluate the condition of each aspect of our lives shows us which of them need more attention than others. Before getting to work on a particular area of your life, you need to know the level at which it is. For convenience we can assign each area a number.
Problems – 1
Vision – 2
Preparation – 3
Routine – 4
Assign each area of your life a number to see at a glance where you stand in general.
Let’s look at each of those.
Problems
If an area of your life is causing you problems, draining money, or anything else, go ahead and label it category one—a priority item. This is an area you need to work on right away. As an example, someone from the bank might call to let you know that you spend more money every month than you bring in and that your credit card debt is growing. That means this area of your life demands your primary focus.
Here is another example, this time from my life: my wife and I once found a problem in the “home” sphere of our life. We had a big laundry basket that was never completely emptied, with some things eternally stuck on the bottom and never cleaned. There were a few situations where the kids did not have the clothes they needed for school or we did not have the clothes we needed for work, which meant this area was affecting other aspects of our lives. In short, the basket was too big.
I suggested buying three small bins instead of the big one, and my wife suggested splitting our laundry into three categories: whites, darks, and colors. Each bin was about the size of a single load of laundry, and so we simply rotated between them. Whenever I noticed one was full, I simply did a load of laundry.
Our plan worked and has been in place for a number of years now, and since we implemented it there have been no problems with dirty laundry. However, we did not simply resolve the issue: we simplified our everyday routine, saving time and removing one more stress factor.
In short, problems are situations that negatively impact an entire area of our lives or, worse, leak out and affect others as well. Problems can even demolish an aspect of our lives if they go unsolved.
Vision
Getting a vision for an area of our lives is not always a simple task. On the other hand, there is no skipping it if you would like to develop that area. What is a vision? Generally speaking, it is made up of the following aspects:
1. You know where you want to move forward
2. You know why you want that
For example:
Your vision for the financial aspect of your life is to achieve financial independence, a goal that involves things like:
• Paying off debts
• Saving up for a small business
So you can see how you want to move forward in this area (save up for a small business) and know why you want to do that (to achieve financial independence).
Another example:
Let’s look at your career. Perhaps you at some point realize that what you are doing is not making you happy. You may even feel unfulfilled. You would then need to do something like the following:
• Study books and attend seminars to help you clarify and understand your main talents
• Understand where your talents are most in demand and how you could find self-fulfillment
Now you know how to move forward (understand your talents) and why you want to do that (maximally develop yourself and your talents).
Very few people have a vision for every aspect of their life, and most do not even have a clear understanding of what they want or why they want it. Instead, they add every idea and goal that strikes their fancy, cramming their list full of things like this:
There is nothing wrong with reaching these goals, as each of them is linked to a specific aspect of your life. However, if you have not decided what your basic vision is for the different aspects of your life, you will always feel overburdened by the sheer quantity of ideas, goals, and tasks packed into your goals folder.
You figure out a vision for the different areas of your life within the bounds of the situation in which you find yourself, rather than writing it in stone. For example, when I was going over the career aspect of my life I recognized that I need further education in this area so as to exploit my personal desires and creative abilities. That led me to the idea of taking a computer graphics course, one that took me two years to carry out. I have already achieved that goal, and now I need a new vision for my career.
Developing a vision for a specific area of your life takes time you will spend reading pertinent books. Maybe you will have enough free time to think through it, and as soon as you decide what is most important to you, go ahead and start figuring out what you should strive for and how you can achieve it this year or next.
You should ideally have a list with a clear vision for each aspect of your life.
Preparation
If you have a good understanding of your vision for a specific area of your life, it will be much easier for you to see what you are looking for, how to prepare for it, and what will not happen. Here is an example:
• Life area: finances. Vision: achieve financial independence. Goal for this year: pay off all debts, save up some money as capital.
Now your biggest job is to get your projects ready to make part of your schedule. The preparation
stage is made up of three steps:
• Collecting necessary information—looking for methods and ideas that will help you achieve the goal you have set for yourself
• Laying out a plan for how to achieve your goal—you need to be confident that you have everything your plan needs to succeed
• Action—now that everything is ready, you can move your project to your active projects folder and get to work
When an area of your life is in the preparation stage, you have a vision and are now looking for how to implement it. At this stage we look for ideas that could help us make our vision a reality.
Routine
The fourth category is for the life areas that have already become routine.
When an area of your life becomes routine, you have a goal as well as a clear plan for how to achieve it that has already begun and is currently under way.
