Imagine if every morning, your job was to put pieces of jigsaw puzzle
together—only, you have no idea what the final picture is supposed to look
like, because you don’t have the box with the picture on it! How would you
proceed?
This is life without a plan or Preferred Future. The law of life
is this: “If you don’t know why you’re doing what you do, you’ll
never have the time to get it done.”
Your life and work are a series of choices, and the activities you
choose to perform determine your results. And the choice you have is between a
plain future or a Preferred Future.
The secret of achieving your Preferred Future is to work on your
highest priorities—the things that will help you achieve your goals, not
just the easiest things on your list.
Five Steps
Here are the five steps you’ll need to follow to reach your
Preferred Future.
- Clearly define your Preferred Future. “I want to make more money”
is not clearly defined. “I want to double my income so I can pay off my
debts and retire by age 60” is a clearly defined result. If you don’t
know what the final picture looks like, there is no way you can assemble the puzzle.
- Know why this Preferred Future is important to you. Knowing why the result
matters to you, will allow you to make decisions and judgments along the way that
will help you get there sooner. Is a job offer important to you because of the
money or the status in the eyes of your peers? If you don’t know why, you
might make the wrong choice for the wrong reason. Seek to do the right thing at
the right time for the right reason.
- Identify a small step that will open the door. You can’t build your
Preferred Future overnight. But every journey has its first step, and each step
leads to the next. And while some are much harder than others, you have to find
a place to start and then begin.
- Monitor your progress. As you progress, keep a record. Make a daily, monthly,
quarterly, yearly, and three-year plan. And take notes. Determine what works and
what doesn’t. Decide what you would do differently or better. If you don’t
track where you are, you won’t know where you’re going.
- Modify your actions based on what you learn. When you know what works and
what doesn’t, change your action steps. When you know what you’d do
better next time, do it. Revise your plans to reach your goal.
What you focus on gets stronger. So, choose the most important puzzle
pieces in your life that will help you to build your Preferred Future. PE
