Last weekend I was cycling in Portugal. Specifically from Porto to Lisbon over 4 days. It’s about 400km and was the 6th annual cycle trip I’ve been doing round parts of Europe with a group of friends that started innocently enough with a 600km London to Paris route in 2010.
The point is, it’s a big goal. It’s a big distance. But, that’s not how to see it.
When we set ourselves these Big Hairy Audacious Goals (as Brian Tracy likes to call them – BHAG’s), then they can at the same time as exciting us, overwhelm us.
The sheer enormity of the task can stop us in our very tracks.
The way round it is just how I used to manage projects when I was working as a Project Manager in the City (of London). You break it up. Or chunck it down into more manageable parts.
On our trip, a friend of mine was in a real bad way. On the final day he didn’t even want to start. The thought of doing the final 100km push to Lisbon was too much. So I told him not to. I told him just to do the first 10km – that’s all. And even when he conceded to that, when he was on the bike, I told him just to focus on one peddle push, then the other.
That’s all we can really do anyway. We don’t know what’s coming round the corner. In our case – lots and lots of hills on that final day. But I couldn’t think about all the hills to come. I didn’t even think about the hill I was on. My goal was just to make it to the next turning. And then when I reached that, the goals was the next turning. And so on.
This might all sound trite to say it, but really by chunking the goal down into many more smaller goals it become manageable.
I do this with many things each and every day. Even say drinking water. I like to drink between 3 – 4 litres of water a day. (Some may think that’s too much, but that’s for another conversation). But I have a goal. 1 litres before lunch when I’m working (say 9am – 12.30pm), then another litre after lunch before the end of the ‘working’ day (I work for myself so it never really ends!) – that’s 1.30pm – 6pm. Then I always aim for a litre from waking to starting work and then again in the evening.
Because I’ve defined smaller chunks and time periods in which to perform the drinking, it becomes much more manageable.
So that’s the advice here. Look at your BHAG’s and any other goals as tiny goals and they will seem a lot closer to achieve.
What do you think? What is your approach? Comment below.
