One of my favorite quotes of all time is by Albert Einstein:

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Are you doing something over and over in your life and for some reason or another, expecting different results to manifest? Whenever you want to see a different result – be it a positive change, an improvement in your performance or realization of your goals – you have to do something different from whatever you are currently doing. In goal achievement terms, it’s changing your strategy to reach your desired goal.

Change Your Actions to Get Results You Want

Why is that so? Because whatever the actions you have taken thus far aren’t giving you the results you seek. Say ABC actions have been giving you ABC results. If you want to get XYZ results, you need to adopt XYZ actions. Repeating ABC actions again and again isn’t going to give you XYZ results – It’s just going to give you the same ABC results indefinitely.

Applying this principle to your life goals, this means:

If you have been trying to lose weight but somehow aren’t anywhere near your goal despite everything you have done, you need to overhaul your action plan.

If you are a single looking for your soulmate to no avail, you need to change whatever it is you are doing (or not doing).

If you have been trying to improve your career standing with limited success, you need to change your approach.

If you have been in the same income bracket for the past few years despite wanting to earn more money, you need to do something different to earn a higher income.

If you have been pursuing your ideal career but not making much headway, you need to change your actions.

Change your actions = Best way to initiate desired changes

In certain cases, there may be changes brought about through no direct change in your actions. This change might be due to accumulated effects from your previous actions (e.g., a promotion at work from consistent hard work) or through changes in your external environment (e.g., a manager resigning at work which expedited your promotion).

This doesn’t mean not changing is the best manner to give you desired results. The former shows you could have expedited the change by increasing your effort, which is a change itself. The latter (change in external environment) is too unreliable a way to get what you want. Sitting around and hoping things will miraculously change in your favor is a very reactive manner to live life. It’s much more empowering to get to what you want through your own actions. No matter what situation you are in, you always have a choice in how you act.

Give actions sufficient time to play out first

Of course, this assumes you have given the set of actions sufficient time to play out before changing them. The amount of time will vary on the goal itself. For a weight loss goal, a month should be a good time frame for results to set in. For a start-up, results might take anywhere from 3-6 months or even a year to play out. In cases where results take longer to manifest, instill intermediate time frames to measure the effectiveness of the actions.

Keep effective actions; Remove ineffective ones

Changing your actions doesn’t mean chucking aside everything you have been trying. It’s likely you are experiencing a certain level of success with your current actions. If that’s the case, review these actions, keep the ones which are bringing in the results, throw away those which aren’t working and bring in new actions into the mix. Don’t waste your time doing actions which aren’t bringing you anywhere.

Big changes in actions = Big changes in results

It’s not just about changing your actions too. The magnitude of change also plays a role. The more dramatic the results you seek compared to your current results, the more dramatic the change in actions you need to make. With big actions, comes big results. Small changes in actions lead to small changes in results. Big changes in actions lead to big changes in results.

For example, maybe you have been trying to lose 20lbs in 4 months. You improved your diet by eating more fruits. You increased your activity level by walking more. These changes have brought about a decrease in 2lbs in the past 2 months. While these actions have brought about their own effects, continuing in the same steps probably isn’t going to bring you anywhere near losing 20lbs, ever. To bring about a larger change, you need to add in more dramatic changes, such as transforming your diet into a healthy, lower-calorie diet and setting in a proper exercise regime.

Example: Singles finding their partners

For example, a common goal among many is to find their ideal partner. I know many singles (I’m a single myself too), whereby some are in their 30s, with a small handful in their late 30s. Some are discreet about this desire to find their dream partner. Some are overt about it. Then there’s those who try to avoid the issue and claim they are okay being single.

These people have been meaning to get into a proper relationship but haven’t been able to for some reason or another. If they could have their way, they would want to be attached or married by now. While some have already become skeptical about their state of singlehood, most continue to look toward the future with a glimmer of hope that they will find their partner one day.

(By the way, I’m referring to singles who seek to find their special someone but haven’t been able to do so. There are singles who deliberately choose singlehood as their way of living and I see it as a perfectly fine choice.)

There’s usually one big problem though. Many of them do the exact same actions (or in some cases, inactions) they have been doing in the past few years of their life as they “search” for their soulmate. Engage themselves in their daily routine? Check. Sit around, wondering why they are still single rather than actively work toward their goal of finding their partner? Check. Try to ignore their desire to find someone and pretend it doesn’t matter? Check. Wait for destiny to miraculously sweep their special someone into their life one day? Check.

Why is any of that a major problem? If whatever they have done in the past 10~20 odd years have not led them to their special someone, what’s there to think that they will get different results in the next few decades? More likely than not, they’re going to end up with the same fruitless outcome at the end of 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, till their deathbed. If any case, their chances are probably going to get lower and lower as more and more people get attached.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a hopeless romantic at heart. The last time I did my Myer Briggs profile, it’s a INFP, characteristic of a romantic idealist. I believe in the concept of soulmates. I believe in intertwining fates and interlocking threads of destiny. I believe there is someone special for each of us out there whereby invisible forces of destiny will do their best to bring us together.

But I also believe we need to take action to create the results we want. Destiny and fate may exist, but if you just sit around waiting for destiny to piece everything together, nothing’s going to happen. You have to earn something in order to receive something. Just like the hero in the RPG: He may already have his quest marked out for him, but if he’s just sitting inside the village every day mucking around, that’s all his existence is going to boil down to – nothing. Your life partner isn’t going to fall onto your lap all of a sudden without you doing anything  different. You have to take the necessary actions to trigger the event.

If you are a single and you are nowhere near finding your special someone, it is a major indicator to start doing things differently. For starters, self-improvement is probably the biggest thing you can act on. Think about the kind of person you envision yourself to be (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually), and work on the areas which you are not there yet. Are you someone you will love unconditionally? Are you someone that your ideal partner will love? Many times people are single because there are something about them which aren’t attracting their desired partners, but more often than not they are too busy looking outward than inward to realize they need to change from within.

Next, change your whole action around. If you haven’t already done so, been put yourself out there and know other singles. Meet up with more people, go to different outings, take part in different interest groups or societies. If you are adventurous enough, join dating agencies, dating sites and/or approach people you have an interest in and get to know them. Basically, just do anything different from the things you have been doing all along.

Example: The Personal Excellence Blog

Another example is my blog. Just 8 months after launching it, The Personal Excellence Blog now has a strong flow of quality traffic (a few thousand/day), is known by many in the personal development industry, has been featured on almost all key media outlets in my country and has scored front pages in major networking sites, including Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. It’s performing better than many other blogs of the same theme across different measures – total traffic, unique visitors, page views/visitor, reception among visitors. All in all, it is considered to be highly successful.

While those who have no knowledge of the online industry may think of it as an easily achievable outcome, people who have tried to make blogging a serious venture will know it’s very hard to generate quality traffic, especially due to the oversaturation in websites and blogs in the past few years.

For starters, there are about 70 million blogs out there, with tens of thousands of new blogs set up every day. Within the personal development blogosphere, there are at least a few thousand blogs competing for readership. The low barriers of entry have made it incredibly easy for someone to start up a blog, but extremely difficult for people to succeed. Available internet marketing outlets are already used to death by every single blogger (just to name a few – SEO, commenting in blogs/forums, submitting and promoting in social bookmarking sites, networking with bloggers, submitting to blog carnivals, guest posting).

The reason why The Personal Excellence Blog has been doing well is because I continously change my strategy to get my desired results. I started off with a traffic building plan. Then after 1-2 months, I would check the results of my traffic building efforts. If the results haven’t been achieved, I would review the effectiveness of my strategies. For actions that have been efficacious, I would keep them; For actions which aren’t, I would put them aside. Then, I would research and adopt new methods to add into the mix. I’m always open to try every single method to get traffic – if it’s something I’ve not done before, I’ll be game to just try it out, even just for one time.

