When life gets unpredictable, it’s tempting to focus only on the day ahead of you. After all, you don’t know what will happen down the road, and no one wants their plans thwarted over and over again. Uncertainty on the horizon doesn’t mean that we should walk into the future without direction, though.
People like us know that we can line up our dominoes to start small, build up to big goals, and leverage models and systems that allow us to pivot when the world throws something new our way.
We’ve learned a lot in 2020 about what it means to pivot fast and adjust our perspectives, and it won’t be the last time our plans get squashed by unpredictable life events. The unexpected will happen again, and while it’s never easy, now we have the tools to be prepared for it.
Here’s our step-by-step approach and accompanying ONE Thing tools and resources you can use to reclaim your year and maintain momentum on the way to achieving your goals.
The Tactic: Reflect on your past and plan for your future.
The Tool: Reflect & Plan
The pressure to hustle and push forward at all costs is more than just exhausting. It’s counter-productive. Researchers have found that when you invest the time to reflect on what you’ve done, you can actually improve your future performance. “Now more than ever we seem to be living lives where we’re busy and overworked, and our research shows that if we’d take some time out for reflection, we might be better off,” says researcher Francesca Gino.
When people build a reflective practice into their lives, they are more equipped to handle whatever is thrown their way. This is because they are actively learning from what’s happening to them.
The ONE Thing designed a simple tool called a Reflect & Plan to help you build the habit of reflecting. Using this tool, you can benefit from the power of consistent reflection and planning. Monthly and quarterly, you can use Reflect & Plans to ask big questions to learn from what happened and use those experiences to create a strong plan for your future.
The Tactic: Recast a vision for your year.
The Tool: The Goal Setting Master Course
It’s hard to let go of goals, ideas or plans that were awesome in other circumstances, but new challenges and major disruptions call for a blank slate.
Keith Cunningham has pointed out that “What stops us from reinventing ourselves is an attachment to the way things used to look.” The truth is, the new normal is here to stay. You must pivot your goals for the future if your progress and growth is still important to you.
In times like these, the point of the Goal Setting Master Course is to help you let go of what was. As you work through it, you give yourself permission to grieve what was lost and reflect on why those old goals and plans were important to you in the first place. From there, you can reimagine what is possible considering what has changed. You’ll set new goals, create new plans and go forward with clarity and purpose.
The Tactic: Build a relationship with your goals.
The Tool: The 411 & The GPS
Most people set their goals at the beginning of the year and don’t look at them again until the end of the year. The problem with this approach is that by the time you revisit your goals during the holidays, time is already up. You can’t make adjustments or get back on track. Rather, most people just tell themselves they’ll do better next year and start the cycle all over again.
Here at The ONE Thing, we know that the purpose of a goal is to be appropriate in the moment. It’s a compass to guide your activities and help you determine how to invest your time. We use two different tools to make the most of that investment. The 411 is for individuals to break big annual goals down into weekly and monthly activities. The GPS is, in part, designed for leaders to put their highest priorities and biggest goals in one place. It outlines everything that needs to get done in order for us to accomplish our goal. While individuals can use it too, the best results come from leveraging those tasks to stakeholders. No one succeeds alone, after all.
The Tactic: Set your goals with the people who matter most.
The Tool: The ONE Thing Goal Setting Retreat
Every year our community comes together with the people who have a stake in their success so they can get clarity on what matters most. Because we can’t be physically together this year, we’re going virtual and going all-out with our offerings.
When you join us for the The ONE Thing Goal Setting Retreat in November, you’ll have access to both weekends, one designed for couples and the other for individuals. You’ll get inspiration and support from your community, the ONE Thing team, and lauded guest speakers as you set your goals for 2021. The time you spend with us at the retreat will be the culmination of the work you’ll have done to reclaim 2020 and set yourself up for a stellar 2021.
The Domino Effect works because it starts with a small, attainable task that won’t overwhelm you. The first domino you knock down will not be earth-shattering, but it will be critical for you to move on to the next step in accomplishing your goals. For a lot of people that first small domino will be getting help to reset their goals for the rest of 2020, and the tactics and tools we’ve created offer that help. Buy a ticket for our Virtual Goal Setting Retreat today and get the resources you need to make sure your dominoes fall toward your goals.