You’ve all heard the saying “how can you get somewhere if you don’t know where you’re going” or the worse thing you can do is climb the ladder to find out it was the wrong ladder.

Sometimes we wander aimlessly through the day, doing a lot but accomplishing little, especially towards our long term goals.

Years pass and although we’ve been working hard, we’ve seen little progress.

This is often because we have not created a “map”. We’ve had a vague picture running in the background, but have not pinpointed it clearly enough to decide how we are going to do it.

Planning does not necessarily need to take a lot of time. In fact it is my personal feeling that too often too much time is spent planning and not enough time is spent acting on them – doing the work to make them happen.

But it is important to choose your end goal, break it down and work back from there.

This will give you yearly, monthly weekly and daily plans to work with.

There are a few approaches you can take depending on how detailed you want to get and how self disciplined and motivated you are to get there.

You can start with a retirement plan, a 10 year plan, a 5 year plan and or a a yearly plan, which is then broken up to months, weeks and days.

You can do this for the many areas of your life. Some use the main categories universal to us all – job, family, health etc. You can also choose to use categories more specific and personal to you.

For example, maybe you are starting a new hobby and would like to hit a target as opposed to tracking your progress. Pre-selecting your target and working backwards, from a predetermined destination will push you to achieve it.

Merely tracking your progress is a step in the right direction, but finds you moving aimlessly forward with no set goal in mind.

Although you may be focused, you will not feel the same pull, the commitment to give your all. This can make the difference between being happy with your results and feeling that you could have done better – or worse – genuinely feeling that your goal was beyond you, when all that was needed was a little more vision.

Or instead of taking a multi faceted approach, you can select one area that you would really like to break down and focus on – the core concept is the same.

Many times when using this approach, the area you choose will be the foundation that the others rest on and you will move on to another one in a sequence as you get your first targets under your belt.

It is much like the jar story. If you fill it with water or sand first… the small things… there will be no room for the bigger stones.

If you put the big stones in first (your major targets) then put in the smaller ones, the sand, then water, there will be room for all and the jar (you’re life) will not be so taken up by the little things that there is no room for the large.
Try it. With self discipline and focus, you will see results the first day.

Janice Ferrante is the Queen of KAOS. You can learn more about how to Conquer KAOS and take CONTROL by visiting her website at http://www.queen-of-kaos.com. Also be sure to sign up for her free ezine containing more practical tips, articles and resources at http://www.queen-of-kaos.com/qoktipssub.html .