All in all, it is through the continuous process of reviewing and changing my actions which have enabled me to achieve the results I have today. If I had just adopted one set of actions and stuck with it the whole time, I’d never be getting the kind of readership and exposure today, and my blog would never have grown to be what it is now.

Start Changing Your Actions

Think about a goal which you have been wanting to achieve with limited success. Then, think about the following questions. Write your answers with a pen and paper:

1. What have you been doing to achieve this goal in the past few months/years?
2. Why haven’t you been able to reach your goal? Have you been trying hard enough? Have your actions have been too confined? List out all the reasons and dig deep into the answers.
3. How can you revise your strategy? What shall you do differently moving forward? For example, look at the people who have been successful in achieving this goal. What did they do? Can you put more effort in your existing steps? What are some new things you can try out? How can you address the obstacles you have been facing? Read 25 Brainstorming Techniques to get new ideas for your strategy.
4. Carry out this new strategy you have designed.
5. Review it a few months from now to measure its effectiveness. If the changes in results are limited, then repeat steps 1-3 as you review your strategy. If you haven’t been able to get the results you want, it just means that the strategy you have been adopting is not on-point. Keep changing it until you finally achieve the results you want.

Remember that as long as you keep reviewing your actions, stick with the most effective methods and try on new actions, you will eventually get the results you want.

Related Posts:

• Goal Achievement: Strategy
• Using Your Environment to Achieve Your Goals
• Create Your Life Handbook
• Is Your Goal Worth 30 Minutes of Your Time Every Day?
• Goal Achievement: ESPER
• To Get What You Want, First Admit You Want It
• Does Your Room Inspire You?
• Skills Development

Leveraging on your environment is one of the strategies I outlined in Part 4: Strategy of my 7-Part Goal Achievement series. This is one of the most important strategies you can utilize in achieving your goals.

Why Environment Plays A Role in Achieving Your Goals

Some people have no problem setting goals, but they do not rope in strategies to achieve their goals. They think goal achievement is all about relying on (a) brute force and (b) sheer desire. While both factors are very important, they can only get you that far, especially for larger goals. There are two reasons:

Firstly, motivation is a fleeting quality. Your motivation fluctuates within a certain median, depending on your level of consciousness, who you are with, what you are doing, the experiences you are faced with. While you may experience moments or periods of peak motivation, this peak motivation does not last for an extended period of time. More reliable methods are needed to achieve our goals.

Secondly, your environment largely determines how your energy is utilized. For example, suppose you have water, a mug and a basin. What happens when you pour the water into the mug? Water, having no definite shape, takes the shape of the mug. How about when you pour it into a basin? The water will take the shape of the basin. And what if you pour the water onto the ground? It will become a large puddle, with no particular shape.

In this analogy, your energy is like water; Your environment is like the container holding the water. If your environment is well structured, your energy will be channeled into appropriate avenues. If you have a environment that has no structure, your energy will probably be randomly scattered all over the place. With the right environment/platform, your energy becomes effectively utilized such that you achieve your goals much faster.

If your environment is not conducive towards achieving your goals, you will be wasting a lot of energy trying to go against it every day. If you are trying to lose weight, an unconducive environment will be one where you are constantly surrounded by fatty food, fast food restaurants, people who like to eat, people who don’t exercise and gourmet magazines/TV programs. You might be able to get through 1 day unscathed based on discipline alone, but beyond that it is an excessive waste of your energy to have to overcome the same stimuli every day. Rather than doing that, it is more effective to change the environment/stimuli altogether and replace it with environment that aids you in your goal, such as joining weight loss communities, exercise programs, stocking up your fridge with healthy food, etc.

The same applies whether you are trying to cultivate good habits, earn more money, increase your performance, get promoted, gain more sales, improve time management, wake up early, quit coke, improve your posture and any other goals.

For those who have read my previous article on 21 days to cultivate good habits, you may have experienced a spike in motivation when you first read the post. Maybe your intended habit was to wake up early at 5am. So for the first few days, you relied on the motivational high to wake up early. 1st day, woke up at 5am. Felt absolutely awesome. 2nd day, woke up at 5am. Felt terrific. 3rd day, 4th day, 5th day… you started to slip away from your goal. Then gradually, you got to the point where the initial motivation dissipated. Your sleeping schedule became exactly the same as when you first started. Dejected, you decided to sign off on that goal altogether, thinking you were not meant to be an early riser.

If you only planned to accomplish the 21 day program through sheer motivation, it wouldn’t be a surprise if you were unable to nail down the habit in those 21 days. Relying on the initial burst of motivation can only get you so far. You need to use that spike in the beginning to create the environment to ensure your success.

How I Use Environment For My Goals

For example, when I wanted to try out being a vegetarian 2 years ago, I spent a few days setting up an environment that is conducive for my goals. I went to buy a blender, so I could easily make my own fruit smoothies. I went to the supermarket and stocked up on vegetarian food so I would have a constant food supply at home. I did up a goal sheet for my vegetarian goal, writing out my motivations for trying out the vegetarian diet and plastering the sheet with pictures of nice, appetizing vegetarian food. I set my desktop wallpaper with a picture of a whole variety of juicy, fresh fruits. I told the people around me that I was going to try out vegetarianism for the next 1 month, so they would be walking reminders of my goal. I joined vegetarian online communities to acquaint with like-minded folks. I placed bookmarks of vegetarian sites in my browser.

All these were done so I would be able to stick to a vegetarian diet for the entire month. And because I created the right, conducive environment to achieve my goals, I was able to hit my goal, surprisingly easy. And I never looked back ever since.

Here are other examples where I created/leveraged on my environment to achieve my goals:

• In my ongoing plan to improve my fitness level, I joined weekly kickboxing classes, frisbee sessions and badminton sessions with friends. By joining these groups which have recurring, weekly activities, I’m reminded and compelled to join the sessions by virtue of my membership.
• I joined Vipassana 10-Day Course because I wanted to nail in my habit to meditate. Being immersed in such an intensive environment, with the proper facilities and people to guide me along, enabled me to easily integrate the habit into my life when I came back.
• Being self-employed, it’s easy to slip into a mode of stagnancy if I’m not watchful. As countermeasures, I join my partners in their office to work there once a week, I regularly meet up with people in the industry as a source of inspiration and ideas, I lock in my coaching commitments for rolling 2 months so I will need to commit myself to these coachees in that period, I make announcements of my plans at my blog/at events so there is an increased level of accountability, among others.

Create the Best Environment

Even with an environment enables you to achieve your goals, there is always room to improve it such that it’s letting you achieve your goals in the fastest possible manner. For example, if you want to reach the 20th storey in a building, the facilities in the building will affect how fast and how much work you need to put in to get to the 20th storey. If your building only has stairs, you need to climb through 20 whole storeys, perspiring and panting, before you can reach your destination. If your building has escalators, you can reach the 20th storey with minimal movement on your part. If your building has an elevator, you can sail your way up to the top in a matter of minutes.

Likewise, if your goal is to have a toned up body, the degree to which your environment is conducive to your goal will determine how successful you are. If you are just going to sign up for a weekly abdominal class at the gym, the results you can see is going to be lesser compared to if you sign up for the class, sign up for another aerobics class, get a membership at a gym with good body-training facilities and get a personal trainer all at the same time.

There are many different components in your environment you can play around with, such as the following:

• Your physical environment. This includes your workplace, your office, your home, your room, places you go to or even the country you live in.
• Your computer – specifically, what you have on your desktop, your favorites/bookmarks and your post-it notes, since computer has become a staple in our lives
• Communities you are a part of, both online and offline
• People you hang around with
• Anything that’s part of your routine, such as classes you join (recreation or for self-improvement purposes)

By changing any of the variables, you will see experience different results even when exerting the same energy. Change all of the variables, and you will experience dramatic results.

