Part 2 My Most Fundamental Life Principles
The first stock I bought was a company called Northeast Airlines, and the only reason I bought it was that it was the only company I had heard of that was trading for less than $5 per share, so I could buy more shares, which I figured was a good thing. It went up a lot. It was about to go broke but another company acquired it, so it tripled. I made money because I was lucky, though I didn’t see it that way then.
So what I really wanted to do now was beat the market. I just had to figure out how to do it. The pursuit of this goal taught me:
1) It isn't easy for me to be confident that my opinions are right. In the markets, you can do a huge amount of work and still be wrong.
2) Bad opinions can be very costly. Most people come up with opinions and there’s no cost to them. Not so in the market. This is why I have learned to be cautious. No matter how hard I work, I really can’t be sure.
3) The consensus is often wrong, so I have to be an independent thinker. To make any money, you have to be right when they’re wrong.
So
1) I worked for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do. For that reason, I never felt that I had to do anything. All the work I ever did was just what I needed to do to get what I wanted. Since I always had the prerogative to not strive for what I wanted, I never felt forced to do anything.
2) I came up with the best independent opinions I could muster to get what I wanted.
The way I learn is to immerse myself in something, which prompts questions, which I answer, prompting more questions, until I reach a conclusion.
3) I stress-tested my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them so I could find out where I was wrong.
4) I remained wary about being overconfident, and I figured out how to effectively deal with my not knowing. I dealt with my not knowing by either continuing to gather information until I reached the point that I could be confident or by eliminating my exposure to the risks of not knowing.
Sometimes when I know that I don’t know which way the coin is going to flip, I try to position myself so that it won’t have an impact on me either way. In other words, I don’t make an inadvertent bet. I try to limit my bets to the limited number of things I am confident in.
5) I wrestled with my realities, reflected on the consequences of my decisions, and learned and improved from this process.
In a nutshell, this is the whole approach that I believe will work best for you—the best summary of what I want the people who are working with me to do in order to accomplish great things. I want you to work for yourself, to come up with independent opinions, to stress-test them, to be wary about being overconfident, and to reflect on the consequences of your decisions and constantly improve.
1) Failure is by and large due to not accepting and successfully dealing with the realities of life, and
success is simply a matter of accepting and successfully dealing with all my realities.
2) Finding out what is true, regardless of what that is, including bad stuff—like mistakes and personal weaknesses—is good because I can then deal with these things so that they don’t stand in my way.
3) there is nothing to fear from truth. knowing even the scary truths -- like having cancer -- allows us to deal with them better.
Being truthful, and letting others be completely truthful, allows me and others to fully explore our thoughts and exposes us to the feedback that is essential for our learning.
4) being truthful was an extension of my freedom to be me.
people who are one way on the inside and believe that they need to be another way outside to please others become conflicted and often lose touch with what they really think and feel --
difficult for them to be happy and almost impossible for them to be at their best.
5)
I want the people I deal with to say what they really believe and to listen to what others say in reply, in order to find out what is true.
6)
One of the greatest sources of problems in our society arises from people having loads of wrong theories in their heads—often theories that are critical of others—that they won’t test by speaking to the relevant people about them. Instead, they talk behind people’s backs, which leads to pervasive misinformation.
7)
making judgments about people so that they are tried and sentenced in your head, without asking them for their perspective, is both unethical and unproductive.
8)
everyone makes mistakes and has weaknesses and that one of the most important things that differentiates people is their approach to handling them.
9)
There is an incredible beauty to mistakes, because embedded in each mistake is a puzzle, and a gem that I could get if I solved it, i.e., a principle that I could use to reduce my mistakes in the future.
each mistake was probably a reflection of something that I was (or others were) doing wrong, so if I could figure out what that was, I could learn how to be more effective.
10)
popular picture of success—which is like a glossy photo of an ideal man or woman out of a Ralph Lauren catalog, with a bio attached listing all of their accomplishments like going to the best prep schools and an Ivy League college, and getting all the answers right on tests—is an inaccurate picture of the typical successful person.
