Brian Tracy walks through a seven-step goal-setting method: write ten goals for the year, pick the one with the biggest impact, then write it down, set a deadline, list all actions needed, organize them into a checklist, and work on it daily. Writing goals down makes you roughly 900% more likely to achieve them.
Chapters
From now on, whenever you bring on a new person, put them through this exercise. Here's the exercise: take a clean sheet of paper and write down goals and today's date, and then write down 10 goals that you would like to accomplish in the next 12 months, and write them in the present tense. I earn, I achieve, I weigh, I drive such and such a car, I own. And then you take this list of 10 and you say, if I had a magic wand and I could wave this magic wand and I could have any one goal on my list within 24 hours, which one goal would have the greatest positive impact on my life? And usually this will jump out at you. Put a circle around that goal, and that's the goal you transfer to a clean sheet of paper. And then you follow the 7 steps: write it down, set a deadline, make a list of everything you have to do to accomplish it, organize the list into a checklist, take action, and then do something every day. If you'll just do this, nothing can stop you but yourself.
Simple. I love it. I'm a big goals guy. There's a stat out there that if you write down your goals every day, you're like 900% more likely to hit them. Worth trying.