Creating your best environment includes any one or a combination of the 3 steps below. The better your environment is, the better it can help you in your goals.

(1) Using existing environment.

Say you decide to lose weight this month. You have a blender you normally use to make milk smoothies. Rather than using the blender to make your usual smoothies, you use it to make healthier, fruit and vegetable smoothies instead. You may also have a swimming pool at your house which you never use. Now, you can leverage it by swimming regularly there.

(2) Modifying your environment.

Using the same weight loss goal example, modifying your environment includes: Encouraging your friends to join you in losing weight. Stocking up your fridge with healthy food. Putting up posters of thin, athletic people around your room. Setting your desktop wallpaper with an aspirational model. Writing out your goal and placing it in front of you. Throwing out your larger size clothes and filling out your wardrobe with right-sized or smaller sized clothes in preparation for your new weight.

(3) Moving yourself to a new environment.

Sometimes, this method is the most effective if it’s too troublesome to modify your environment. Join a weight loss club. Join exercise programs. Get a gym membership. Move to a new neighbourhood where there are only healthy eateries and no fastfood.

Think about one of the top goals you have currently and ask yourself these 3 questions:

(1) What are the ways your current environment can support you in your goal?

(2) How can you change your environment in such a way that it best helps you achieve your goal? (Read: Does Your Room Inspire You?)

(3) What other environments can you leverage on to generate the best momentum towards your goals?

By strategically using your environment for your goals, your goal pursuit process will become much more seamless. Have fun creating the best environment for your goals

Related Posts:

• Does Your Room Inspire You?
• Goal Achievement: Strategy
• Create Your Life Handbook
• Is Your Goal Worth 30 Minutes of Your Time Every Day?
• Not Getting What You Want? Time To Change Your Actions
• Declutter Your Home in 8 Easy-to-follow Steps
• Goal Achievement: Introduction
• 21 Tips To Wake Up Early

The importance of skills development can’t be stressed enough. Behind every successful goal achievement, comes proper skills development.

Importance of Skills Development

Many of us often get impressed by the kind of results others achieve without realizing the time that was spent in developing their skills. There is a tendency for us to fill in other parts of the picture with our own assumptions.

For example, some severely underestimate the amount of work needed to attain those results. These people zealously set out for the same goals thinking they will get the same success, without investing time to learn and develop their skills. This is happening to many bloggers today. They read about the big name bloggers making six-figure incomes from full-time blogging. Seeing the low barriers of entry on the internet, they start out blogs as well, thinking they will be able to achieve the same level of success in a short period of time. In the end, they become rudely awakened when they see their blogs making no headway even after 3-6 months. Some press on; many give up.

Then there are some who are daunted by the scale of goals they are trying to reach. They become intimidated by their lack of knowledge and give up or put off their passions infinitely. Some conveniently attribute it to some ‘X’ factor or talent required and declare they are unable to do it because they lack those factors. The larger their goals, the more likely they get daunted by them.

Skills development is a necessary step in getting to where we want to be. With every new result you want to achieve, there are new skills you need to learn, new skills you need to develop. There is really no ‘magic’, ‘miracle’ or ‘quick fix’ behind it. If you try to skip the stage of learning, you become limited in what you can achieve. You will end up failing or achieving mediocre results.

For example, if you want to be an English writer, you need to master your fundamental skill first – your command of the English language. You can’t go far in your ambitions if you have problems with fundamental tenses, grammar and vocabulary.

Or, let’s say you are a budding graphic designer. To bring your creative visions to life, you need to be well versed in your image editing software, such as Photoshop. Else, you will be forever stuck with lots of envisioned ideas but no way of translating them into digital artwork.

The skills which you have define the boundaries you operate in. The more skills you learn and the more developed you are in those skills, the greater your capacity to perform. This means better results. By developing your skills, you literally expand your own boundaries. These boundaries can be as big as you want – they are defined by you. If you want them to be humongously huge, all you have to do is to keep learning and developing new skills to the point where you keep leveling up.

Example: My Writing Skills

I frequently have people commending my writing skills after reading the articles on my blog. They tell me that I have a flair for writing and I should consider writing a book.

While these comments are very kind and I do think I have much to improve on, these writing skills didn’t just pop out of nowhere. I wasn’t an English major in school or did I take any writing courses. The closest class that ever came close to writing was one of my business modules back in university which covered business writing (on a broad scale). And whatever was taught in the module is totally different from what writing on a blog constitutes.

These writing skills came about as an intentional effort to cultivate them. When I first started my blog in Dec ‘08, I spent time reading materials on writing good content, such as how to select my topics, how to craft enticing headlines, analyzing top articles, and so on. Some resources I visited were Copyblogger, Men with Pens and Zen To Done.

My first batch of articles took a huge amount time to write. I remember starting out with the Discover Your Real Purpose series, because everything in life starts with our purpose and I wanted to get that topic covered first to lay down the blog foundations. It took a while to craft the content. There were so many different things I could write about on Purpose but I didn’t know which were the most pertinent and how best to present them. I spent almost a whole week getting the entire series down into 7 articles.

And it didn’t just end there. When it came to actually posting the series on the blog, I ended up rewriting a good part of it  because I felt what I wrote  before wasn’t good enough. In fact, the part 3 you see now is pretty much a whole new article from the original one I wrote offline!

This whole writing and rewriting process happened for a good 2-3 months for the other articles I wrote. It got quite frustrating sometimes because it was so inefficient. My disappointment series and Materialism Breeds Unhappiness article were great examples – They took way, way longer time to write than they should have. Copious amount of time was spent writing, rewriting and rewriting until I finally felt they were good enough for publishing.

Despite all that, I just kept writing, learning and improving in the process.

Today, all the hard work has leveled up my writing skills. Now, I’m much more on-point and hardly have to rewrite my content. My sentences and words flow out much naturally than in the past. And all this is a result of conscious, hard work in development of my writing skills: not randomity, some chance occurrence or magical innate ability. And you can do it too as long as you put in the due diligence in your skill development phase.

Core Skills and Secondary Skills

Skills can be classified into two key groups. The first group is core skills. Core skills refers to skills we absolutely need to have in order to perform our tasks. They are directly tied to the outcome. Without these skills, you cannot function properly in the task. The second group is secondary skills. These are skills which are nice-to-haves and not need-to-haves to achieve the desired output.

Let’s say you are a writer and you want to write an English fantasy novel. Typically, the core skills will be your a) command of language b) creativity and imagination skills c) story writing skills. Secondary skills will be things like your d) pitching skills (to pitch to the publishers) e) designing skills (to design the book) f) time management.

The differentiation between core and secondary skills really depends on what your goal is. As long as the skill has a critical impact in the outcome, it will be a core skill. If your goal is to write a novel that will be picked up by a huge publisher, pitching skills will become a core skill. If your goal is to write a novel in an accelerated timeline, time management will be a core skill.

The role the skill plays in your desired outcome should dictate the amount of resources you invest in it. By first identifying the core skills in the task you are doing, it makes you aware of the time and energy you want to spend cultivating them. The peripheral nature of secondary skills means it is sufficient to have a broad-level grasp of the skill, rather than an in-depth understanding.

In the times when it is not effective for you to acquire certain skills, you can have the option of outsourcing it to other people. I won’t be covering it in this article as it isn’t the focus here.

