To Ambitiously Seek a Goal
Part 1 — Know Thyself
When we have ambition, we begin each week with motivation, and most likely set some sort of goal with good intentions.
Though, we arrive at the end of a busy week thinking wtf just happened!
We set goals, we work hard, then wonder what went wrong?
What we should be asking is: Where did the time go?
Could it be the “busy work” has derailed our focus and now we have arrived at the end of the week with our best intentions left in the wake of being “busy”.
How then, do we keep the most impactful goal in focus? How do we keep on a straight and narrow path?
When these questions arise, my modus operandi is to look for answers from people who have become masters in this domain.
“Are you just being busy for busy-ness sake?” Tim Ferris — The 4 Hour Work Week
Here, we are drawing the comparison between being occupied with busy work tasks vs being effective towards the most impactful goal.
What's our ambition?
Setting a strong ambition can keep us on the straight and narrow path towards our goals.
Many of us set goals every day, week, month, or year. But do we ever take the time to consider how we orientate our tasks, to achieve our goals?
When we consider our ambitions, we can effectively align the effort vs impact of any given task when orientating towards a greater goal.
Ask yourself, does this task compliment your ambition? Or does it keep you occupied and give you an excuse to abandon the greater goal?
What's your priority?
At first, this may come across as selfish, however, we are all self-motivated in some way shape, or form.
Put on your oxygen mask first!
Help yourself in order to help others. Collectively, we can share an ambition and postulate a greater goal, but without the self-awareness of our own ambition, we may fail to orientate ourselves effectively.
Purgatory
We set goals with good intentions. But the road to hell is pathed with good intentions. Therefore, to avoid getting stuck in the busy rut, we need a plan — and a process.
Process. The plan
A plan is the modus operandi, but to execute the plan we need a process to determine how fast we get there — if we are to get there at all. This is how we become more effective.
How can we be more effective? The Eisenhower Matrix
This simple yet effective tool takes only 5–10 minutes to orientate your day, week, month, or year (ok perhaps more than 10 minutes to prioritize your year but done habitually, the process becomes faster day by day).
Used alone, this tool is helpful. Used in conjunction with a crystal clear intention to achieve an impactful goal driven by a strong ambition — It's powerful!
Effort vs Impact
Another way we can look at this matrix is effort vs impact. In fact, there are multiple ways to modify the matrix to serve the purpose. Simply discern the subject matter to determine the best approach. One way to look at it may be:
Big Decisions → Effort vs Impact
Daily/Weekly Decisions → Urgency vs Importance
In Part 2, we will look at identifying the ambition, creating an intention, and specifying the goal. Onwards and upwards to 3x life design.
Written by Dave @ Justgo.design