I met a number of great people and learned that none of them were born great—they all made lots of mistakes and had lots weaknesses—and that great people become great by looking at their mistakes and weaknesses and figuring out how to get around them.
11)
the people who make the most of the process of encountering reality, especially the painful obstacles, learn the most and get what they want faster than people who do not. I learned that they are the great ones—the ones I wanted to have around me.
12)
While most others seem to believe that learning what we are taught is the path to success, I believe that figuring out for yourself what you want and how to get it is a better path.
13)
While most others seem to believe that having answers is better than having questions, I believe that having questions is better than having answers because it leads to more learning.
14)
While most others seem to believe that mistakes are bad things, I believe mistakes are good things because I believe that most learning comes via making mistakes and reflecting on them.
15)
While most others seem to believe that finding out about one’s weaknesses is a bad thing, I believe that it is a good thing because it is the first step toward finding out what to do about them and not letting them stand in your way.
16)
While most others seem to believe that pain is bad, I believe that pain is required to become stronger.
My Most Fundamental Principles
I found that if I accepted the realities (often in the form of problems) rather than wished that they didn’t exist and if I learned how to work with them rather than fight them, I could figure out how to get to my goals.
It might take repeated tries, and seeking the input of others, but I could eventually get there.
As a result, I have become someone who believes that we need to deeply understand, accept, and work with reality in order to get what we want out of life.
Whether it is knowing how people really think and behave when dealing with them, or how things really work on a material level—so that if we do X then Y will happen—understanding reality gives us the power to get what we want out of life, or at least to dramatically improve our odds of success. In other words, I have become a “hyperrealist.”
When I say I’m a hyperrealist, people sometimes think I don’t believe in making dreams happen. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, I believe that without pursuing dreams, life is mundane.
I am just saying that I believe hyperrealism is the best way to choose and achieve one’s dreams.
The people who really change the world are the ones who see what’s possible and figure out how to make that happen.
This brings me to my most fundamental principle:
Truth
—more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality— is the essential foundation for producing good outcomes.
This perspective gives me a non-traditional sense of good and bad: “good,” to me, means operating consistently with the natural laws, while “bad” means operating inconsistently with these laws.
For example, when a pack of hyenas takes down a young wildebeest, is this good or bad? At face value, this seems terrible; the poor wildebeest suffers and dies. Some people might even say that the hyenas are evil. Yet this type of apparently evil behavior exists throughout nature through all species and was created by nature, which is much smarter than I am, so before I jump to pronouncing it evil, I need to try to see if it might be good.
I believe that evolution, which is the natural movement toward better adaptation, is the greatest single force in the universe, and that it is good.
I believe that the desire to evolve, i.e., to get better, is probably humanity’s most pervasive driving force. Enjoying your job, a craft, or your favorite sport comes from the innate satisfaction of getting better.
Our lives are not satisfied by obtaining our goals rather than by striving for them—because of the law of diminishing returns.
In other words, the sequence of 1) seeking new things (goals); 2) working and learning in the process of pursuing these goals; 3) obtaining these goals; and 4) then doing this over and over again is the personal evolutionary process that fulfills most of us and moves society forward.
I believe that pursuing self-interest in harmony with the laws of the universe and contributing to evolution is universally rewarded, and what I call “good.”
Like the hyenas attacking the wildebeest, successful people might not even know if or how their pursuit of self-interest helps evolution, but it typically does.
We all have things that we value that we want and we all have strengths and weaknesses that affect our paths for getting them. The most important quality that differentiates successful people from unsuccessful people is our capacity to learn and adapt to these things.
However, typically defensive, emotional reactions—i.e., ego barriers—stand way of this progress. These reactions take place in the part of the brain called the amygdala. As a result of them, most people don’t like reflecting on their weaknesses even though recognizing them is an essential step toward preventing them from causing them problems.
