Today is New Year’s Eve. Like most people in the world, I’m taking time to reflect on how the past year went, while also gazing ahead to the new one that awaits. Every year, I set goals or “resolutions” on how to be a better man. I succeed with some but fail in others. Many people become jaded with New Year’s resolutions because they often go un-achieved. Some people are just complacent with themselves. I read today that one individual wasn’t planning on setting New Year’s resolutions because, well, he likes the way he is and doesn’t want to change.
I like myself plenty, but I know there are areas where I can improve my life.
I’ve read plenty of self-improvement books on how to set goals. I’m sure you all have, too. They all pretty much say the same thing: Set specific goals, make sure your goals are measurable, set goals that stretch you, etc. That’s all fine, but setting goals is the easy part. How do we actually achieve them? Most books will tell us that we need to post our goals somewhere that we can see them all the time, repeat them everyday, or make some lame “vision board” so you can visualize your goal. Somehow that’s going to help us achieve our dreams.
I’ve been skipping the regurgitated fluff by self-help gurus and instead seeking advice on how to be a better man and achieve my goals from history’s greatest men. How did I get the advice of history’s great men? I read their biographies. Here’s what I’ve learned from them on how to succeed at your goals.
Establish a system. As a young man, Benjamin Franklin set the audacious goal of “achieving moral perfection.” Franklin set mini-goals to live one of 13 virtues as perfectly as he could each week. In order to achieve his goal of moral perfection, he established a system that helped him keep track of how he was doing in his progress to moral perfection. His system consisted of 13 small charts which contained a column for each day of the week and 13 rows marked with the first letter of his 13 virtues. Franklin evaluated himself at the end of each day. He placed a dot next to each virtue he had violated. The goal was to minimize the number of marks, thus indicating a “clean” life free of vice. With just a glance, Franklin could see how he was doing on his goals.
While Franklin never achieved moral perfection, he didn’t think the project was a waste because he was definitely a better man after he was done.
We can apply the same principle Franklin utilized by establishing a system to help us keep track of our progress. If your goal is to lose 40 lbs this year, create daily mini-goals like Franklin did with his virtues, and make a mark when you don’t achieve those daily goals. A mini-g0al for losing 40 pounds could be exercising every day or not eating junk food during the week. If you slip up on those goals, make a mark for that day. The goal is to have fewer and fewer marks.
Download this replica of Franklin’s chart and adapt it to your goal. You can also use a really handy and FREE online service called Joe’s Goals. It’s basically Franklin’s charts online.
Create a daily regimen and stick to it. How many of us get up each day not knowing what in the heck we’re going to do with our time? What usually happens? We get a few things done, but then we waste the rest of our time surfing the web or watching TV. Great men from history ALWAYS knew what they were going to do each day because they had a daily routine and stuck to it like clockwork. Throughout his life, Teddy Roosevelt maintained a rigid daily routine; a habit he picked up from his father. He set aside specific time each day for study, exercise, and work. Ben Franklin shared his daily schedule with us in his biography.
In a letter to his son, George Washington laid out a daily routine for the young man to follow every day of the week, giving the exact time he should spend with each activity. Washington ended his letter by saying:
Time disposed of in this manner, makes ample provision for exercise and every useful, or necessary recreation, and at the same time that the hours allotted for study, if really applied to it, instead of running up and down stairs, and wasted in conversation with any one who will talk with you, will enable you to make considerable progress in whatsoever line is marked out for you.
If we know what we’re going to do and at what time we’re going to do it, we’ll be less likely to waste time with trifles.
December 31, 2010
