Image by yogesh more from Pixabay
When it is obvious that I cannot reach the goals, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.–Confucius
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How many of you have set a goal, laid out the action steps, and found out you would not achieve the goal after beginning the work? (I raise my hand). This will not be a rare occurrence. The reason it will not be rare is that we are doing something we have not done before. We are traveling in uncharted territory. So what do we do? We take the learning that we have gained and re-apply that knowledge to the original plan and try it out. We continue this until we have achieved what we envisioned to be the goal.
Look at any art. Writing a book? Composing music? Painting a picture? If you take any artistic goal, you find that art is a series of improvements. You write the first draft. It’s ok, but needs a lot of work. The work is where the art is. You change a sentence here, move a paragraph there, change the title or order of your chapters to make your work more readable or fluid. This is yet another example of being flexible with your plans, knowing that you will make mistakes as you go. We make mistakes because we don’t know what we don’t know.
How can we avoid mistakes? Well, I think it’s impossible to avoid mistakes entirely. You can minimize mistakes by learning from others. There are many people on this planet and a lot of them who post tutorials, lessons, and other information that worked for them. Heck, right here on WordPress, you can find articles about anything. Some of them are terrific! For others you may have to find something on YouTube, an online course, or your local library.
You could use this as part of your plan to achieve a goal. Learn how to do what you want to do at some point. Let’s say you want to learn how to write a nonfiction book. You can find books, papers, classes all over the internet discussing this very topic. Fiction writing, writing poetry, or writing a short story are waiting for you to read, watch, and learn.
One of my bucket list items is to write a mobile app. I’m taking courses on Codecademy to learn the basics of programming. Then I can look for classes on mobile programming and I’m almost home. Then it’s just a matter of developing what I want to create for my mobile app and then learning the processes involved for submitting my app to the iTunes and Google Play stores. I haven’t looked yet, but know there are courses and tutorials available for this thing.
If you have your goal set in your mind, the pieces of the puzzle you need to complete that picture are waiting for you. Remember that you will make mistakes. That’s ok. It’s all part of learning how to do something. Once you know how to do something you can do the work and bring it home.
Well, that’s it for today, folks. I hope some of you enjoy this. If you have any stories to tell about how you found out how to do something, post a link here.
As always, have a great Wednesday!
Until next time…
Dave
