Do you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, never quite reaching your goals? Where do you want your life to be a year from now?
In Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell offers a practical approach that can help you set and achieve an annual goal. He outlines a step-by-step process to clarify your vision, create an actionable plan, and align your goals with reality.
Read on to learn how to make this next year your most successful yet.
Your Annual Goal
To make the most of your time and achieve your life goals, define what you want in the next year and then design a plan to achieve it. A plan allows you to plot the best path toward your annual goal and, ultimately, your dream life.
Step 1: Clarify Your Goal
First, Martell recommends you visualize your dream life in as much detail as possible. Don’t limit yourself to what you think is realistic. The bigger the dream, the more it’ll inspire you and give you the push needed to achieve it. Martell suggests you outline three specific areas of your dream life:
- People: Who are the most important people working with you and supporting you in reaching your dream?
- Professional: What’s the one business you’re devoting yourself to? According to Martell, the most successful entrepreneurs focus all their energy on one business first. Once you’re clear on that, you can imagine ways of expanding your business, whether you’re introducing new products or tapping into new markets.
- Lifestyle: What does your home and personal life look like? What hobbies or community activities are you involved in?
(Shortform note: If you’re struggling to visualize your dream life through imagination alone, creating a vision board can help. Rhonda Byrne explains how to create one in The Secret: Find a poster board and attach images that represent your dream life. You could even consider splitting your vision board into three sections to cover the areas Martell recommends you imagine—one for the people you want in your life, one for your business, and one for your personal life. Byrne suggests taking a moment to feel the experience of each picture as you put it on your vision board and to put your finished board where you can see it often.)
Step 2: Identify Actionable Steps
Next, break down your dream into actionable steps. Identify the milestones you’ll need to reach on the way to your ultimate goal. Then jot down some key strategies for achieving each milestone. Martell recommends you rank each strategy based on how beneficial it would be, how easy it is to enact, and how confident you are that it’ll succeed.
For instance, if opening a successful restaurant is your dream, your milestones could involve professional training in restaurant management, gaining experience in a renowned restaurant, preparing a business plan, finding funding, and then finally launching your restaurant.
Step 3: Fill in Your Calendar
Then, schedule your year: Begin by slotting in significant events and important strategies for achieving your goals. Martell also recommends grouping similar events. For instance, you might decide to spend a month attending networking events and industry luncheons. Don’t forget to give yourself regular breaks so you can stay energetic and focused all year round. Lastly, add in everyday tasks such as personal obligations and recurring job duties.
| Create Your “Dreamline” In The 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss provides additional tips for how to turn your dreams into an actionable timeline. He also recommends you make your dreams unrealistic for the reasons Martell does, adding that such dreams have less competition than smaller dreams, which the majority of people pursue because they seem more achievable. Let’s look at Ferriss’s steps for planning your dream life and how they compare to Martell’s. First, Ferriss says you must get clear about what your dream is. Instead of visualizing three areas of life, he recommends you create a list of five things you want to have, five things you want to be, and five things you want to do within 12 months. To brainstorm these things, consider: • The opposite of what you don’t want • What you would do every day if you had $100 million • What would make you excited to wake up every morning • A place to visit, a bucket-list item, something you want to learn, or something you want to do regularly Second, choose your four most exciting and important dreams. Do some math to determine the monthly costs of each and the necessary income to fund them (a step Martell doesn’t discuss). Ferriss provides a calculator on his website for doing so. Third, Ferriss recommends you identify the first three steps for each of your four dreams rather than all of the steps to achieve your goals. These should be doable in less than five minutes and clearly defined. Ferriss recommends you do the first step right now—otherwise, you’ll delay it and potentially never get to it. Take the second step tomorrow and the third the day after. |
Step 4: Align Your Goal With Reality
To make sure you can successfully carry out your annual plan, consider the time, money, and energy that each event will demand. If you’re not confident that your plan will make your year fantastic, edit it some more. Once you’ve created your plan, stay committed to it, but leave room for unexpected opportunities. Having an annual plan allows you to be in control and enjoy life while pursuing your goals.
(Shortform note: While making a detailed plan will keep you on track with your goals, it’s important to recognize that you can’t control everything. In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman stresses the importance of being flexible when planning for the future. He states that expecting the future to unfold as you planned it leads to unhappiness and wasted planning time if those expectations aren’t met. Instead, be comfortable with uncertainty—reflect on how little control you’ve had over your past life events and remember that success can occur through unexpected events as well as planned ones.)
