I was recently fortunate to be able to attend a presentation by Joe Pulluzi, who is the founder of the Content Marketing Institute. I was expecting him to give me some pearls of wisdom about how to generate some awesome content – maybe even some tips about how to create something to share with you – but I came away with something far more valuable. He taught me the secret to success in whatever it is that you want to do. 
Have you ever heard of the phrase “Tabula Rasa”? It comes from the Latin for blank slate, and is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception.
So what if you were the blank slate and could be or do anything you wanted. What would it be? Five years from today, what is it that you would want to have achieved?
-Do you want to write a book?
-Meet the man/woman of your dreams?
-Lose 40lbs?
-Do you want to be rich?
Or maybe you just want to make sure that your kids make it through college.
Well I’m here to tell you that there is a formula for success and it is used by the most accomplished people in the world – including Joe, who had a goal to start his business, build it up and sell it in 5 years for $15 million. Guess what? He did it, it took him an extra month longer than planned, but he got the price he wanted!
The formula that Joe uses is:
- Record
- Repeat
- Remove
The first step is to RECORD.
Most of us know this already, but writing a goal down makes it far more likely to be achieved. Depending on which survey you want to believe, as few as 10 percent of people write down their goals BUT, that 10% are more successful in achieving their goals than the other 90% combined.
SO it doesn’t matter what your objectives are, WRITE THEM DOWN. There are a lot of reasons why this is a good idea.
- It Serves As a Reminder – Writing down your goals helps to remind you of what you are trying to achieve. Funny enough we forget so many good ideas without even realizing it, they vanish as soon as they pop up in our minds.
- It’s a way of bringing your vision into reality – Our ideas will remain stuck in our minds until we write them down and commit to achieving them. Most people have lofty visions for their lives, but not until it is written down, they risk of not achieving their goals.
- It can be used as a way of tracking your progress – In the process of achieving your goals is very important to keep track of progress made along the line. You should also keep track of your failures, that way you are likely not to repeat the mistakes that made you fail.
- It helps you filter opportunities – As you begin to achieve success in certain areas of your life, you will find more opportunities coming your way. Sometimes these opportunities become a distraction that can push you off track.
The next step is to REPEAT.
What this means is that every day and every night we review our written goals. This may sound excessive, but in reality should take less than 15 minutes – or about 1% of your day. What we are trying to achieve here is to reprogram our minds to actually believe that our goals are achievable, because the key to achieving a goal is the FAITH that it’s possible. By reviewing our goals daily, we are also creating a habit – to see how to effectively create a habit see Anita’s article for this month – which on average takes around 66 days. Part of this process is about self-accountability. If you are forcing yourself to look at your goals every day and every night, you can be sure that you are actively working towards them.
The final step of the process is to REMOVE.
The most successful people will tell you that the key to their success is focus. They are single minded in pursuing their goals. This means two things. Firstly they don’t have a lot of goals, they concentrate on just one, or maybe two. Secondly, they cut distractions out of their lives – the things that aren’t helping them towards their goals. The average person spends a combined 4-5 hours per day watching television, using social media and playing games on their smartphone. Considering that most people are only awake 16 hours per day, that’s between 25-30% of their waking hours “wasted” on non-value added activities. Successful people watch hardly any television and they don’t play Candy Crush or Angry Birds. They have chosen to remove these things from their lives because they realize that to achieve their goals means they need to concentrate on what’s important, and to cut out what’s not.
If you want to be like them you need to realize that they aren’t smarter or “luckier” than you. No! The only difference is that they made a decision to focus. So stop getting upset by the results you didn’t get, with the work you didn’t do and begin to reprogram your brain with the 3 R’s.
If you struggle with creating plans or with holding yourself accountable to follow the plans you have created give Jager Consulting a call on (440) 385-6737 and take advantage of our free initial consultation.