The Personal Evolutionary Process
I believe that life consists of an enormous number of choices that come at us and that each decision we make has consequences, so the quality of our lives depends on the quality of the decisions we make.
We aren’t born with the ability to make good decisions; we learn it.
Reality
+ Dreams
+ Determination =
A Successful Life
Success is nothing more than getting what you want—and that it is up to you to decide what that is for you.
For most people success is evolving as effectively as possible, i.e., learning about oneself and one’s environment and then changing to improve. Personally, I believe that personal evolution is both the greatest accomplishment and the greatest reward.
For most people happiness is much more determined by how things turn out relative to their expectations rather than the absolute level of their conditions.
This basic principle suggests that you can follow one of two paths to happiness: 1) have high expectations and strive to exceed them, or 2) lower your expectations so that they are at or below your conditions. Most of us choose the first path, which means that to be happy we have to keep evolving.
Another principle to keep in mind is that people need meaningful work and meaningful relationships in order to be fulfilled.
Your Most Important Choices
As I mentioned, as we head toward our goals we encounter an enormous number of choices that come at us, and each decision we make has consequences. So, the quality of our lives depends on the quality of the decisions we make.
Choosing well is not dependent on our innate abilities such as intelligence or creativity, but more on what I think of as character. For this reason, I believe that most people can make the right choices.
The following five decision trees show these choices. I believe that those who don’t move effectively to their goals do the things on the top branches, and those who do move to them most quickly do the things on the bottom branches.
First: Allow Pain to stand in the Way Or Understand Pain to Produce Progress
It is a fundamental law of nature that to evolve one has to push one’s limits, which is painful, in order to gain strength—whether it’s in the form of lifting weights, facing problems head-on, or in any other way.
Please remember that:
Pain + Reflection = Progress
How big of an impediment is psychological pain to your progress?
Second: Avoid "Harsh Realities" Or Face "Harsh Realities"
People who confuse what they wish were true with what is really true create distorted pictures of reality that make it impossible for them to make the best choices.
In contrast, people who know that understanding what is real is the first step toward optimally dealing with it make better decisions.
So, remember...
Ask yourself, “Is it true?”
...because knowing what is true is good.
How much do you let what you wish to be true stand in the way of seeing what is really true?
Third: Looking Good Or Achieving Goal
People who worry about looking good typically hide what they don’t know and hide their weaknesses, so they never learn how to properly deal with them and these weaknesses remain impediments in the future. These people typically try to prove that they have the answers, even when they really don’t.
I have never met a great person who did not earn and learn their greatness.
This explains why people who are interested in making the best possible decisions rarely are confident that they have the best possible answers. So they seek to learn more (often by exploring the thinking of other believable people, especially those who disagree with them) and they are eager to identify their weaknesses so that they don’t let these weaknesses stand in the way of them achieving their goals.
How much do you worry about looking good relative to actually being good?
Fourth: Decisions Based On First-Order Consequences Only Or Based On First-, Second-, and Third-Order Consequences
People who overweigh the first-order consequences of their decisions and ignore the effects that the second- and subsequent-order consequences will have on their goals rarely reach their goals.
This is because first-order consequences often have opposite desirabilities from second-order consequences, resulting in big mistakes in decision-making.
For example, the first-order consequences of exercise (pain and time-sink) are commonly considered undesirable, while the second-order consequences (better health and more attractive appearance) are desirable.
By contrast, people who choose what they really want, and avoid the temptations and get over the pains that drive them away from what they really want, are much more likely to have successful lives.
How much do you respond to 1st order consequences at the expense of 2nd and 3rd order consequences?
Fifth: Hold Yourself Accountable Or Not
People who blame bad outcomes on anyone or anything other than themselves are behaving in a way that is at variance with reality, and subversive to their progress.
Successful people understand that bad things come at everyone and that it is their responsibility to make their lives what they want them to be by successfully dealing with whatever challenges they face. Successful people know that nature is testing them, and that it is not sympathetic.
