Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Think backwards

When you’re planning to travel, where do you usually begin that planning? You begin with the destination.

You cannot know what direction to go unless you know where you would like to end up. So a successful plan begins with the destination and works its way backwards to the point where you begin.

When you desire to reach a specific goal, the same kind of approach will work very well. Start with the end goal, and develop your plan backwards from there.

When you’re clear about the goal, you can easily figure out what would be the last step necessary to reach that goal. When you know the last step, you can determine what the step before that will be.

You can develop your plan, step by step, from the end to the beginning. When you do, instead of wondering what the best first step would be, you’ll know precisely what to do first, what to do after that, and what to do after that.

However ambitious the goal may be, there is something you can do right now to get off to a solid start. Visualize the goal, work backwards step by step, and you’ll know precisely how to begin.

— Ralph Marston

Frustration into achievement       Make the commitment

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