For example, I once realized that my work had me emotionally drained, though the problem was concentrated in the vacation area of my life. I did not have a plan for how to relax or revive myself emotionally. As I thought over the problem I understood that the revival happens when I do something I enjoy—something like painting. That was the start of a vision for that area of my life. It took some time to figure out how to make painting become routine (preparation), but I eventually found some classes for adults very close to my house. I gave them a try and started going regularly. At some point I realized that my emotional energy had been completely restored and I was just enjoying myself, which meant that area of my life had gone from being a problem to being routine.
Another example occurred once when my wife and I were talking about her work. She mentioned that it is tricky for her to get to the office because there are no direct bus routes. Even though her work is fairly close, it sometimes took her 40 minutes or more to get there. She wanted to get home sooner to spend more time with the family—her vision. We looked for a solution (preparation) and decided on the idea of buying an electric bicycle. That idea was clearly able to have a positive impact on her everyday routine, so we decided to make it a reality. Now my wife goes to work on her bike, a trip that takes 15-20 enjoyable minutes. That is an example of an area of one’s life becoming routine—in this case, work.
The more areas of your life that become routine, the better. That is my main goal, but remember that you will probably not be able to do everything all at once. Do not let that get you down, as it is completely normal for a preliminary overview of your life to show that half of its aspects are problems and the other half are visions. That is fine and just means you have work to do.
If most of the areas in your life have become routine, you can safely call yourself a TM master.
Issues when categorizing one’s life
How do we figure out which category to assign each area of our lives?
Ask yourself a few questions:
• Has this area become routine? In other words, everything is great, you have a plan, and your plan works. You can feel that this area is pleasant and profitable. If that is true, label this area a 4, and if not, go to the next question.
• Do you have a plan for how this area of your life can become routine? Alternatively, are you in the middle of creating that plan? That means you have a clear understanding of the value of this area and the direction in which it is headed. You know where to go, where you will be in a year, two years, or even three, and we give this area a 3. If not, go to the next question.
• Do you have a vision for this area of your life? Have you determined the main direction in which you want to go? Do you know why you want to go in that direction? If you cannot answer these questions, label this area a 2. Now your main goal for this aspect of your life is to look for a vision.
• Is this area a problem? Any area of your life can turn into a catastrophe for any number of reasons. It often happens that we have not laid out our values and the directions in which we want to go, but whatever the case, if you see that this area frequently causes problems and crises, give it a 1. You need to find a solution for this issue.
I hope these questions will help you quickly understand how to categorize the many aspects of your life.
What does this approach offer?
I once happened across a TM book that described standard aspects of one’s life laid out across the twelve months of the year. Later I found many more such books. The idea was to save you from thinking by allowing you to simply follow a schedule. For example, in January you need to get your home life in order, February is for looking at how you are raising your children, in March you should move your career forward, etc. On the one hand, it was an inspiration, but on the other I could see that that approach is not effective.
I once saw a video with someone talking about different methods and approaches to driving a car. The conversation turned to blind spots. What are blind spots? They are when you look in your rearview mirror, do not see anyone, and confidently make a left hand turn only to hear honking from a car racing up on your left. How did that happen? The problem is that mirrors do not let you see everything to your right and left, leaving several blind spots a few meters behind you. If a car is in one of them, you will not see it when you look in your mirror. That is why I both glance in the mirror and physically turn to look behind me when making a turn to be sure nobody is in my blind spots.
Why am I telling you this? TM has its blind spots as well. If something is not in front of you looking you in the eye, you will probably forget about it, regardless of how important it is. Books that lay out specific tasks for you to accomplish over the course of a year are attempts to cover the blind spots in our lives. We are supposed to spend time consecutively focusing on different areas of our life in an attempt to make changes in them. The difficulty with that method is that we will not do what needs doing according to our plans, leading us to intuitively fight it.
The system I have laid out in this chapter for working with the different areas of your life is much deeper than simply sticking with a plan. We need to figure out what needs our attention, understand what we need to change in each area, decide how to achieve that, and, what is most difficult, make each area of our life become routine. If we do not do this, the chances are we will simply grab something at random and give up without ever reaching a single goal.
I used to read everything I could get my hands on one after the other. Everything seemed important and urgent, but now I do not have to worry any more. I can use my system to be secure in the knowledge that everything will happen in its own time. One aspect of my life can be put off to focus on another.
As you look over all the areas in your life every month you will have a clear view of the overall picture. In time you will even stop keeping everything in your head at the same time, knowing that you are not missing anything that needs your attention.