QUESTION: What’s the best way to get the most out of the second half of 2024?
Clarity is Key for Implementation and Execution
The biggest thing I have always seen with clients, my recruiters, and myself, quite bluntly, is whenever I have struggled with implementation, execution, and delivery, I find that I have lacked clarity on what I truly wanted. Yeah, I wanted more money or more placements. Still, if I had not defined that specifically, I would struggle when I said more money.
If I did have a specific amount, then I did not have a place to allocate it, meaning, was it going to go into savings? Was it going to go into money for a down payment on a house, a different vehicle, a vacation, or long-term financial security?
The Importance of Vision
When I was a young parent in the late 1990s, my daughter was probably 4 or 5 years old. It was a rainy weekend, so we were going to do a puzzle. This puzzle was designed for a 5-year-old, and it was nothing too complex, but I was always taught that you begin by spreading out all the pieces and doing the edges.
One of the questions I always ask people is, when you start a puzzle, what’s your first step? Generally, people say you do the edges, flip all the pieces over, and combine the right colors. Those are all great second, third, or fourth steps. However, the natural first step is looking at the box top.
My ah-ha moment came when I was building this puzzle with my daughter and she said, “Look, Daddy, it’s a beach scene.” I said, “Oh, we’re building a beach scene.”
New Year’s Eve Reflection
What is your box top? What exactly, specifically, and precisely are you trying to build in the second half of 2024 to make it a great year? The question you can all ask yourself is this question. Imagine it’s December 31st, 2024. It is New Year’s Eve. You and I were to meet at a holiday party, and you came up to me and went, Mike, in 2024, I had my best year ever. Or, I had a great year and was thrilled with my progress. Write down exactly what you accomplished.
What has to be true for you to be delighted with your progress, personally and professionally, on December 31st, 2024?
Images in The Brain
Get really vivid with your answers. You want to avoid general goals such as more revenue and more time off. If it is more money, be specific! Say something like, “I billed another $125,000, and I had some expenses associated with that, and I paid some taxes, and I kept $90,000. Of that $90,000, I took this exotic vacation, and we went to Fiji, and then I took another week and an Alaskan cruise.” You start detailing where you went on that cruise because the brain works off images.
The brain works off images. It is important to remember that because when you say make another $125,000 a year, that really does not register. Once you say, well, I am going to eliminate $20,000 of debt, I am going to go on those exotic vacations, I am going to put $10,000 away toward my child’s education, now those are all motivations.
Painting Your Box Top
To get off to a quick start, answer that question. Paint your box top. Bonus points if you look three years out and say, here is personally and professionally what my life looks like three years from now. The beauty of going three years out is that your brain will not fight you as much on it if it is realistic. Your brain will not fight you as much on, “But I do not know how to do it.”
All good goals, all challenging goals, one should not know how to do them when they set them. If you know exactly how to do them, you are probably just experiencing marginal growth for what you have already been doing from an existing standpoint. I would invite you to consider that it is only paper when writing stuff down! But if it comes up as a point of desire, there has got to be a path to getting there. You do not have to know what it is when you set the desire. You just have to start taking the first step.
Reverse Engineering Your Goals
I use this in our training a lot, too. If you are going to leave in the middle of the night from New York City in a car and drive to Los Angeles, you will plug the address into your GPS so it tells you to take this turn, take that turn, take this turn. Here’s the other thing: it is at night. Let’s assume there are not even any streetlights.
Your headlights give you 100 to 200 yards worth of view or vision. When you go 100 feet, your headlights go another 100 feet. You always have 300 yards worth of vision. You cannot see Los Angeles in your headlights. Even if you are going during the day, you cannot see Los Angeles. You are following the GPS, and your headlights are lighting the way.
Stuff Shows Up
The combination of answering this question and beginning to take action is essential because if you back test this in your own life, I think you will find that as soon as you start taking action, ideas, strategies, people’s help, whatever, begins to show up that will take you the next 100 yards and the next 100 yards until you ultimately get to your destination. I would set that intent and then I would begin to reverse engineer it.
Here is where I want to be on December 31st. Here is where I need to be on October 31st. And if I want to be here on October 31st, here is where I should probably be on July 31st. If I should be there on July 31st, what does a great first week of July look like to put me on target for October 31st, which puts me on target for December 31st? When you think a year out, it is too long, but I can think a week out and get really specific and granular with a month, a week, and a day.
This is a fantastic question for this time of year.
Ready to go deeper?
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