How much do you let yourself off the hook rather than hold yourself accountable for your success?
In summary, I believe that you can probably get what you want out of life if you can suspend your ego and take a no-excuses approach to achieving your goals with open-mindedness, determination, and courage, especially if you rely on the help of people who are strong in areas that you are weak.
If I had to pick just one quality that those who make the right choices have, it is character.
Character is the ability to get one’s self to do the difficult things that produce the desired results.
Achieving success—whatever that is for you—is mostly a matter of personal choice and that, initially, making the right choices can be difficult. However, pushing your boundaries will make you stronger, which will lead to improved results that will motivate you, the more you operate in your “stretch zone,” the more you adapt and the less character it takes to operate at the higher level of performance.
Whether or not I achieve my goals is a test of what I am made of. It is a game that I play, but this game is for real. In the next part I explain how I go about playing it.
I don’t believe that limited abilities are an insurmountable barrier to achieving your goals, if you do the other things right.
Your Two Yous and Your Machine
Those who are most successful are capable of “higher level thinking” —i.e., they are able to step back and design a “machine” consisting of the right people doing the right things to get what they want. They are able to assess and improve how their “machine” works by comparing the outcomes that the machine is producing with the goals. It is a feedback loop.
Your goals will determine the “machine” that you create to achieve them; that machine will produce outcomes that you should compare with your goals to judge how your machine is working.
Your “machine” will consist of the design and people you choose to achieve the goals.
For example, if you want to take a hill from an enemy you will need to figure out how to do that— e.g., your design might need two scouts, two snipers, four
infantrymen, one person to deliver the food, etc.
While having the right design is essential, it is only half the battle. It is equally important to put the right people in each of these positions. They need different qualities to play their positions well—e.g., the scouts must be fast runners, the snipers must be precise shots, etc.
If your outcomes are inconsistent with your goals (e.g., if you are having problems), you need to modify your “machine,” which means that you either have to modify your design/culture or modify your people.
Do this often and well and your improvement process will look like the one on the left and do it poorly and it will look like the one on the right, or worse:
I call it “higher level thinking” because your perspective is of one who is looking down on at your machine and yourself objectively, using the feedback loop as I previously described. In other words, your most important role is to step back and design, operate and improve your “machine” to get what you want.
Think of it as though there are two yous—you as the designer and overseer of the plan to achieve your goals (let’s call that one you(1)) and you as one of the participants in pursuing that mission (which we will call you(2)).
You(2) are a resource that you(1) have to get what you(1) want, but by no means your only resource. To be successfully you(1) have to be objective about you(2).
If you(1) see that you(2) are not capable of doing something, it is only sensible for you(1) to have someone else do it.
In other words, you(1) should look down on you(2) and all the other resources at your(1) disposal and create a “machine” to achieve your(1) goals, remembering that you(1) don’t necessarily need to do anything other than to design and manage the machine to get what you(1) want. If you(1) find that you(2) can’t do something well fire yourself(2) and get a good replacement! You shouldn’t be upset that you found out that you(2) are bad at that—you(1) should be happy because you(1) have improved your(1) chances of getting what you(1) want. If you(1) are disappointed because you(2) can’t be the best person to do everything, you(1) are terribly naïve because nobody can do everything well.
The biggest mistake most people make is to not see themselves and others objectively. If they could just get around this, they could live up to their potentials.
My 5-Step Process to Getting What You(1) Want Out of Life
Have clear goals.
Identify and don’t tolerate the problems that stand in the way of achieving your goals.
Accurately diagnose these problems.
Design plans that explicitly lay out tasks that will get you around your problems and on to your goals.
Implement these plans—i.e., do these tasks.
You need to do all of these steps well in order to be successful.
A few general points about the process.
1) You must approach these as distinct steps rather than blur them together. Blurring the steps leads to suboptimal outcomes because it creates confusion and short-changes the individual steps. Doing each step thoroughly will provide information that will help you do the other steps well, since the process is iterative.
