When Anything Gets Measured, it gets Done

A genius without a roadmap will get lost in any city, whilst an average person with a clear map, will easily find their way to any location they want to travel to in the city. So even if you have a clearly defined concept about where you are and a crystal clear picture of where you want to go, you will never make it from one to the other unless you have proper map or plan.

Vague Plans, Result in Vague Outcomes
Always remember that a vague plan, will at best deliver vague or unsatisfying results, whilst a clear and concise plan will easily guide you to take the correct daily actions and help you achieve the outcomes you want. Ensure that you invest sufficient time to develop a well-designed plan, with very concise measurement criterion. Unless you constantly measure your progress against a well thought set of measurement criterion, you may very well be taking actions every day, which are not aligned with your goals.

Make Constant In-course corrections
When the Apollo Space craft took off from Cape Canaveral in the early 70’s and they were just one degree off alignment, the astronauts would have missed the moon by 300 000 miles. So to ensure that they remained on track they constantly made in-course corrections. They effectively failed their way to the moon, making tiny corrections all the way, to ensure that they reached their desired destination. They were only able to do this because they had a set of very concise measurement criterion and as the space craft passed these locations, the actual position was measured against the required location.

Include Measurement Criterion in your Plan
So it is not only important to have a plan, but when you are creating your plan make sure that you have a set of easy to measure and review, measurement criterion, against which you can regularly measure your progress. Apply discipline to measure your progress as often as feasible and then make any small changes or corrections necessary to keep you on track.

Patience and Persistence
One of the greatest challenges when you are on the path of success, is that you will become impatient and have unrealistic expectations about when projects or goals can be completed. As Anthony Robbins said, People often overestimate what they can achieve in a year, and significantly underestimate what they can achieve in a decade.

Take a Longer Term View and be Patient
Not having an understanding that achieving goals is a process and that things may not occur as fast as you would like them to happen, makes people feel like they are making no progress, so they give-up. When you are standing at the station and you look down the tracks and all you see are empty train tracks, do you just go home and say the train is not coming or do you walk over to the time table and check when the next train is expected and then wait for that train to arrive. When it arrives you board the train and just continue your journey. When you have concise measurement criterion for your goals, you can consistently measure your progress and create a realistic timetable of your own. This can then serve, to help you develop the patience you need to keep chipping away every day, until you succeed.

Measure your Progress
Whatever gets measured gets done. This is the main reason why you need a realistic set of measurement criterion, against which you can regularly measure your progress. This measurement criterion must be time defined, so that it can serve as your time table for success. As you know life is dynamic and things change all the time. These measurement criterions, are guidelines only. How many times do you think trains are delayed? Well the same is true for your goals; they can also be delayed by all sorts of unexpected delays. The secret is to know that even if the train is delayed, unless there has been a catastrophe, it is on its way. The same is true about your dreams.

Have Realistic expectations.
When you plant a seedling, if you constantly pull on the roots, do you thinks that it will grow any quicker. Obviously not, the same is true of your goals; they will materialize at the right time. The only thing over which you have control is that the more meaningful energy and effort you apply the sooner your dreams will materialize.