The Formula: 5 Simple Steps To Accomplish Anything

Photo by Joshua Earle

You have something big that you want to accomplish, but you just don’t know where to begin. Maybe you want to:

• Start a business.
• Learn a new language.
• Travel to a distant country.
• Eliminate personal debt.
• Get in remarkable shape.
• Master an instrument.
• Buy your own home.
• Or write a book.

The challenge with big ambitious goals is that they can easily become overwhelming. So we postpone our plans for a future time when we’ll be more prepared, organized, and ready…

But that time never comes. And the “future you” that was supposed to be more prepared has an even longer list of excuses. More reasons to wait for another day.

Well, today is that day. Now is the time to start, because it’s only by starting that you’ll face your fears and begin to make progress.

To help, I’d like to share my simple five-step formula. This approach has helped me accomplish many of my biggest goals. And I believe it can be used to achieve just about anything you set out to achieve in life.

1. Clarify Your Biggest Dreams

What experiences do you want to have? Who do you want to spend your time with? What things really matter to you in the long run?

This step begins with accepting the natural limitations of time and energy. We can’t be everywhere, do everything, or share our lives with everyone. So we need to choose the things that are most important to us. We need to prioritize.

TO DO: Take out a pencil and paper. Briefly describe eight of the most important experiences, accomplishments, or results you want to achieve in your lifetime. Don’t worry about how to make them happen quite yet. Just dream big and write a sentence or two to describe each one.

Don’t know where to start? Consider the following questions:

• If you could travel or live anywhere in the world where would you go?
• Who do you look up to and what is it about them that you admire most?
• What are your favorite hobbies and how could they be taken further?
• How do you want to be remembered by your closest friends and family?
• What’s something you always wanted to learn but never had time to start?

Your list doesn’t have to be perfect. Take as much time as you need to describe eight things that matter to you.

Keep in mind you can always revise this list in the future.

TO DO: With your list ready take a moment to circle the three most important experiences or achievements that you absolutely must accomplish in life. Then take a moment to write a paragraph or so about why each of these three things are important to you.

2. Establish Measurable Goals

The process of setting goals is widely regarded as an effective way to accomplish something, but the truth is it’s just one step in the process. More on that in a bit, but for now let’s focus on turning our dreams into concrete and measurable goals.

Step one was all about providing ourselves with a rough sense of direction. Now it’s time to get clear on exactly what we want to accomplish on our way to making those dreams a reality. This is important because it gives us a way to measure progress. It also makes it possible to celebrate milestones in the future.

For this exercise, we’re going to use S.M.A.R.T. goals. There are a few established variations of this acronym, but here is the one we will use.

Specific: Every goal should be specific about what must be accomplished.
Measurable: There should be a way to measure progress from start to finish.
Achievable: The outcome should be something you can realistically achieve.
Relevant: It should be related to your dreams as described in step one.
Timely: There should be a clear due date as opposed to being open-ended.

TODO: Take out another piece of paper. Write out two S.M.A.R.T. goals for each of the three dreams circled from step one. That means a total of six goals. Choose things that will help you move closer to realizing those dreams.

These shouldn’t be action items or simple tasks. The idea is to map out major accomplishments that will help us measure success as we close in on achieving our dreams.

For example, let’s say you’ve always dreamed of playing the guitar and jamming along with a cover band to some of your favorite songs. You might consider milestones like:

• “It’s January. I’ve taken four months of private lessons and I now feel comfortable playing basic chords and can even play a few simple songs.”
• “It’s March. I’ve joined a local band, and we just played our very first show in front of a real live audience of friends and family members.”

Notice how these goals are written in present tense? This is a technique that helps to internalize the result that we want to achieve. Also note that both are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.

3. Develop Supportive Habits

Earlier I hinted that goals are just one step in the process. It’s not enough to just know what we want to accomplish. We have to put in the time and effort to make things happen.

That’s why we need to focus on our habits. We all have habits. Patterns that we go through on a daily or weekly basis with little to no thought. Things like: when we wake up, how we spend our morning, where we go to work, what we eat, who we hang out with, and even what we do for fun.

These habits ultimately determine our future. So the easiest way to alter our future is to make intentional adjustments to these routines.

But here’s the thing… change is really hard.

That’s both the blessing and the curse of habits. It’s great because once we establish a new habit, it doesn’t take much to maintain it. But this also means that it’s really hard to change the habits we already have.

Here are some quick tips for changing habits:

• Focus on just a single habit change at a time.
• Repeat it for at least 30 days before starting another.
• Start out with a very small and simple commitment.
• Complete it within the first three hours of each day.

It’s very important that we start with just a single change. And that we keep that change as small as possible. So for example, if we want to start practicing the guitar — just commit to spending 10 minutes practicing first thing each morning. You can always increase the time later, but it’s better to start small than to overcommit and set yourself up for failure.

