Accomplishing the Middle Goals

Breaking down goals is a challenge because we get overwhelmed at the sight of the big picture. After a day or two of motivation, we lose the positive emotion we started with and end up giving up on our goal. If you focus on the finish line everyday, you feel like a failure because every day you don’t cross it. So what’s the solution?

Goals are accomplished in the middle. If you want to successfully accomplish something – lose weight, sales quotas, read books – it is done in the middle. None of us need motivation to start something or a reminder of the rewards of finishing it. What we need is to break down our goals into healthy, manageable steps. Self-help authors all have a different name for this, whether it’s daily actions, tactics, a power list, or winning the day. It doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as you do it. If your goal is to read 12 books in a year, or a book a month, then think about the number of pages you’d have to read every day to reach that goal. If you hit your daily goal, it is much more effective of a strategy than constantly having the 12 book goal looming over your head. What if instead the goal is reading 15 pages a day? I love the way entrepreneur Alex Hormozi thinks about this: “Don’t commit to the goal, commit to the actions that are conducive to the goal.”

Just like driving across a giant bridge requires you to be focused on the section of road right in front of you, big picture goals need daily focus. If you develop daily discipline, it is less overwhelming and more effective in achieving what you want – whatever that is! Commit to the daily actions you need, and the goals will come.