Setting Goals

Once you’ve listed the steps you need to take to make your wish come true, and you’ve also set milestones to keep you on track toward your deadline, you need to transfer both the steps and the milestones to your daily schedule. Scheduling bridges the gap between planning and doing. It’s the difference between a good intention and an appointment. Instead of saying to an old friend, “Let’s have lunch sometime,” scheduling lets you say, “Let’s have lunch next Tuesday at 1:00 p.m.”

If you’ve ever used a planner or pocket scheduler, you already know how to schedule the steps and the milestones of your plan. Simply enter each step in your scheduler the same way you would enter a meeting, or a lunch date, or an appointment with your doctor. You don’t have to schedule the entire plan all at once, just the next week or two. Then if a step takes longer than you expected, or your schedule is disrupted in some other way, you won’t have as much to reschedule.

When you schedule a step on your calendar, you are making an appointment with yourself. Keep it. Treat it like an appointment with the most important person in the world - because it is!

Take yourself seriously. If you don’t, who will? Take yourself as seriously as you want the rest of the world to take you. After all, why should anyone else treat you better than you treat yourself? If you want other people to keep their appointments with you, keep your appointments with yourself. If you want other people to be there when you need them, be there for yourself.