Developing Skills in My Work

In my personal development work, there are lots of skills which I need to learn and develop in order to be good at what I do. A partial list includes:

Core Skills:

• Personal development
• Analyzing; Problem solving
• Writing
• Speaking, Presentation
• Coaching
• Business management
• Project management
• People Skills
• Networking
• Marketing, Promotion

Secondary Skills:

• Graphic design (site design, namecards, etc)
• Programming (for my blog)

My core skills are what I focus on learning and developing. Earlier in this article, I shared how I cultivated my writing skills when I first started the blog. Beyond that, I also learnt how to market and promote my blog in the Web 2.0 landscape. I had prior experience running sites before but that was nearly 6 years ago, where the landscape online was entirely different. When I started Embrace Living in Dec ‘08, I was overwhelmed by the new media that had taken over the internet – Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, just to name a few. They were entirely foreign to me. Before this, I had not even heard about them! Yet, all it meant was I needed to relearn the landscape and learn how to promote my blog in this new media environment, rather than being stumped by them.

As I expand my personal development business later this year, I will be starting to actively speaking/training at seminars and workshops. I’m currently working with a few partners to set up a career consultancy where I will be the key trainer and coach. Just like how I built up my writing skills, I will undergo the same steps to develop my speaking skills. For example, I expose myself to videos of some of the best speakers in the world, such as Les Brown, to get inspiration for my speeches. Recently, I purchased a white board and marker which I use to rehearse my speeches.

Even for my knowledge in personal development, I’m always constantly immersing myself in the best materials so I’m learning new things to apply to my life and share in my blog, coaching and speeches. It is a continuous journey of learning.

On the other hand, I spare minimal time on my secondary skills – I just do what’s necessary to get the things done and out of the way. After that, I will quickly focus on building my core skills again. This is why CelestineChua.com has such a simple design, even though I used to be a graphics designer. I did not start this blog to showcase my designing skills. I started it to enable others to live their lives more consciously and achieve higher potentials. As long as the site is functional and user-friendly, it serves my purpose. The same goes for my programming skills – I know near zero about PHP and I just pick up what’s needed from tutorial sites to get the php aspects of my site working.

How To Start Developing Skills

Here are some ways you can start off:

Break it down into smaller steps.

The process of skills development can be a daunting task, especially if it’s a new, high chunk skill. For example, starting a new business. Business management involves a whole series of different skills, such as project management, time management, leadership, problem solving, and so on. If that’s the case, break this down into mini steps. What is the first step you need to take to embark on this? Direct all your efforts into getting that first step into place, then move on to your second step. You will find things are much easier to handle that way.

Learn from the best.

It’s easiest to learn from the people who have been there before. Identify the people out there who are already experts in the skills you want to develop. Observe them. Model them if you want an exact same output. If you know them, approach them for assistance. Ask them to be your mentors. Seek guidance. Look for coaches who are experts in the field and engage them for coaching.

Research – Read up.

There are tons of excellent material out there with information waiting to be lapped out. In fact, in today’s world, we are more overwhelmed with the amount of information rather than the lack of it. Start off by researching on the internet. Download podcasts. If there is a library where you live, head to the library and borrow books related to the subject. Watch related videos. Hit the bookstores and buy recommended books of the topic. Books tend to be better sources because of the structured content and the holisticity of the information in it.

Attending trainings

Trainings, seminars and workshops are great sources to quickly develop skills. Depending on the quality of the training, trainings can sometimes be a one stop shop for the kind of skills you are developing. They serve as concentrated sources of information that is already organized and structured into a series of programs. The intensity of such events and the combined common intentions of the participants enable you to move forward much faster than if you were to do it alone.

Get into action – Do it.

There is no better way to learn than to get right into thick of things and do it. Strategizing and planning are important, but at some point you need to start executing the plans. When you start doing, you get immediate feedback on your progress and whether it fits with your expectations. Until you try it, it will always remain in your mind as a hypothesis. Doing things closes all the ‘what ifs’ and creates momentum to move forward.

What Skills Do You Need to Develop?

This is an exercise to start working out the skills you need to develop to succeed in your goal. Take out your pen and paper now or open up a document in your computer.

1. List down your top most important goal in your life now.
2. What are all the skills that are needed to pursue this goal?
3. Out of these skills, which are the core skills and which are the secondary skills?
4. For your core skills, how can you start learning and developing them? How can you apply the suggested ways above to develop your skill?
5. When can you start taking action on the different ways you have identified in (4)?

Start developing your skills now and soon enough, you will start seeing the merits of those skill building efforts coming through in your results

This is part of Skills Development series:

• Skills Development
• Leveling Up
• 10,000 Hours To Develop Talent

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• 10,000 Hours To Develop Talent
• Goal Achievement: Strategy
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• Quitting To Win
• We’re finally up!! :)
• How To Overcome Procrastination – Part 3
• Keep Your End Objective In Mind
• Does Your Room Inspire You?

When you hear the word ‘quitting’, what do you think of?

Many of us have been brought up with the notion that quitting is bad. We have been imbued with many negative perceptions of the act of quitting.

If you are like most people, you will likely have one or all of the following preconceived notions of what quitting means:

1. Quitting means you are opting to lose.
2. Quitting means you are taking the easy path out.
3. Quitting means you are not going to be successful.
4. Quitting means not to have perseverance and self-discipline, which are highly regarded virtues.
5. Quitting means you are fickle and unclear about what you want.
6. Quitting means to waste the money, time and energy that have already been invested in the task.

By quitting or even just talking about wanting to quit, you automatically become stigmatized with any or all of the 6 statements above. Because of all these stigmas, people treat the whole idea of quitting with great adversity. It has become a dreaded ‘Q’ word. They do everything in their abilities not to quit in whatever they do and press on till the end.

After all, we repeatedly hear about how the most successful people are where they are because they never quit. They persevered, toiled through hardship, overcame trials and tribulations to eventually attain great accomplishments. Top it up with periodic quotes from great leaders like “There’s only one thing that can guarantee our failure, and that’s if we quit.” or “Winners are not those who never fail, but those who never quit” and that deeply sets in the affirmation in people not to quit.

The Fallacy of Not Quitting

The ability to persevere and not quit is a commendable trait. However, there’s a huge problem when people become obsessed with the whole notion of not quitting for the sake of, well, not quitting. This can be when people naturally equate all forms of quitting with losing. When they refuse to quit just because they want to succeed (cue: one of the traits of a perfectionist). When their desire not to quit is driven by fear of what quitting represents to others or themselves.

What Quitting Really Means

What is quitting, really? If we look at quitting as an objective act, it means to release, let go of your hold (of what you are doing). You work on a task, you quit = you let go of the task. That’s all that it means!

On the other hand, everything else that has come to be associated with quitting are just subjective representations. While they do hold true, they are very much dependent on the context of the situation. When we automatically link the act of quitting with thoughts like losing, failure, lack of perseverance, fickle-mindedness, etc, we are missing the bigger picture.

Conscious Quitting

There are numerous situations when quitting does not adhere to the 6 common representations above. These are the situations when quitting means to win. Some examples of these situations are:

• When what you are doing is not your passion
• When you have obtained the key lesson you need out of it (i.e. obtaining the 80% value)
• When there is no additional value in continuing on
• When there’s something better you can be doing instead

In these situations, the worst thing u can do is not quit. Here, not quitting is really, to lose.

Instead of clinging on to every single task in our life for the sake of not quitting, we need to practise conscious quitting. Conscious quitting means to assess a task based on how meaningful it is to us so that we can choose whether to quit or not.

Let us examine the 6 conceptions of quitting in the context of conscious quitting:

Misconception #1. Quitting means you are opting to lose.

If you are quitting from tasks that are not meaningful, you are indeed opting to lose – in tasks which do not matter to you. Does it then matter whether you lose or win in them? It does not seem to me that you’re losing out at all – in fact, you only really lose if you choose to invest your time and energy to win in tasks that are pointless to you.

