When Will You Achieve It?

The question today is, “when?”  When will you achieve the things you’ve set out to do?

I’m talking–this week and next–about a series of questions that leads you to change, transformation, and accomplishment.  Know who you are, what you’re about, and what you’re trying to do.  Yesterday’s question was, “What do you want to achieve?”  Today’s question is, “When will you achieve it?”

Due Dates

Not everything is immediate gratification, and the best things take time to accomplish, to earn, and to deserve.  So, answering this question is really about creating timelines.  If your goal is to get in shape for summer, you probably missed the boat on that one.  You would have needed to start several months ago.  If your goal is to get in shape for next summer, then that’s another story entirely.

Identifying the whens of your goal helps you to create a plan.  You can work back from the deadlines you’ve created to fill-in milestones along the path.  Knowing that your 100 push-up goal will need to build by 10 push-ups a month over the next 10 months means you have a concrete place to start: 10 reps today.  You also have the motivation of knowing you’ll need to do be able to do 20 reps in a month from now in order to keep on track for your goal.

Start Dates

The other side of this coin is knowing when to start, or–more accurately–what to start when.  Any goal can be broken-down into sub goals and sets of actions needed to achieve them.  These are the things you need to do in order to be able to do the things you need to do to do the big thing.

Once you’ve put a start date on something and an end date on something, then it’s not longer a dream or a fantasy, now it’s a plan.  Do you see this picture coming into focus now?  When you know who you are and what’s really driving you, then you add to that a clear vision of what you want to achieve–then start putting boundaries and parameters on that vision–you’re building an actionable plan.  It’s so real in your mind now, and maybe even written down on paper, that the only thing remaining to do to make it real is to take action.

The question today was, “When will you achieve the things you’ve set out to do?”  But I think the real question is, “If not now, when?”