There are four essential parts to high achievement, and here are some of the lessons I’ve learnt from them.
The four pillars are:
The long term vision that pulls you forward.
The medium term plan of how to get there.
The daily attention and self improvement.
The feedback loop
It’s essential to have a long term goal and vision that pulls you forward. It should be ambitious, that stretches and excites you and gives you direction about where you are going and what to, and not to, focus on. For me this is building the worlds best online admissions platform.
The medium term plan is basically the pathway to achieving it. The sales calls each day, the roadmap of hiring and building a team, and sharpening your skills, and when to review it. The schedule.
The daily attention and application is one of the most overlooked and important parts. This is the part where you focus on winning each day, improving your energy, attention and relationships, having clear work spaces.
Feedback and self improvement cycle is the one that reviews and identifies the bottlenecks. Something like once a week. Identify where you are off and on course and how to adjust the vision, plan or daily parts. You can build feedback loops in multiple ways, introspection and review is one part. Surrounding with the right people can act as another.
What I’ve learnt
I’ve learnt the importance of these pillars over time.
he quicker you can set goals and visions, the faster you can get into feedback loops and improve and learn how to adjust
- The long term goal and vision should be grand and big and optimistic, and exciting but the quicker you can set goals and visions, the faster you can get into feedback loops and improve and learn how to adjust. Making it too long or far away means you get far fewer feedback loops. You can only really do 4-5 x 10 year visions in your life, and if you miss one, you are down to 3. That’s why setting shorter or breaking a grant vision down into smaller ones that are achievable quicker is great training, because great achievement is done by a great vision that meets and navigates reality and the more cycles we have the better we can improve at that.
- The medium term plan should be aggressive and this is where the lessons come from. The vision is achieved from these steps. This is what can be controlled. The daily sales calls, the reviews.
The limit is often something within ourselves and our own psychology. it’s an easy lever because its something that you control nearly 100%
- The daily attention is the one that people often miss. We often focus on the medium term plan, but if the medium term plan is reaching a bottleneck, the cap is often something within ourselves and our own psychology. Waking up with abundant energy vs tired creates such different outcomes, and it’s an easy lever because its something that you control nearly 100%. Just meditating each day and reading and controlling your attention and being around great people who are ambitious and close to the vision is just going to accelerate your progress so much.
- The feedback and improvement loop is the essential part that should be done weekly or periodically. This is where you identify where the bottleneck is in your work and yourself, and then set up a plan to fix it. I’ve learnt so many valuable things about the reality - how leverage can help you, how things work from this constant review and learning.
I think a lot of this isn’t that complicated and can be taught with the right mentors and relationships. Common traps, I’ve seen people and I have sometimes set less ambitious or vague goals, not had a clear plan and reviewed the plan to get there, got derailed and distracted on the day to day level and not honestly reviewed the progress with review cycles.