2) Each of these five steps requires different talents and disciplines. If you are missing any of the required talents and disciplines, that is not an insurmountable problem because you can acquire them, supplement them, or compensate for not having them. So you must be honestly self-reflective.
3) It is essential to approach this process in a very clear-headed, rational way rather than emotionally. Figure out what techniques work best for you; e.g., if emotions are getting the better of you, take time out until you can reflect unemotionally, seek the guidance of calm, thoughtful others, etc.
To help you do these things well—and stay centered and effective rather than stressed and thrown off by your emotions—try this technique for reducing the pressure: treat your life like a game or a martial art.
the big and really great news is that you don’t need to have all of these skills to succeed! You just have to 1) know they are needed; 2) know you don’t have some of them; and 3) figure out how to get them (i.e., either learn them or work with others who have them).
By and large, life will give you what you deserve and it doesn’t give a damn what you “like.” So it is up to you to take full responsibility to connect what you want with what you need to do to get it, and then to do those things—which often are difficult but produce good results—so that you’ll then deserve to get what you want.
The good news, as I have mentioned, is that most learning comes through making mistakes—so there is no end to learning how to play the game better.
5-Step CloseUp
1) Setting Goals
You can have virtually anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want.
In other words, to achieve your goals you have to prioritize, and that includes rejecting good alternatives (so that you have the time and resources to pursue even better ones—time being probably your greatest limiting factor, though, through leverage, you can substantially reduce time’s constraints).
It is important not to confuse “goals” and “desires.”
Goals are the things that you really want to achieve, while desires are things you want that can prevent you from reachingyour goals—as I previously explained, desires are typically first-order consequences.
Another common reason people fail at this stage is that they lose sight of their goals, getting caught up in day-to-day tasks.
Avoid setting goals based on what you think you can achieve.
This requires some faith that you really can achieve virtually anything, even if you don’t know how you will do it at that moment.
There is almost no reason not to succeed if you take the attitude of 1) total flexibility—good answers can come from anyone or anywhere (and in fact, as I have mentioned, there are far more good answers “out there” than there are in you) and 2) total accountability: regardless of where the good answers come from, it’s your job to find them.
Great expectations create great capabilities, in other words. And if I fail to achieve my goal, it just tells me that I have not been creative or flexible or determined enough to do what it takes, and I circle back and figure out what I need to do about this situation.
Your goal is always to make the best possible choices, knowing that you will be rewarded if you do. It’s like playing golf: sometimes you will be in the fairway and sometimes you will be in the rough, so you have to know how to play it as it lies.
Generally speaking, goal-setting is best done by those who are good at big-picture conceptual thinking, synthesizing, visualizing, and prioritizing.
In summary, in order to get what you want, the first step is to really know what you want, without confusing goals with desires, and without limiting yourself because of some imagined impediments that you haven’t thoroughly analyzed.
2) Identifying and Not Tolerating Problems
On the way to achieving your goals and executing your design, you will encounter problems that have to be diagnosed. That’s why you need to identify and not tolerate problems.
Most problems are potential improvements screaming at you.
The more painful the problem, the louder it is screaming.44 In order to be successful, you have to 1) perceive problems and 2) not tolerate them.
If you don’t identify your problems, you won’t solve them, so you won’t move forward toward achieving your goals. As a result, it is essential to bring problems to the surface.
Why most people don't identify problems:
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“harsh realities” that are unpleasant to look at, so people often subconsciously put them “out of sight” so they will be “out of mind.”
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Thinking about problems that are difficult to solve can produce anxiety that stands in the way of progress.
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People often worry more about appearing to not have problems than about achieving their desired results, and therefore avoid recognizing that their own mistakes and/or weaknesses are causing the problems.
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Sometimes people are simply not perceptive enough to see the problems.
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Some people are unable to distinguish big problems from small ones. Since nothing is
perfect, it is possible to identify an infinite number of problems everywhere. If you are unable to distinguish the big problems from the little ones, you can’t “successfully” (i.e., in a practical way) identify problems.
