I had previously mentioned in one of my articles, Lost in Life, one of the ways to achieve your goals is to break them down into steps. But how do you actually break them down?
How small should a step be?
Before you ask this question, you must first identify what is the goal you want to achieve. Next, give yourself a deadline that you want to reach your goal. These two things will help you understand how small your steps need to be. For example, you want to be a great pianist. How long do you intend to give yourself to achieve that? Perhaps you give yourself ten years. Then you may want to give yourself one year for each step. How much can you achieve in one year and yet be on track to hit your target, will be how small your step is.
Set a realistic deadline
Giving you just ten years to become a great pianist is apparently too unrealistic. Many of the greatest pianists around require more than ten years attaining their status. So give yourself a realistic deadline. Be very specific with your goal. What do you have to achieve to become a great pianist? Maybe you need to win an international award and gain the recognition of other musicians. If that is the case, how long do you think you will need to achieve that, probably more than ten years if you are starting from scratch?
Have self-discipline
It is easy to plan and think of what you want to achieve, but doing it is a different story. Tremendous self-discipline is needed when you want to achieve great things in life. A very good way to train your self-discipline is always to make sure you meet your deadline for every small step that you had planned. Many people don't set a deadline, or they simply don't care about the deadline, which makes them lack the urgency to do things. Another greatest mistake people make is to procrastinate. Some people like to put off things that they ought to do each day. They will put off their day's work till tomorrow, but tomorrow will never come. Such people lack self-discipline; if there are things that you need to do, do it now.
A combination of the three aspects will be a guide for you to do effective step-by-step planning. Everything in life requires a certain amount of planning. If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. This is especially so when you are planning for the goal of your life. Step-by-step planning is crucial to achieving your life goals; every step you complete will provide you with additional motivation to carry on. And a well-structured plan might probably be the key to your success.
