LIVE BY PRIORITY

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”
 —Alan Lakein

Live with purpose and you know where you want to go. Live by priority and you’ll know what to do to get there.

Without direction, without purpose, whatever you “shall do” will always get you somewhere. But when you’re going somewhere on purpose, there will always be something you “should do” that will get you where you must go. When your life is on purpose, living by priority takes precedence.

GOAL SETTING TO THE NOW
Our life is driven by the purpose we give it. But there’s a catch even he had to confront. Purpose has the power to shape our lives only in direct proportion to the power of the priority we connect it to. Purpose without priority is powerless.

The truth is we have goals and plans for only one reason—to be appropriate in the moments of our lives that matter. While we may pull from the past and forecast the future, our only reality is the present moment. Right NOW is all we have to work with. Our past is but a former now, our future a potential one. To create a powerful priority as “Goal Setting to the Now” to emphasize why we were creating a priority in the first place.

The truth about success is that our ability to achieve extraordinary results in the future lies in stringing together powerful moments, one after the other. What you do in any given moment determines what you experience in the next. Your “present now” and all “future nows” are undeniably determined by the priority you live in the moment. The deciding factor in determining how you set that priority is who wins the battle between your present and future selves.

The further away a reward is in the future, the smaller the immediate motivation to achieve it.
Maybe it’s because objects that are farther away appear smaller, so people mistakenly assume they really are and discount their value.

We need a simple way of thinking to save us from ourselves, set the right priority, and move closer toward accomplishing our purpose.

Goal Setting to the Now will get you there. By thinking through the filter of Goal Setting to the Now, you set a future goal and then methodically drill down to what you should be doing right now.It can be a little like a Russian matryoshka doll in that your ONE Thing “right now” is nested inside your ONE Thing today which is nested inside your ONE Thing this week, which is nested inside your ONE Thing this month... . It’s how a small thing can actually build up to a big one. You’re lining up your dominoes.

To prove its value, just skip the steps by asking yourself, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do right now so I’m on track to achieve my someday goal?” Doesn’t work. The moment is too far from the future for you to clearly see your key priority In fact, you can keep adding back in today, this week, and so on, but you won’t see the powerful priority you seek until you’ve added back in all the steps. It’s why most people never get close to their goals. They haven’t connected today to all the tomorrows it will take to get there.

Connect today to all your tomorrows. It matters

People tend to be overly optimistic about what they can accomplish, and therefore most don’t think things all the way through. Researchers call this the “planning fallacy” Visualizing the process—breaking a big goal down into the steps needed to achieve it—helps engage the strategic thinking you need to plan for and achieve extraordinary results. This is why Goal Setting to the Now really works. 

Living a domino run.

Your last step is to write down your answers. Much has been written about writing down goals and for a very good reason—it works.

BIG IDEAS 

1. There can only be ONE. Your most important priority is the ONE Thing you can do right now that will help you achieve what matters most to you. You may have many “priorities, ” but dig deep and you’ll discover there is always one that matters most, your top priority—your ONE Thing.

2. Goal Set to the Now. Knowing your future goal is how you begin. Identifying the steps you need to accomplish along the way keeps your thinking clear while you uncover the right priority you need to accomplish right now.

3. Put pen to paper. Write your goals down and keep them close.

Pull your purpose through to a single priority built by Goal Setting to the Now, and that priority—that ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary —will show you the way to extraordinary results. And once you know what to do, the only thing left is to go from knowing to doing.