So push through the pain of facing your problems, knowing you will end up in a much better place.
When identifying problems, it is important to remain centered and logical.
While it can be tempting to react emotionally to problems and seek sympathy or blame others, this accomplishes nothing.
Try to look at your problems as a detached observer would. Remember that identifying problems is like finding gems embedded in puzzles; if you solve the puzzles you will get the gems that will make your life much better.
Doing this continuously will lead to your rapid evolution. You should get excited about finding problems because identifying them will bring you closer to your goals.
Be very precise in specifying your problems.
It is essential to identify your problems with precision, for different problems have different solutions.
For example, if your impediments are due largely to issues of will—to your unwillingness to confront what is really happening—you have to strengthen your will, for example by starting small and building up your confidence.
Problems due to inadequate skill might then be solved with training, whereas those arising from innate weaknesses might be overcome with assistance or role changes.
It doesn’t matter which is the case; it only matters that the true cause is identified and appropriately addressed.
The more precise you are, the easier it will be to come up with accurate diagnoses and successful solutions.
For example, rather than saying something like “People don’t like me,” it is better to specify which people don’t like you and under what circumstances.
Don’t confuse problems with causes.
“I can’t get enough sleep” is not a problem; it is a cause of some problem. What exactly is that problem?
To avoid confusing the problem with its causes, try to identify the suboptimal outcome, e.g., “I am performing badly in my job because I am tired.”
Once you identify your problems, you must not tolerate them.
Tolerating problems has the same result as not identifying them (i.e., both stand in the way of getting past the problem), but the root causes are different.
Tolerating problems might be due to not thinking that they can be solved, or not caring enough about solving them.
If you are motivated, you can succeed even if you don’t have the abilities (i.e., talents and skills) because you can get the help from others.
People who are good at this step—identifying and not tolerating problems—tend to have strong abilities to perceive andsynthesize a clear and accurate picture, as well as demonstrate a fierce intolerance of badness (regardless of the severity).
3) Diagnosing the Problems
You will be much more effective if you focus on diagnosis and design rather than jumping to solutions.
A common mistake for people to move directly from identifying a tough problem to a proposed solution in a nanosecond without spending the hours required to properly diagnose and design a solution.
Diagnosing and designing are what spark strategic thinking.
You must be calm and logical.
When diagnosing problems, as when identifying problems, reacting emotionally, though sometimes difficult to avoid, can undermine your effectiveness as a decision-maker. Do what you can to get yourself centered before moving forward.
You must get at the root causes.
Root causes, like principles, are things that manifest themselves over and over again as the deep-seated reasons behind the actions that cause problems. So you will get many everlasting dividends if you can find them and properly deal with them.
Proximate causes typically are the actions or lack of actions that lead to problems—e.g., “I missed the train because I didn’t check the train schedule.” Proximate causes are typically described via verbs.
Root causes are the deeper reasons behind the proximate cause: “I didn’t check the schedule because I am forgetful”—a root cause. Root causes are typically described with adjectives, usually characteristics about what the person is like that lead them to an action or an inaction.
Recognizing and learning from one’s mistakes and the mistakes of others who affect outcomes is critical to eliminating problems.
Most people find it difficult to identify and accept their own mistakes. More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don’t is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively.
So to be successful, you must be willing to look at your own behavior and the behavior of others as possible causes of problems.
The most important qualities for successfully diagnosing problems are logic, the ability to see multiple possibilities, and the willingness to touch people’s nerves to overcome the ego barriers that stand in the way of truth.
4) Designing the Plan (Determining the Solutions)
Problems are great because they are very specific impediments, so you know that you will move forward if you can identify and eliminate their root causes.
Creating a design is like writing a movie script in that you visualize who will do what through time in order to achieve the goal.
Visualize the goal or problem standing in your way, and then visualize practical solutions.