Misconception #2. Quitting means you are taking the easy path out.

To quit is to willingly severe and give up all the investments you have made. It is to go against stigmas from the society and people around you to stay true to yourself. It is actually a harder task than not quitting. Maintaining the status quo and not quitting seems to be actually the easier path out.

Misconception #3. Quitting means you are not going to be successful.

This is quite the contrary to what conscious quitting is about. Conscious quitting is all about getting success in your life.

Firstly, understand what constitutes as success for a particular task may not bring you success for a particular goal. Subsequently, what gives you success for a certain goal may not lead you to your desired success in your life. It is important that you do not confuse success in the task you are doing, with success in life.

The kind of success you want to see in your life is success in what you are passionate about, not every single nitty gritty task. It’s success in the goals, dreams, visions you love. To achieve that, you need to quit from the things you are not passionate about so you can be working on things you ARE passionate about – your big rocks. Quitting makes it possible for you to be a master of your time and be effective so that you eventually become successful. If you are going to spend all your time doing things you dislike and put off doing things you love, you are never going to see your passions coming to fruition, ever.

Misconception #4. Quitting means not to have perseverance and self-discipline, which are highly regarded virtues.

Sure, sticking in a task you loathe can help you strengthen skills like perseverance, self-discipline, strength of character, etc. But you do realize that these are the exact same soft skills that can be strengthened in doing what you are passionate about as well, don’t you? Every task we undertake tests a certain facet of our soft skills in one way or another. Every thing we do has its own set of challenges and obstacles. Strengthening these skills are not exclusive to just this particular task you are clinging on to.

In fact, it is by pursuing what you really love that you become the best person you can be. When you are driven by love, you will leap forward in front of even the biggest obstacles to overcome them. Being motivated by passion makes you want to perform your best in the task you are doing and subsequently lets you achieve your highest potential.

Misconception #5. Quitting means you are fickle and unclear about what you want.

This is quite the opposite. Conscious quitting occurs because you know precisely what you want. You can’t quit consciously unless you know what is it that you want. This isn’t fickle; this is about being loyal to your passion and yourself. If you choose to remain in this task despite knowing there is something else you rather be doing, that’s being fickle.

Misconception #6. Quitting means to waste the money, time and energy that have already been invested in the task.

The resources you invested thus far has given you enough insights for you to conclude that you want to quit. They are not wasted because they enabled you to derive this learning from this experience. It is choosing to stay on in a meaningless task that you are really wasting your money, time and energy.

Quitting In My Life

There have been multiple times when I have taken a hold of the situation I am in, assessed it, evaluated the options I have and made the conscious decision to quit. Below are some examples:

• I quit my brand management career – To pursue my life passion and get my personal development business, up and running
• I quit pointless relationships with people and in rare incidences, friends if they do not enable me to be a better person. In return, this makes me unable to contribute meaningfully to the friendship and properly pursue my purpose.
• I quit halfway through my tennis course when I realized I don’t like tennis as a sport and it was a waste of my time to do something I don’t like. This was despite having made a non-refundable prepayment for the whole course.
• I opt out of non-constructive outings and activities to more effectively spend my time doing things that are more important to me

Conscious quitting has made me much more effective, productive, better off, happy and successful than if if I had chosen not to quit.

Quitting To Win

What can you quit from your life today to win? Some examples are:

• Quitting from a job you do not like for something you DO like
• Quitting from relationships which are holding you back for relationships which do elevate you
• Quitting from Quadrant 3 and Quadrant 4 tasks for your Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 2 tasks
• Quitting from the 80% lesser value activities so that you have more time for the 20% higher value activities

As the CEO of your life, you need to make some hard decisions on what you need to cut out so you can focus on your big rocks and experience continual growth and success. Real life CEOs face that every day, making tough calls on what divisions to sell-off, people to lay-off, products to discontinue, cuts in fundings, etc so the resources can be properly channeled into the most critical, important areas to generate long-term success for the company. Identifying what these hard decisions are and start quitting to win today.

Related Posts:

• Is Your Goal Worth 30 Minutes of Your Time Every Day?
• Put First Things First
• When Goals Stop Working
• Get Your Big Rocks In First
• Create Your Life Handbook
• Self Discipline is Overrated
• 55 Tips to Manage Work Stress
• Using Your Environment to Achieve Your Goals

How is your room like? How do you feel whenever you are in it? Is it a place that inspires you?

The Importance Of Your Room

Many people don’t spend too much energy or time setting up their room. They see it as just a place which shelters them while they sleep and do their activities. However, your room is actually a place of significant importance, for three reasons:

Firstly, you spend a huge amount of time here throughout your life. Factor in the approximate 1/3 of our days which we spend sleeping and the times when we hang out in our room during weekends and after school/work on weekdays, and it becomes clear that your room is one of the places where you spend the most time in.

Secondly, a lot of your important thinking and decisions are made here. Chances are a lot of introspection, goal setting, planning, self evaluation, studying, working take place inside your room. This can be when you are conversing with friends on the phone/internet, emailing, surfing the net, working, etc.

Thirdly, it holds emotional significance. This is the place where you have your personal space and privacy to do what you want. It’s your safe alcove which you know will always be there for you to return to at the end of every day. It is where you grew up and will continue to grow up in

Improving Your Room

Given that, it is actually highly valuable to invest time and energy to make your room a place which inspires you. If you are going to spend so much time here, wouldn’t it make sense to make it a place where you will absolutely love to be in? In that sense, your room becomes a very vital goal achievement tool which sets you up in the right frame of attitude and mindset.

Some people have a separate study room and bedroom. Even then, the same principles apply that you should be creating a conducive environment for a place which you find yourself spending a lot of time in and doing a lot of thinking/decision making.

What Is Your Ideal Room?

What is your ideal room? A room that enables you and is conducive for your well-being can have varying different qualities. Here are some checklist questions you can use:

• Do you enjoy spending time in? Do you look forward to going back here at the end of every day?
• Does it make you feel excited and exuberant just being in it?
• Does it provide you with a peace of mind, absent of mental stress or anxiety?
• Does it enable you to be effective when doing your tasks?
• Is it conducive for the left brain aspect of yourself in thinking logically and rationally? Does it trigger the creative, right brain visionary aspect of yourself?
• Do you see your aspired self living here?

Based on the above, visualize your ideal room. How is it like? As you do that, factor in the following aspects of your room. In your ideal room, how will they be?

1. Area space of the room
2. Layout (positioning of furniture, objects, etc)
3. Type of furniture (your bed, wardrobe, bookshelf, desk, bedside table, etc)
4. Objects inside your room (lamp, fan, books, clothes, bed, bedsheets, stationery, amount of clutter, etc)
5. Free space (for walking around, moving in)

Now, take a look at the current state of your own room. Is it the same? Is it different? If it is different, how different is it? What are the immediate changes you can make to move towards your ideal vision of your room? What are the changes you can target to make in the long-term?

#1 and #3 tend to be changes you can effect in the long term, while #2, #4 and #5 can be worked on in the short-term. In particular, #4 – amount of clutter is something that can be addressed immediately. This can be in the form of removing old books, random junk, infrequently worn clothes, anything that you do not have a use for but is around ‘just in case’ you need to use it in the future. Many times, we keep a lot of things which we think we’ll use in the future, but never do.

How I Totally Turned Around My Room

My room in the past

My room used to be highly messy and disorganized. Clothes, things and books were just strewn everywhere. My worn clothes would typically be piled up at a random surface area. My textbooks and notes (I was still studying in university then) would be stacked up on the floor. My table was quite untidy. While it served its function well as my study/bedroom, I never did feel completely homely in it – It didn’t feel in sync with my self-identity. It wasn’t a place I would jump with excitement to be in, save for the fact that I get my own privacy to do what I want inside. There would be times when I felt emotionally and mentally stifled inside. I was not very proud of it and it wasn’t a place where I would openly invite my friends to come and hang out in.

