Knowing what to focus on can be daunting. There’s so much right now that is calling for your attention. How can you have a simplified way of knowing where you are on your path to be the best that you can be?
To make things simple, I would like you to focus on just five areas. In each of these areas I would like you to give yourself a score from 1 to 10.
So let’s look at the first of these, which is Dreams. How good are you at dreaming? Do you have big dreams? Are they really, really big dreams? Do you visualise these on a dreamboard? Do you share your dreams with other people such as your life partner, your family, your children or your colleagues?. How often do you update your dreams?
Give yourself a mark of 1 to 10 – 1 being that you don’t have any dreams and a higher score if you’ve got huge dreams. Richard Branson famously said that if your dreams don’t scare you then they’re not big enough. Also, ask yourself why you’re not giving yourself one less than the score that you have. Then ask yourself what do you need to do to increase the score that you’ve given yourself by one or two points.
Secondly, I’d like you to give yourself a mark from 1 to 10 for your Goals. Are your goals clearly defined? Do you have goals for the next 10 years, five years, three years or next year? How about for this quarter for this month, this week, or even today? Again, are your goals written down and shared with other people?
Give yourself a number from 1 to 10. 1 is not very good at all – maybe you don’t even set any goals. 10 is outstandingly good at setting and goals – world class, dangerously good. Ask yourself why you’ve not given yourself a score one less than you have? What would you need to do to increase your score?
Thirdly, I’d like you to give yourself a mark from 1 to 10 for Learning. How much time are you spending, educating yourself on how to be a better person? How much time are you spending learning new business skills, new life skills, finding out new things? At ActionCOACH have a phrase: you can’t expect to earn more if you don’t learn more. How important is learning to you? Do you read books, attend seminars, listen to podcasts or audiobooks? Do you have time in your day, in your week for learning?
Give yourself a score from 1 to 10. If you’re not doing any reading or any learning at all I wouldn’t expect that to be more than a 1. If you are learning all the time getting through at least a book a week, watching relevant TED Talks, attending educational seminars, learning more about your business, then I’d expect you to award yourself a higher score.
The next area is Planning. How good are you at planning? Do you have plans, clear KPIs and milestones that have been bought into by other members of your team? Is it very clear what you should be doing, what other people should be doing and what other stakeholders are expecting? If you’re fantastic at planning I’d expect to see a high score. If not, a lower one. What score would your colleagues give you?
The fifth and final focus areas is Action. How good are you at taking action? Are you fantastic at planning, but then put the plan in your top drawer, only to never look at it again? Any plan is only as good as this execution, and execution means action. Do you do what you say you’re going to do, when you said you were going to do it?
Finally give yourself a mark from 1 to 10 on taking action. If you don’t take action, or consistently fail to follow through on the tasks you’ve assigned yourself then you should be looking at a low score. If you smash through your task list, and get everything done – and more – then you’re worthy of a higher score.
The way in which you find out if you are on path to be the best version of yourself that you can be is to times these numbers together.
The maximum score is 100,000. If you are not happy with your final figure go back and look at your scores for each of the five sections and work out what changes you can make that will increase those values.
When I’m working with clients we go through these numbers on a regular basis. And what we find is that when these scores start getting up to 100,000 we reassess. What happens is that as people get closer to their goals they are then able to create bigger dreams and goals they realise they can earn more by learning more, can make their plans even more bullet proof, and take bigger actions.
So what five changes will you make as a result of this exercise?
