How To Prepare Your Gap Analysis

Now that we're done with the first step, the mission statement, we are primed with our global blueprint, which is necessary to create our more detailed goals. But first we need to understand what we've done already in our progress towards achieving our mission, and then identify how much more we need to go in each of the areas and categories of our lives. To do that, we need to prepare a gap analysis. And that's step two of the Arutas success formula. I doubt your lives are already a picture of the vision of what your mission statement looks like, known as your vision statement, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Therefore, we need to create a gap analysis for all the various areas of your life. We'll examine what the gaps are between your current state and what your desired state is in each of these areas at the category level. Otherwise it'll be too broad. As we talked about before, it won't be useful if it's done at that level. The overall desired state is your mission, right? That's the big target. The gap is the bridge we need to cross to get you to the promised land. Crossing this bridge is the goal, and we'll need a plan to get to it. On the other side of the bridge is where fulfillment lies. Now, before we begin with this process, it's important to discuss measurement. Why? In order to be successful with this process, you must be able to measure your progress with respect to taking action towards achieving any goal. Otherwise, you won't know if you're getting closer or further away from the goal. Therefore, it's crucial to use some type of measurement system to track your progress towards achieving your goals and thus closing your gaps. It's also important to pick as specific a measure as possible. Now, this can take some time, and it also takes a lot of effort if the answer isn't initially clear, such as a goal in teamwork. A less effective measure, but one that is also less time consuming, is measuring your current and target scores with respect to your level of satisfaction in a particular category on a 1 to 10 scale. However, this should only be done if the goal is very subjective or judgment based, as opposed to factual and objective, and only after much thought has been given to arriving at a more specific form of measurement. It's also better to have a goal that you can specifically measure so you know the real level of progress you're making. You can't manage what you don't measure. So now we have the categories of the main areas of our lives. We need to decide if we're happy with our Current status, condition, state, situation, etc. In these areas. So usually each area can stand for at least some improvement. That might mean spending less time in one area that you're good in, so you have more time spent in another area where you need work. The process is evaluating where you are in a particular category in your life, your current status, your current state, and then deciding where you want to be, which is your target state, and the difference between the two is the gap. Right? Want to close that gap? Now remember, during the mission statement process, within each area of your life, we identified various categories. If you just set goals at the area level, like health, for example, it's going to be too broad. You need to get down to the category level like exercise, and come up with your specific goal at that level even deeper sometimes, perhaps like aerobic or anaerobic exercise. As we discussed, a crucial factor in successful goal setting is that the goals are specifically measurable. Without breaking down the areas into categories, not only will you be likely to leave out important components of the global areas, but it'll be harder to measure something specifically. For instance, what is more difficult to measure, the area of health or the category of sleep? Health is much more difficult to measure, of course, it's just too broad to measure. But sleep, on the other end, you can measure very specifically by say, the number of hours that you get. So the first step in the gap analysis process will be to identify the the areas and categories within those areas. Steps 2, 3 and 4 comprise the actual gap analysis part of the Eruta Success formula. This is done at the category level. Remember, we have areas and categories within the areas. Step two is to list for each category, like exercise, where you currently are ideally in a specific form of measurement like hours or days. For example, perhaps you're getting one hour of exercise per week. Step three is to state the target. Where do you want to be? Perhaps you want to be getting three hours of exercise per week. Step four is to state the gap, which is just the difference between the two. Right? That's two hours. Remember, the importance of measurement is key here, so this is hours for us. Your scoring could be on a 1 to 10 scale if what you're measuring is very subjective. However, much better to have a specific form of measurement like time, dollars, calories, body fat, etc. Do not state your goal yet. That's going to be the next step. Step five. We want to chat about the importance of goals before we do that.