Making the decision to change my room

In mid-2007, I was setting up a working space in my room for my office work, since my ex-company had a work-from-home option where we could spend one day a week working from our own homes. At that time, I thought I might as well be take this chance to re-do my whole room. After all, if I’m going to be spending a good portion of my life for the next few years in this room, why not invest proper time and energy to turn it around into a place where I would deeply relish every single moment of being in it?

Executing the change

With that, I set the vision in place for my ideal room which is exquisite, uplifting, pretty and homely.

I started off with a massive spring cleaning. I threw out a huge volume of unwanted things including clothes which I don’t wear, books (I couldn’t believe that I was still keeping textbooks and notes from back in secondary school), my old table which were not conducive for my work, random junk, non-working stationery, clutter, and so on. For the old books, letters, cards, miscellaneous things etc which I wanted to retain as keepsake, I put them inside very convenient storage boxes and placed them underneath my bed.

Then, with the help of my dad, we shifted the remaining furniture around to a layout which fully maximized the space in my room. I bought new furniture (table, lamp, printer, bedside table), new stationery, among many other things. I got a bedside table because I always thought it would be nice to have one where I can both fall asleep to and wake up to nice flowers as well as photos of me and my best friends. I placed flowers, potpourri, curtains and decorations all around the room to create a homely atmosphere. I exhibited all of my favorite gifts from my friends over the years. All these decisions were made based on what matched my ideal room vision.

Since I was busy working in the weekdays, I could only work on my room during the weekends. All in all, this whole change took about 2 months to complete.

An end result which completely paid off

The net result is a completely overhauled room and my own haven where I absolutely relish spending every single moment in. Just spending time in my room makes me feel extremely vitalized, inspired and exubrant, on top of my normal self! In fact, I was so proud of my accomplishment that I even threw a room warming party where my friends came over to celebrate and hang out

Pictures of My Room

Here, I will share with you selected pictures of my room They were all taken in Jan 1st 2008, but generally everything still looks pretty much the same as in the pictures.

This is my work desk. This is where I’m at when I’m using the internet, the computer and/or working on the site My laptop is now a pink Dell which I bought late last year at a computer fair. The mushroom at the back is the mushroom from Super-Mario Brothers, a classic game which I enjoyed playing from my childhood It’s actually a tissue paper holder. The globe you see to the right of the mushroom can be lit by a switch. I use to mark the places I’ve been to and to serve as a reminder of other places I want to visit someday in the future.

The lamp, which I bought from Ikea, is quite flexible – it can be rotated around and shifted up/down. There’s a full length mirror on the left of the table, which is not very visible in this picture. The printer on the right has been shifted to below my desk so I can have more space to put other things.

This is my notice board in front of my work desk It’s a corkboard which I use it to pin up inspirational quotes and articles which interest me at the moment. Two of the articles on right now are ‘10 Tips To Become A Water Walker’ and ‘Seven Characteristics of Top Talent’. All the background and flowers you see on the noticeboard were actually manually stuck on by me.

The chair I sit on to work. The pink back cushion is a birthday gift from my friend last year. The little puppies underneath the bed are my bedroom slippers.

These are the outer doors of my wardrobe. I put up photos of all my best memories, my best/good friends, my colleagues, my oversea travels, birthday celebrations, and so on. Since this picture was taken in Jan 2008, there are actually about double the photos now than you see here. Whenever I looking at these pictures, I’m instantly reminded of all the wonderful moments in my life. It makes me grateful for everything that has transpired and excites me in what’s to come on next

Some ornaments I hang around to decorate the room.

My clothes, organized and arranged by segments inside my wardrobe. I have folded them to make them more compact and save space.

One of the shelves of my bookshelf. These are my graduation photos. (The left one is my graduation photo from kindergarten – with really short hair! The right one is from university).

The tortoises are birthday gifts from my friends (back then we were totally addicted on Gunbound which is a multiplayer 2-D side-scrolling shooting game. One of the bots I used very often was the turtle. The chain you see hanging around the tortise reads Kawaii – my nickname.)

My bed That’s two Elmos you see on the bed – the big one, which is a birthday gift from a friend when I was 15, and the small one on my pillow, which I had since I was born.

A closer look at the table beside my bed. The lamp is a touch-based lamp which I really like. It lights up to varying brightness with each touch on the metal base. I got it at a night market a few years ago and always thought it was quite a steal for the price it was selling at. The photos here are with my group of close friends from since secondary school days whom I’ve known for almost a decade.

I also have my journal below the glass surface of the table. However nowadays I just journal in my computer since it’s more efficient.

The ceiling of my room where I’ve stuck over 60 stars! These stars glow in the dark, so every night I fall asleep to a simulated starlit sky I wanted to get a picture of stars when it’s dark but my camera wasn’t able to capture the light.

How Can You Make Your Room More Inspiring Today?

Should you reduce your clutter? Should you shift your furniture around? Should you get furniture and objects that fit you better? How can you be taking little steps today to make your room more conducive? While this time and energy may seem to be huge investments in the beginning, bear in mind that this will become a very worthwhile investment which will pay off in spades in the long run

Related Posts:

• Declutter Your Home in 8 Easy-to-follow Steps
• Create Your Life Handbook
• Using Your Environment to Achieve Your Goals
• How To Be A Dean’s Lister – Part 2
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• You are the Average of the 5 People You Spend the Most Time With
• Is Your Goal Worth 30 Minutes of Your Time Every Day?
• Sneak Preview: The Personal Excellence Book (Pre-Order Starts 18 July, Sunday)

One of the key tools I found critical in my pursuit of personal growth and living a purposeful life is creating my own life handbook. What do I mean by a life handbook?

A life handbook, to put it simply, is your manual that contains anything and everything important in living your life, from your life purpose, adages, life learnings, long-term goals, short-term goals, strategies, plans, right down to your daily tasks. Just as the Bible is the guidebook that reflects the doctrine and creed of Christianity, your life handbook is your map towards living your best possible life.

The idea of having a life handbook came to me over a year ago. In 2006, I realized my life passion to help people grow before I started my corporate job. At that point, I made the decision to enter the corporate world anyway for growth purposes, but promised myself to keep in mind my passion and pursue it full-time one day.

Fast forward to a year later in 2007, and what did I have? Absolutely no progress on my passion whatsoever! And it wasn’t because I had lost interest in it. It was simply because I was so busy juggling my busy work schedule and my daily life that I had no mental energy left to think about my passion at the end of the day. This was the same for most of my Quadrant 2 goals.

Besides that, I also noticed there were a lot of valuable learnings I was getting in life and in the course of my work were either lost over time or stashed away somewhere in my latent memory. I wasn’t proactively utilizing those learnings and maximizing what I could get out of my encounters. It was not effective to constantly keep them in my conscious memory either, since it would prevent me from utilizing all of my mental capacity with the daily events in my life. While I made an effort to pen them in notebooks and documents, they were often strewn all over the place and it was a chore just trying to keep up with them.

When I troubleshooted the whole situation, I realized it was because I was lacking a central system to hold my life around. If I were to create a one single document which lay out the blueprint on how I could get the best out of life; If I were to refer to this document as my sole reference point every day, it would enable me to be much more focused and effective. A lot of unnecessary rework I had been experiencing would be cut away. This would be the only place where I document everything that is noteworthy and it would serve as the guide for my everyday thinking, decisions, actions to be the best I can be.

