Goal achievement matters more than goal setting. Many teachers focus on how to set goals because it’s easier to focus on getting clarity than on taking action.
In the last three months of 2023, when I was still living in Melbourne, I had two deaths of people close to me, one after the other. In September, my housemate and high school best friend of 32 years died. Less than two months later, another even more tragic death in my immediate family.
While I’d been handling Alastair’s death well, the second death bowled me down like a pin in a bowling alley.
This wasn’t the first time I’d faced tough times.
And yet, despite my grief, as an entrepreneur, there comes a point where you need to keep delivering to clients and keeping your team employed.
The way I handled it was each day I’d get up and express my emotions as they came up. As a result, I honoured the grieving process while continuing to work on the things that mattered.
Once again in my life, I used skills in my life I’d developed to equip men to have stronger mental health.
How about you? When have your feelings threatened to throw you off course for the things that are truly important to you?
In this article, I’m going to share the principle I used to keep progressing. And the best thing is it works whether you’ve clearly defined your goals or you only have a general sense of them.
The Away/Towards Principle
The key question of time management is this: What’s the highest priority action I can work on right now? Every time management system out there seeks to answer this question.
Answering that question forces you to make a choice. Your choice will either move you away from your desired life or towards it.
Russ Harris in The Happiness Trap (2nd Edition) describes the Away/Towards principle like this:
“Toward moves are things you do that are in line with the sort of person you want to be, taking you toward the life you want to build; and away moves are the opposite.”1
At any point, you have the power to choose. Later posts will equip you with tools to make better choices, but simply keeping this principle in mind can lead to making better decisions.
Brian Tracy is willing to be even more bold, choosing to define intelligence as:
“An intelligent way of acting is anything that you do that is consistent with achieving the goals that you set for yourself. Each time that you do something that moves you closer toward something that you really want, you are acting intelligently. On the other hand, an unintelligent way of acting is doing things that are not moving you toward your goals or, even worse, are moving you away from your goals.”2
Are you choosing to be intelligent or unintelligent? To answer this question, you can measure your results in each of the seven areas of life: your purpose and legacy, your physical and mental well-being, the speed at which you learn and implement new ideas, your ability to get along with most people most of the time, the profit margins in your business, your progress towards financial freedom, and your ability to inspire others to get things done while feeling great.
Goal Achievement for Defined Goals
Defined goals are easier to achieve than goals you haven’t written on paper. That written statement of what you’re trying to achieve gives you clarity. Clarity gives you a standard to measure yourself against to see if you’re progressing toward your goal.
But what if you don’t have a concrete goal written down? What if you only have a general sense of where you want to go?
Goal Achievement for “General-Sense” Goals
Even if you don’t have written goals, you have a sense of the direction you want your life to go. You know who you are, what you enjoy doing, and what you’d like to have.
- Be: You have a sense of who you are and the qualities that define the standards of behaviour you consider acceptable. These standards and the resulting actions show your character.
- Do: What are the things you’re inspired to do? Your life already shows evidence of what you’re naturally drawn to do because you enjoy it and find the challenge rewarding.
- Have: Look at the areas where you’re already making progress toward obtaining or accumulating things. For example, are your savings regularly increasing? Have you shifted from savings to building investments? Are you maintaining your desired weight?
These three areas give you the benchmark to decide whether you’re moving away from what’s rewarding for you or closer to it. That’s where the Away/Towards Principle comes into its own.
You can always take some action to build your desired life.
Conclusion: Goal Achievement in 2024 is Within Reach
Here are two important points from this article:
- Understanding the Away/Towards Principle gives you a way to choose whether to build the life of your dreams or take steps away from it.
- You can take steps towards a rich and meaningful life regardless of your feelings. Feelings and actions are separate things. Feelings are to be honoured and expressed. Actions are to be taken intelligently.
Action Steps
- Whenever you face a choice, ask: Is this moving me closer to my goals or further away from them?
- Look at your plans for the next 24 hours — considering any potential curveballs. Where are you likely to face triggers to move away from your goals? How can you turn these points into moments where you take action towards your goals?
- Whether you have a list of goals, end the day by writing out by hand the top 10 goals you’re currently working towards. The more often you do this, the faster your journey toward goal achievement.
FAQs
You can achieve your goals, whether you have them written or you simply have a sense of what’s important to you. The way to achieve your goals is each time you face a choice, answer this question: Will this action move me closer to my goals or further away?
The fastest way to come up with a list of goals is to sit down with a sheet of paper, ask yourself what you’d like to achieve in the next 12 months, and then write out 10 answers. Once you have a list of goals, you can identify obstacles (things that move you away from achieving them) and the next actions you can take to make progress towards your goals. A simple way of staying on track towards achieving your goals is to consider whether the action you’re about to take moves you closer to your goal.
We can break accumulating wealth into three stages: saving, investing, speculating. The best way to achieve long-term financial goals is to start by estimating 6 months of living expenses and then saving that amount in a high-interest account. Once you’ve earned the right to invest through the discipline of saving, the simplest approach is to invest in an index fund of index funds, which diversifies your capital across the best-performing companies in the world. You never need to speculate to become wealthy. It’s something to do only after you’ve achieved financial freedom through savings and investments — and then only if you want to. Never risk over 10% of your net worth in one investment.
