Kai Davis just sent me this excellent letter -

Sebastian,

I love this tip. I did something similar recently. I set aside some time - not too much, just 45 minutes or an hour - and brainstormed out what I wanted my self-performance review to look like at the end of the year. What are my major objectives:

Make more money?

Meet more friends?

Lose weight?

Learn to dance?

Regardless of what it was, I then broke it down to more actionable goals. If I want to lose weight, how much do I want to lose? How much is that each month?

Then I can focus in on smaller goals, like realizing losing 2lbs/month adds up to losing 24lbs.

I was able to divorce the destination (Lose 20lbs! Make $10,000 this year!) from the now. Instead of starting and failing when I don't lose 20lbs overnight, I have a list of long-term goals with monthly objectives. I can focus on losing 2lbs or making a few hundred this month and build a system thats easy to scale.

Thanks for the tip on Getting Some Victory. Loving the weekly emails. Congratulations on the 28,000 visitors.

Kai

I like this a lot. Kai's general guidelines -

1. Take 45-60 minutes and define your major objectives.
2. Break it down into something actionable and measurable.
3. Set a time.
4. Divide your goal by the time to completion to see how much progress you've got to make each.

"I was able to divorce the destination (Lose 20lbs! Make $10,000 this year!) from the now. Instead of starting and failing when I don't lose 20lbs overnight, I have a list of long-term goals with monthly objectives. I can focus on losing 2lbs or making a few hundred this month and build a system thats easy to scale."

You can find Kai at http://www.kaisdavis.com/.

His most recent post, "How I Earned $2,000/Hour Negotiating My Raise" is really good and worth reading. Check it out, and don't forget to leave Kai a comment if you like what he's writing.