Tag: long term goals

When trying to achieve your goals, you need to look at both the big picture (i.e., what relationships to you need to work on to build long-term success) and your day-to-day actions (i.e., what do you need to do to make some money/pay the bills TODAY).

You need to be able to toggle your focus on both sets of requirements to get to where you want to go. If you’re always thinking big picture, building connections and focusing on slow-developing results, you may never get there because you haven’t done what you need to do to keep the lights on today. For example, if you own/manage a theme park, it doesn’t matter if you’re designing a new ride if you don’t get ticket sales today to keep the park open. Your day-to-day operations need to be functioning well in order to move towards your future goals. But, if you’re not careful, you can become stuck always focusing on doing just enough to survive for the next day and never make progress towards your dreams. Toggle your focus between short and long-term results, ideally with your short term actions leading directly towards your long-term goals.

Jon Gordon makes the analogy that you need to use a metaphorical telescope and microscope. If you only have the telescope, you are always looking far away. You’re looking at the big picture in the distant future. That’s great to have a North Star to guide you along your journey, but you also need to be able to look at the daily tasks to get you there. This is where the microscope comes in handy…having attention to detail on short-term events and taking those next “most important action steps” to get you to where you want to be. Don’t get trapped into only using one instrument, as using a telescope won’t let you focus on the small details right in front of you, just as a microscope won’t let you observe the night sky.