How to achieve your goals with a single page | Sarah Glova | TEDxShawUniversity

[Applause] I was talking to a friend of mine and I was really frustrated I told my friend even if your goal was to be president of the United States your plan for that goal would still just need to be a single page I'm not a political scientist and I was not trying to convince my friend to run for president but I was arguing to my friend that more people would be able to achieve their really big goals if they knew how to design a plan for that goal that was just a single page even if their goals were really big like write a book or climb a mountain or start a YouTube channel be president of the United States even if their goals were really big they would still just need to be a single page and my friend looked at me kind of like you're looking at me now like what do you mean just a single page so let me explain my name is Dr Sarah globa and for years I was a business reporter and podcast host meaning I spent my days interviewing people about how they achieved their really big goals I interviewed people who started companies started movements invented new technology I interviewed a lot of firsts so like the first woman or the first person of color to break a record or hit a certain level of leadership in their in their industry and in all these interviews even though all the people were really different I started to notice a pattern even though all the people were really different there were certain things that everybody seemed to be doing as they worked on their goal there was a pattern to how they set worked on and achieved their really big goal I nerded out on this for a couple years I looked to see if the research could verify what I was seeing in this pattern and then I tested it with a number of folks and I found that there was a way to execute this pattern for any goal and it worked best if you kept it to just a single page now what I would really like to do at this point is go back in time and give this to Young Sarah because young Sarah really could have used help getting clear on her goals figuring out how to work on those goals but I don't have a time machine so instead of going back and sharing it with young Sarah I would love if you want to check it out to share with you sound good all right so let's look at this plan for for a goal I mentioned it has to be a single page and normally I would say go grab a sheet of paper but if you're listening to this and you can't go grab a sheet of paper that's fine the plan is actually so simple you can even just imagine a sheet of paper so imagine a space about the size of a single sheet sheet of paper now the first thing we're going to do since we're working on our goal is on our single sheet of paper we're going to write down our specific goal did y'all hear me say that word specific it's going to get so specific that you couldn't trade paper with anybody else this is your page so if your goal is to write a book guess what there's a lot of other people out there who want to write a book but how can you get so specific as you describe this goal so that it's just yours nobody else could take your sheet of paper some of the things when I interview folks about big goals that they've achieved some of the things that they get clear about really early on are things like what is my goal and why do I want to achieve it what does this goal mean to me what are the strengths that I have that I can put into play for this goal the unique strengths that are unique to me that'll work for this goal when do I want to do this thing by and what does working on it look like is like a nights and weekends thing or we doing it every day so you want to get really specific until this goal is just yours and it doesn't take up much space just the first like third of your single sheet of paper you're going to interview yourself around this goal after this we're going to work on our goal that's the easy part right I noticed a lot of people getting stuck in the phas as I tested out this plan and so something we do together is we talk about how to work on our goal and not around our goal I have a story for this one that I think many of you are going to recognize I want you to think about that friend of yours that person you know who hates their job and they swear they're going to get a new one right but every time you talk to them you're like hey how's the job hunt going they're like oh I'm tweaking my resume right now got to get that resume right and then you see them a couple weeks later and you're like hey did you apply anywhere and they're like actually uh I'm getting new head shots this week so I'm going to be updating that LinkedIn profile this weekend and every time you talk to them it's like they're spending their time setting those dominoes up just right they're in that planning phase because that planning phase is is safe we're getting things done we're being productive but are we putting ourselves out there for those really big actions so in the middle of your page something you can do is write down a couple dates a couple deadlines and then underneath those dates and deadlines you're going to put a couple Milestones a couple key tasks that you're going to work on and these are going to be big things things that move the needle cuz let me tell yall those people that I interviewed who accomplished really big things they actually had just as many things on their to-do lists as we do but they were really good at identifying the priority actions so with all the noise all the things that they could do in front of them they were able to pick out the most important things and to move those things forward so in the middle of your paper you're just going to have date a couple Milestones date a couple Milestones like three or four times down on your sheet of paper and what you're going to focus on when you're writing those things are those key priority actions the stuff that even feels a little risky putting yourself out there doing those job applications writing that book draft focusing on those key things that'll move the needle forward and I know it's scary I wish I could tell you that you won't fall down but I got to tell you based on the interviews I did a lot of us fall down but you know what's so great is if you do that key priority action and you do fall down you're going to learn from it and when you learn from it and pick yourself up and keep moving you're going to get further ahead than if you had just been in that Domino space so