The reason we want to develop new habits in the morning is because that’s when we have the most control over our time. We can easily wake up 20–30 minutes earlier and, if something unusual comes up, we have the rest of the day to make up for it.

TODO: Write out three new habits you want to introduce over the next 90 days. These should relate back to your goals from step two. Get clear on the specifics of when, where, and how you’re going to follow through on these habits each and every day.

Then choose the first habit and be ready to put all of your energy into making it happen for the next 30 consecutive days. After that, you’ll be ready to take on the second habit for days 31–60. And when you’re finished you can start the third habit for days 61–90.

4. Complete Bite-Sized Actions

One of hardest things about starting and maintaining a new habit is avoiding uncertainty. Whether you want to spend time exercising, painting, practicing guitar, learning to cook, or almost anything else. Uncertainty about what to do next can kill your momentum.

There’s nothing worse than waking up early to begin your exciting new habit — only to sit there not knowing where to start.

This is why I recommend being proactive when it comes to maintaining a list of new and interesting actions. Small steps that you can easily complete to chip away at your larger goals.

Don’t know where to start? Here are some actions to do first:

• Look for books, videos, or websites on related topics.
• Find a community online or offline with a shared interest.
• Find a teacher or mentor that can accelerate your learning.
• Look for concerts, events, or videos that inspire you.

These examples are designed to help you discover even better actions. The goal isn’t to spend your time reading, talking, and learning about a topic. It’s to use these tasks to find genuine steps you can take to start making real progress towards your goals and dreams.

TO DO: Write out at least ten clear actions that you can take right away. Make sure at least one of them is about researching advice or additional steps you can take in the future. Then prioritize these actions with a rating of 1–5.

Remember, it’s important to always be proactive about growing this list. You never want to get stuck looking at a list of only one or two options.

The goal is to always have a few really exciting things that you can’t wait to get started on. That way you look forward to coming back to the list instead of feeling like it’s just work.

5. Review And Celebrate Results

Few things are as motivating as seeing undeniable evidence of real tangible progress. Not only does this validate the time and energy that you’ve already spent, but it also shows what’s possible if you continue to stick with it.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to become so focused on a larger goal that we fail to recognize early progress. This can become discouraging. That’s why it’s so important to take time to review and celebrate your results.

Do this early and often.

In fact, even as you read this, it’s important to recognize that you’ve already taken some important steps. You’ve put in the time to read this guide, and you’ve started to put your ideas on paper.

TO DO: Start a simple journal where you can list all of your meaningful accomplishments. This is where you will take note of completed actions, newly established habits, and any other results as you accomplish them.

For each entry be sure to write down what you accomplished, why it was important to you, and the date of completion.

And then schedule reminders to review the entries in this journal at least once every two months. You’ll be amazed to look back and see just how much you’ve accomplished. And that will give you the motivation to keep moving forward. It’s a powerful cycle.

Quick Summary

This formula gives you an opportunity to clarify your biggest dreams, establish measurable goals, develop related habits, complete bite-sized actions, and celebrate your results.

Each of these steps are valuable on their own, but their benefits are multiplied when used together as a complete system.

The process of clarifying your biggest dreams helps define what you want to achieve. It sharpens your focus and provides you with a clear sense of direction. While dreams can often be vague or idealistic, this is still a critical step in contemplating your future.

We then use these dreams and establish goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. Where a dream is an artistic or emotional explanation of where we want to go, our goals take more of a scientific approach to defining clear expectations.

To achieve these goals we need to take consistent action every day. That’s why we set out to develop habits that automate this for us. It’s not easy to change our habits, but it’s the best way to shift our time and energy towards our dreams.

To help us stay on track with habits, we need to be proactive in maintaining a list of bite-sized actions. Simple tasks that we can complete in a few short hours. That way we always have something to look forward to when returning to our daily habits.

Last but not least is the process of reviewing and celebrating results. This may be the single most important step because it helps us build momentum and inspires further progress.

It’s the key to maintaining passion, interest, and excitement.

Closing Thoughts

The process doesn’t stop here. This is a repeating cycle. As you begin to take action, you’re going to notice that your dreams from step one begin to sharpen. They may even change a little, so be prepared to adapt. I encourage you to review the entire process every few months. Feel free to adjust your goals, come up with new habits, and always list new bite-sized actions!

The one concern I have with writing this guide is that it may lead some to focus too much on the “process” and not enough on the journey itself. With that in mind, I encourage you to always trust your instincts and do what is best for you.

It’s critical that you’re able to maintain a clear sense of autonomy and freedom. If you ever feel that any part of this formula is getting in your way — change things up! Feel free to take the parts that work for you and ignore those that don’t. Never sacrifice your enjoyment of the journey for the sake of process or even progress.