Benefits Of Creating Your Life Handbook

A life handbook is incredibly powerful in many ways. First and foremost, having this document is your key enabler to becoming a true leader of your life. It is where you get reminded of your life purpose/vision, your adages and all your goals so you can continuously steer in the right direction. Having this level of clarity gives you instant focus, helps you take command of your life and ignore everything else that do not matter.

Secondly, it grants you increased mental resources. Think of your brain as a mental hard drive that has only 10meg of memory. Because this 10meg of mental space is so limited and precious, you want to use it wholly for the task you are working on at any point in time (and become more productive in the process), rather than using it to store information you don’t need currently. A life handbook is like an external, unlimited hard drive where you dump every thing that you can ever possibly need so you can refer it to the future vs storing it in your mind.

Thirdly, it makes you highly organized. There are a lot of different things we have to juggle with everyday – from pursuing our goals, tackling obstacles that surface, managing across different long-term and short-term priorities, to doing our day-to-day tasks. All these makes it very easy to get into disarray. In a bid to become more organized, you may start using post-it notes, create to-do lists, buy personal organizers, etc. However, over time, just trying to keep up with these lists becomes a task in itself to upkeep, which defeats the whole purpose of using them to begin with! A life handbook, on the other hand, keeps you highly organized as it serves as the singular one central medium where you store the information you need.

Fourthly, it makes you much more effective. Have you ever found yourself looping in certain behaviors which prevent you from moving forward? Do you ever feel you seem to be stuck in situations even though you have encountered similar ones before? In your life handbook, you document learnings you gained from your experiences, so that you can always reference back to make better decisions in the future. This allows you to move forward in becoming the best person you can be rather than repeat your footsteps from the past.

How to Create Your Life Handbook

There is no hard and fast rule on how a life handbook should be; it is up to your personal jurisdiction on how you want it to be like. It can be in the form of a book, a personal organizer, a soft copy, an online document, etc. I find creating digital softcopies via processing softwares much more effective since 1) You can easily edit the information 2) It has in-built functions to organize information readily 3) It is transferable across different mediums. My personal recommendations will be a word document or spread sheet due to their information processing capabilities.

When creating your life handbook, bear in mind that this is just like your life’s blueprint. It should contain anything and everything that is important to live your best life. Below is a good starting point on what you should put:

1. Your life purpose/vision
2. What defines you as a person; Your strengths and improvement areas
3. Your life adages
4. Your goals

While the above may seem a bit hefty and overwhelming, there is no need for you to finish writing everything in one sitting; neither is it logical to expect that. You will find that simply writing out this document requires a high degree of self awareness and clarity on your life. Take as much time as you need to introspect upon the areas above. The handbook will always remain as a work-in-progress document. There will never be a point when it is ‘finished’, since you are constantly updating it as you live through life, get new learnings, achieve your goals and aim for higher grounds. Make it a daily habit to update your handbook every day, even if it is just 5 minutes each time.

I first started working on my life handbook in early 2008, in an excel sheet. When I wasn’t busy working, I would be laying out its bricks, chipping in little bits everyday and working on it for longer periods over the weekends. It was about a couple of months before I finally felt the basic foundation of the document was in place. 1 year later today, my handbook has become a massive workbook with nearly 20 sheets chocked full of wisdom, learnings and information paramount to me and my life. Below is an outline of my handbook:

1. My overall life purpose/vision
2. My life-long goals
3. My values and overall life adages based on what I have learnt
4. My strengths; My improvement areas and blind spots
5. List of things that motivates me in life
6. My long-term and short-term goals
7. My strategies, plans and tracking for those goals
8. Inspirational quotes
9. Miscellaneous information which I access frequently: My finances, my credit card info, grocery lists, etc

Your handbook should be organized in a manner that is meaningful to you and effective for your perusal. It should be a document that motivates you and keeps you going everyday. It should keep you focused on what’s important for you. Feel free to decorate it with photographs, images, graphics, and the like. I include a lot of relevant visuals for my most important goals. For example, for my healthy living goal, I have visuals of fruits, nuts, fruit/vegetable smoothies, salads and water.

Because this book is so important, remember to keep at least one backup of it. I have a copy on my computer which I access on a daily basis and a backed up copy in an external harddrive.

After Creating Your Life Handbook

After you have created your handbook, start using it as the central repository for every single piece of information that is valuable to you. Whenever you come across something that is meaningful and noteworthy, incorporate that into your book. Whenever you have a new goal, include it inside. Whenever you get an ‘AHA!’, revelation or epiphany, capture it so it will not get lost. While you might find some getting used to in the beginning, in no time you will become naturally inclined to refer to your handbook every time.

With your handbook in place, develop the habit to start off your day by reading it. Start off with your purpose, followed by adages in life, your long-term goals then your short-term goals. You will find that even just spending a few minutes looking through it everyday will give you immense focus and clarity throughout the day which will lead to dramatic changes in the long-run.

Related Posts:

• Sneak Preview: The Personal Excellence Book (Pre-Order Starts 18 July, Sunday)
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• Apply 80/20 to Your Life Now in 3 Simple Steps
• Does Your Room Inspire You?
• Put First Things First
• 101 Most Inspiring Quotes, Part 3
• The Best Productivity System There Is
• You are the Average of the 5 People You Spend the Most Time With

• Part 1: Goal Achievement: Introduction
• Part 2: ESPER
• Part 3: Establish
• Part 4: Strategy
• Part 5: Planning
• Part 6: Execution
• Part 7: Review

© Temari 09

“Strategies are like recipes: choose the right ingredients, mix them in the correct proportions, and you will always produce the same predictable results.”
Charles J. Givens

Strategy is the 2nd step of ESPER.

What is Strategy?

Strategy refers to a game plan which enables effective pursuit of a specific goal or result. It is a set of underlying principles which determines your action plan towards achieving your end goal. ESPER itself is a strategy for successful goal achievement. The S in ESPER refers to the specific strategies that pertain to your goal.

Strategy is like your blueprint for success. Think of it as the cross sectional map that shows you the best way to lead you to your goal. In war, generals gather together to devise strategies to secure an ensuing victory. In the world of business, companies invest millions in research to develop strategies to win in the market place. Consultancy is such a lucrative business because they identify patterns and strategies for corporations to get an edge over the competitors. In stock markets, the most successful traders spend years studying market trends of the past, identifying strategies and applying them. It is really not much different when it comes to your goal achievement.

Strategy is the one step which most people totally miss in the process of goal achievement, which then leads to their failure. Remember that for every goal, there is always a certain blueprint underlying it that guarantees its success. If you are to identify that blueprint, you pretty much have the goal in the bag.

Strategy Is Underutilized

In the systems I was brought up in, the ability to precisely follow instructions was viewed as epitome of a good student/citizen/employee. People were taught to do, not think. Back in school, we were credited if we used the exact same methodology we were taught. Any other methods, even if it led to the same output, were discouraged. Forms of thinking or behavior that did not conform to the norm were viewed as defiant. This is very commonly found in Asian societies, especially in China and Japan. As a result, many people are great in execution, but weak in strategizing.

I have seen many people around me who are unaware of the importance of strategy. They jump right into the execution of their goals, instead of studying their goals first and developing a strategy. What immediately follows is them succumbing to a cycle of self-depreciation and negativity. In the process, they waste their energy, get burnt and put themselves in a worse situation than before.

My Experience With Strategy

One of my personal success stories where strategy played a monumental role was when I switched to become a vegan in Jan, 2008 (triggered by the curiosity on how it would affect my mental clarity). Before this, I was eating the society’s average diet including animal products. I had never been a vegetarian or vegan in my life, nor have I even remotely thought about it before.