the people that I interviewed were really good at this figuring out how to take those priority actions and keep moving now we've done two sections of our single page and we only have one left but I have to ask you a question at this point I want you to imagine that you're working on this big goal and you get stuck so you get to a place where you have a question or you need to to get some inspiration from somebody to keep moving I want to ask you who you would call so do you have somebody in your life like a parent or a colleague or a family friend or somebody you used to go to school with or that guy who lives down the street who has worked on a similar thing to what you're working on do you have somebody you could call I want you to think for a second about what we've written so far on your page your specific goal the priorities you're setting if you had a question about something that was there do you have somebody who would who would pick up the phone so quick show of hands how many of you thought of somebody okay that right there that we just saw that's the third piece of our single page plan it's community it's the people who you would call if you got stuck and based on the interviews that I've done it's not if you get stuck it's when you get stuck because when you're working on something really big when you're here and you're trying to get there when you want something that you haven't had before you're going to get stuck and so it's really important for us to think about the people who can help and support us honestly it's my favorite part of every interview that I do it's when the people that I interview talk to me about the coaching or mentors who were there for them when they stumbled when they had a question it comes up in every interview even if I don't ask about it that's how crucial the community piece is so I want you to think about who you would call when you pick up oh I did the Elder Millennial phone didn't I I want you to think about who you would call when you pick up the phone there we go and what you're going to do on your single page is you're going to start writing down some names that come to mind so that you can bring your community to the Forefront for for yourself you can remember who's who's supporting you but there's something else crucial we want to do here because I want to remind you when you're working on something that you haven't done before you're going to get to a point where you have to cross a gap that's new territory for you I guarantee you there's somebody out there who's been through that kind of territory before but they might not be in your network yet and that's what's really key here in this part of the plan we want to think about the kind of challenges we might encounter or the challenges we have in front of us now we want to think about this place that we're trying to go and we want to ask ourselves who's been there before do we have people in our Network who know what those rooms look like the rooms that we don't have access to yet and if not we want to identify this on this part of our page we want to outline and name the kind of community the kind of support the kind of expertise that we need that we're missing because the time to need your network is not the time to build your network and if you're going to be getting across these gaps you need to have those community members that you can call so you're going to use this part of your page to name not just the people who can support you now but also to outline the kinds of folks the kinds of expertise that you need to add to this network so that you can get building I have to tell y'all this is my favorite part of the single page plan if I had to just pick one section for you to work on it would be this one but it doesn't matter you can have all three so it's fine all right I told my friend that if he wanted to be president all he needed was a single page and I've told you a little bit about the content the research that I did the pattern that I found that makes that really important and there were three crucial things there getting specific setting those priorities and then thinking about Community but it's not just those three things that I heard in the interview again and again as I would interview folks we would reflect on how just insanely busy the world is today how fast we're all moving at 100,000 miles an hour trying to keep up with it and how when you're working on a goal it is so helpful to have something in front of you that reminds you despite all that noise of what you're working on that's part of the magic here it's not just the content of the single page but it's also the single page itself in this really busy world it is so important for you to be able to have something that's small enough to keep in front of you to keep in your dorm room or in your office or in your back pocket that reminds you what you're working on that keeps you focused on this really important goal it's also a very accessible tool at any point you can have a new idea for something and all you need to do is just go grab a single page to get started to have that bias toward action I don't know if we ever needed more than a single page to plan our goals but we definitely don't these days it's also urgent I really need y'all to try this because selfishly I want to live in a world where your goals exist if you think about that thing that you want whether it's your art your science your leadership your voice whatever it is that you want I think the world will be a better place when you make that happen I genuinely believe that our world will be a better place to live in if more people are able to reach their goals are able to do those big things that I know that you have the potential to do and so I like to imagine that if you have a single page in front of you reminding you of what those priorities are for your crucial actions the people who can help support you that you're going to be more likely to make it happen and so I hope as you walk away from this that you know that I believe in you and I believe in your potential I hope you try this out because honestly at this point my goal is that someday there's going to be some writer like me who's writing about you thanks

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 59,414

Keywords: Achievement, Behavior, Change, Decision making, English, Goal-setting, Life, Potential, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:56816]

Id: LeXSrEMXvQk

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024