Last month, I started a series of posts focusing on the idea of asking six questions to help you steer towards success. The easy way to remember these questions is by the alphabet, starting at the letter ‘O’, and ending in ‘T’. These questions can be asked by anyone, for any goal, and they will all help you to focus your next steps.

This month, question two relates to the letter ‘P’ – your ‘Project’. Now, first of all, before we get to the question, what do I mean by project?

Basically, this is the ‘thing’ you are working on. You can do this with business in mind, or you can do this for your own hobby or personal development. It can be anything from a painting to a sales pitch. Or maybe you’re the creative type and your painting IS the sales pitch! Who knows. Another of thinking about projects is by imagining them as pathways – you know where it is you are heading but the route there might not be a direct line. Lots of decisions to make and challenges to manage.

So, my current project is to write six blog posts covering six questions that will help you to succeed in your goals. When all six posts are published, the project is complete. It will then form part of a slightly larger, more ambitious project, and so on.

What holds a lot of people back from achieving their goals is a lack of clarity. So, to help you reduce this problem, the second question is designed to help you gain clarity. It is this:

‘‘Can you explain the goal you are working on in one sentence?”

Initially this might sound really easy. Maybe I might say to you ”sure, I’m writing six blog posts about goal setting”. But then, hang on a second, what exactly about goal setting are you writing about? My sentence does not ”zero in” on my posts with enough precision. There are loads of posts about goal setting online, but these ones are unique and different. So it’s about how to convey, in one sentence, exactly what it is you are doing.

It’s a useful exercise to get you thinking about exactly what it is you are doing. The really exciting thing happens when you are finally happy with your sentence; you can unpack it and think carefully about what it is you really need to succeed with it. This is the crux of goal setting because if you lack clarity and precision from the start, things are only going to get messy further down the line when you are faced with tough decisions to make that influence the outcomes.

This is the preparation part. You could begin with this statement: ”To complete my project, I will need to….”

The remaining parts of this series will examine how to fill in the gaps of your project and bring it to the point where you can finish it. So if you’re feeling a bit stuck with completing that sentence then don’t worry, I’ve got you covered over the next few months.

My sentence?

”I’m writing a series of blog posts focused on six questions for success in goal setting.”

Including the title of your project within your sentence is a great idea. If your project title sounds strange in normal conversation then maybe it is not a great project title! This is something to consider too.

Stay tuned for the third question in September…