Because I wanted to succeed in my goal the first time round, I sat down to work out a strategy that would definitely secure a victory. There were many things I did in preparation of the goal, including a full research on veganism, anticipating obstacles that would prevent my successful transition and my counterplan for those obstacles. I got in touch with vegan/vegetarian communities, made a list of nutritional sources from foods so I would have adequate nutrition, bought a blender to prepare my meals at home, among many other things.

The outcome was a home run. Not only did I not feel any desire to eat meat afterwards, I also did not experience any difficulty in the process. In return, I almost enjoyed the upsides of being a vegan immediately, such as the increased mental clarity, the increased vitality, improved sense of morality, among others. While I have heard of other people who try to become a vegetarian/vegan and revert back to meat within the first week, I did not experience any of such problems. I became a vegan immediately and have never looked back since.

Develop Your Strategy

As you look at your goal, think about what are your strategies to achieve this goal. What is going to be your blueprint for success? What can you do to fully bust this goal? No matter how huge your goal is, there will be an underlying set of patterns which will allow you to conquer it.

Below are 8 guides to develop your strategy:

1. Understand The Goal Thoroughly.

What do you know about the goal? What are all the information you need about the goal in order to achieve success? What does the goal constitute? What is the gap that exists between you and the goal currently? List down all the information and knowledge you have that you think will play an important role in reaching your goals.

2. Leverage on the Mastery of Existing Resources.

As you are collecting the information, think about the existing resources you leverage on in your goal pursuit. There is an amazing wealth of knowledge and experience around you which you can utilize. One of the ways will be reaching out to people who have tried to achieve the goals or even achieved the goals before. If possible, look for mentors or coaches to help. Other sources include the websites, books, podcasts, online communities, friends, just to name a few.

3. Identify your More with Less Route, or 80/20 Route.

After you have obtained all the knowledge on your goal, identify all the paths you can take on to reach there. think about all the potential paths that can be undertaken to move towards your goals. Brainstorming plays an important role here, since you want to leave no stones unturned. Go wild with your ideas; really think out of the box! Visit 25 Brainstorming Techniques for solid brainstorming techniques you can use for this exercise.

After you are done brainstorming, assess all those options based on the information you have. Out of all those paths, which is your More with Less or 80/20 route? The More with Less or 80/20 route refers to the path which gives you the most reward for the least effort, as opposed to other paths which may give you low reward for low effort, high reward for high effort, or low reward for high effort.

4. Identify the Key Pillars of Success, or 80/20 Actions.

After you have identified your 80/20 route, identify your key pillars of success. Key pillars of success are the few action steps which give you the bulk of the results; they absolutely need to be executed for your goal to be a success. Another name for them will be the 80/20 Actions; the 20% of actions you undertake which give you 80% of results. Again, do not be caught up in the number 80/20; it is just a metaphor for the disproportionate relationship between cause and effect.

Rank your key pillars of succes pillars in order of importance; this prioritization will guide you as you move to Planning/Execution. To be able to identify these pillars, you need to obtain a thorough knowledge on the subject matter and goal itself (see point 1 above).

For all the other action steps that are not your key pillars of success, they fall under your 20/80 actions. These are 80% of your actions which give you only 20% of the results for your goal. There is no need to discard them per se; when the need comes, you just need to prioritize your 80/20 Actions over your 20/80 Actions. We will talk more about this in Planning.

5. Pre-empt your obstacles and identify solutions to bust them.

Imagine that you are now pursuing your goal using your 80/20 route and key pillars of success you have identified above. Simulate the scenario as vividly as you can in your mind. What obstacles do you anticipate standing in your way of success? If you have pursued this goal in the past, what derailed you? Write all these obstacles down and rank them in order of magnitude. The bigger the obstacle is in diverting you from the goal, the higher the rank.

From here, start brainstorming on ways to bust the barriers. When you do this, you will have a set of ready solutions at your disposal when you face these obstacles later on. Instead of getting distracted in the middle of your goal pursuit to troubleshoot those barriers, you can easily brush them aside with the solutions you have developed. You can use the list of 25 Brainstorming Techniques for this exercise as well to identify ways to break out of those obstacles.

For example, when I was working out my strategy to lose weight, I realized that I had a penchant for doughnuts (Homer Simpson, anyone?). If I were to start eating a doughnut, it would set off the trigger to break out within the confines of my diet; in fact this was one of the reasons why my previous weight loss efforts were futile. I addressed the issue by staying away from doughnut shops, refusing doughnut offers from friends, telling my mom to stop buying donuts home. Nowadays it is no longer a problem as my natural inclination is towards much healthier foods and I find donuts too sweet for my taste.

6. Obliterate Your Goals with Overwhelming Force.

This is a tactic used in military to overkill the opposition. The concept of overwhelming force means over-committing all your resources, time and energy so that there is absolutely zero possibility of you failing. While it is possible for you to achieve your goals with lesser resources, you are also eliminating any chances of failure. Isn’t it more effective to get the job done once and for all, rather than dragging it around? Within the More With Less route and key pillars of success you have defined, what are all the things you can do to absolutely overkill you or goals, without any question of doubt?

7. Leverage on Your Environment.

Your environment guides your actions and behaviors and can be leveraged on to aid you in your goal pursuit. When you are in a building, notice how its structure alters your decisions and actions inside accordingly, whether it’s walking in a certain direction to get to a room, the use of elevator or stairs to get to a different level, and so on.

Ask yourself this – How can you use your surroundings to support you in your goal? How can you modify your surroundings in a way such that it aids you in achieving your goal? What kind of environments can you immerse in that will set you on sail towards your goals? As you start observing your environment, you will find there are actually many ways you can make use of it.

For example, you may want to become fit. You can put up pictures of athletes around your room to remind yourself of your goal. You can start throwing out your larger clothes and buy fitting or smaller clothes in preparation for your new body. You can hire a trainer to get you up to speed. You can remove all the junk food in your house so that you will not have the opportunity to eat them. You can join both online and offline communities where fit people will amass, such as sports clubs, marathon groups, etc.

Be sure to read my article: Using Your Environment To Achieve Your Goals

8. Develop Your Skills.

With the achievement of every goal, there are different skills which you need to learn. The core skills are the ones which are critical to the success of the goal. The secondary skills are nice-to-haves and not need-to-haves to achieve your desired output. Which are the core skills and secondary skills for your goal? How can you develop these core skills to ramp up your chances of success?

Be sure to read my articles on skills development:

• Skills Development | Leveling Up | 10,000 Hours To Develop Talent

9. Create accountability.

Create accountability via two levels. The first level is accountability towards yourself, which we will discuss in the last step of ESPER, Review.

The second level is extending accountability beyond yourself. Who are the people you can get to hold you accountable for your results? You can get together with a friend who is sharing the same goal, share your plans and targets with each other and start holding each other accountable. Join support groups or communities which are related to your goals, such as weight loss groups, Alcoholic Anonymous, entrepreneur societies, Toastmasters, etc. Around you, start telling everyone about your goal and your desired outcome. They will start associating you with your goal and ask you for updates the next time they meet you.

At the end of the day though, remember your goal is your responsibility solely and its success depends on you. People around you can only serve as an aid.

The strategies you develop will form the foundation which your goal plan will be built upon. We will be discussing about Planning in the next part.

This is part 4 of a 7-part series on what it takes to successfully achieve goals.

• Part 1: Goal Achievement: Introduction
• Part 2: ESPER
• Part 3: Establish
• Part 4: Strategy
• Part 5: Planning
• Part 6: Execution
• Part 7: Review

Related Posts:

• Goal Achievement: Planning
• Goal Achievement: Execution
• Goal Achievement: Establish
• Goal Achievement: Review
• Not Getting What You Want? Time To Change Your Actions
• Goal Achievement: Introduction
• Goal Achievement: ESPER
• Apply 80/20 to Your Life Now in 3 Simple Steps