Think about each problem individually, and as the product of root causes—like the outcomes produced by a machine. Then think about how the machine should be changed to produce good outcomes rather than bad ones.
There are typically many paths toward achieving your goals, and you need to find only one of them that works, so it’s almost always doable.
An effective design requires thinking things through and visualizing how things will come together and unfold over time.
Write down the plan so you don’t lose sight of it, and include who needs to do what and when. The list of tasks falls out from this story (i.e., the plan), but they are not the same.
The story, or plan, is what connects your goals to the tasks.
Designing your plan, think about the timelines of various interconnected tasks. Sketch them out loosely and then refine them with the specific tasks.
This is an iterative process, alternating between sketching out your broad steps (e.g., hire great people) and filling these in with more specific tasks with estimated timelines (e.g., in the next two weeks choose the headhunters to find the great people) that will have implications (e.g., costs, time, etc.).
It is essential that you look at what won’t be accomplished and ask yourself if the consequences are acceptable or unacceptable. This is where perspective is required, and discussing it with others can be critical.
If the plan will not achieve what’s necessary in the required time, you have to either think harder (probably with the advice of other believable people) to make the plan do what is required or reduce your goals.
It doesn’t take much time to design a good plan—literally just hours spread out over days or weeks—and whatever amount of time you spend designing it will be only a small fraction of the time you spend executing it.
But designing is very important because it determines what you will have to do to be effective. Most people make the very big mistake of spending virtually no time on this step because they are too preoccupied with execution.
People successful with this stage have an ability to visualize and a practical understanding of how things really work.
Remember: Designing precedes doing! The design will give you your to-do list
5) Doing the Tasks
The importance of good work habits is vastly underrated.
It is critical to know each day what you need to do and have the discipline to do it.
People with good work habits have to-do lists that are reasonably prioritized, and they make themselves do what needs to be done. By contrast, people with poor work habits almost randomly react to the stuff that comes at them, or they can’t bring themselves to do the things they need to do but don’t like to do (or are unable to do).
People who are good at this stage tend to be self-disciplined and proactive rather than reactive to the blizzard of daily tasks that can divert them from execution. They are results-oriented: they love to push themselves over the finish line to achieve the goal. If they see that daily tasks are taking them away from executing the plan (i.e., they identify this problem), they diagnose it and design how they can deal with both the daily tasks and moving forward with the plan.
5-Step Process is iterative.
If this process is working, goals will change much more slowly than designs, which will change more slowly than tasks.
Designs and tasks can be modified or changed often, but changing goals frequently is usually a problem because achieving them requires a consistent effort.
People who have problems reaching their goals handle these steps backwards; that is, they stick too rigidly to specified tasks and are not committed enough to achieving their goals (often because they lose sight of them).
Weaknesses don't matter if you find solutions
Ask yourself what is your biggest weakness that stands in the way of what you want.
People who don’t get what they want out of life fail at one or more of the five steps. But being weak at any one of these steps is not a problem if you understand what you are weak at and successfully compensate for that weakness by seeking help.
You will achieve your goals if you do these five steps well, it follows that if you are not achieving your goals you can use the 5-Step Process as a diagnostic tool.
You would do this by 1) identifying the step(s) that you are failing at; 2) noting the qualities required to succeed at that step; and 3) identifying which of these qualities you are missing.
| 1) Set Goals |
Higher level thinking, synthesis, visualization, prioritization |
| 2) Identify and don't tolerate problems |
perception, intolerance of badness, synthesis |
| 3) Diagnose the problems to root causes |
hyper logical, willingness "to touch the nerve", seeing multiple possibilities |
| 4) Design a plan for eliminating problems |
visualization, practicality, creativity |
| 5) Do what is set out in the plan |
self-discipline, good work habits, results orientation, proactivity |
In a nutshell, my 5-Step process for achieving what you want is:
Values→ 1) Goals → 2) Problems → 3) Diagnoses → 4) Designs → 5) Tasks
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