On a recent episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast, Tim said, “most people don’t attempt great things because they don’t believe they can do great things.”
This comment struck me as spot-on. We hold ourselves back because of limiting self-beliefs.
What if this is wrong, though? What if the self-imposed limits are not so much a lack of belief, but a result of the overwhelming nature of attempting to do some mambo, big, great thing?! Isn’t achieving a great thing just a bigger version of achieving a small thing?
If so, then we can break the achievement process down into a few manageable steps…
- Define the purpose and principles: what outcome are you trying to achieve, why, and under what set of game rules?
- Crystalize your vision of wild success: if you were wildly successful on this big thing when all was said and done, what would that look like in crystal clear detail?
- Brainstorm all the possible ways to get there: externalize a list of all the possible actions, considerations, and other ideas you may want to capture that could be relevant to the achievement of the great thing.
- Organize the results of your brainstorm: eliminate the ideas that don’t fit, prioritize or sequence what remains.
- Act on the next physical, visible thing that moves you closer to achievement: work on the first action in the priority order or sequence.
Simple? Yes! Easy? Not always. This model, the Natural Planning Model from the Getting Things Done methodology, is how we plan nearly everything we do from what to wear, to what to eat, to whether to get up and go to work today, to achieving world peace. Big or small, all great things can be much more simply accomplished when broken down into the natural sequence of activities necessary to achieve any outcome.
If you want to do great things, do small things well. And to identify which small things, break the process of achieving great things down. Works every time. And you just might surprise yourself with what you achieve.
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