Hello!
Seiiti Arata.
Let us talk about how you have made resolutions several times but you have never seen your
objectives work as you planned.
Today you are going to learn how to use the famous PDCA cycle to adjust your goals to
an ideal size and with that, get results.
In a minute I will explain what PDCA is and how to use it… but I should tell you beforehand
that the solution is to avoid ambitious objectives and start setting weekly mini goals.
What is the problem with goals that are too ambitious?
Think, for example, about: Earning a million by starting your own company or losing 12
kilos of fat in one month.
Even if you use the SMART standards to design specific, measurable, reachable, relevant
and under deadline goals, it is very likely that, even in that case, you have not managed
to achieve those goals.
Since those goals are too ambitious, you usually have to define a very long deadline to meet
your objectives.
And it is difficult to sustain your enthusiasm when the objective is very far away and you
don’t get immediate rewards for your actions.
All of that can be solved if you leave aside those huge objectives and start focusing on
setting weekly mini goals.
Weekly mini goals are easier to reach, more stimulating and they give you immediate feedback.
A small weekly goal is nothing but a SMART goal in which the last element, the letter
T (from “timely”), that makes reference to the set time limit, is always one week.
You are going to look at the objectives you have already set and you are going to see
which of those objectives can be reached within a week.
This has many advantages.
It forces you to create a more practical plan, reduce your expectations and act quickly.
You also receive more immediate feedback, you keep your enthusiasm and it lets you adjust
the things that are not working.
I will give you an example to make myself clear.
Imagine that you currently have a SMART goal set which is: “Lose 12 kilos in the next
three weeks using the Paleo Diet and doing calisthenics three times a week”.
This is a relatively ambitious goal.
You need to focus on following that diet and doing exercises during ninety days to try
to lose the weight you defined.
It may happen that, in the beginning, you lose more weight.
It may happen that you don’t lose weight on the scale because your fat decreased at
the same time that you gained muscle mass.
It may happen that you have a wrist injury that prevents you from doing calisthenics.
So, let’s transform this ambitious goal into a weekly mini goal.
Of course it’s impossible to lose twelve kilos in just a week.
The first step to create your Weekly Mini Goal is to reduce your expectations and adapt
yourself to reality.
How much weight is it possible to lose in a week?
That is a difficult number to define exactly, but, as we will see, it doesn’t matter.
You must focus on your progress, not on perfection.
Let us say that you set the goal of losing only one kilo.
In that case, your Weekly Mini Goal with the SMART criteria will be: “Lose one kilo in
the next seven days using the Paleo Diet and doing calisthenics on Mondays, Wednesdays
and Fridays before going to work”.
Use the PDCA cycle to get the most out of your weekly goals and see how your goals get
closer every week.
PDCA is a technique of ongoing improvement that means Plan, Do, Check, Act.
That is why PDCA is perfect when used together with the Weekly Mini Goals.
Let’s continue with our example.
Now you have defined that your Weekly Mini Goal will be to “Lose one kilo in the next
seven days using the Paleo Diet and doing calisthenics on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays
before going to work”.
That has been the beginning of stage P of the PDCA: you started planning.
But your plan needs to be more detailed.
What meals are you going to eat during the next week so that you can follow your diet?
What food do you need to buy and have at home?
If you have unexpected occasions that will force you to have lunch or dinner at restaurants
during the next week, what will you order to follow your diet?
What exercise routines will you do on Monday, Wednesday and Friday?
Where will you practise those exercises?
All of your planning, as well as the rest of the PDCA stages, must be made in written
form, in a planner or any other organizing and execution tool.
The plan can’t just remain in your head.
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
Here we can see very clearly one of the advantages of setting small weekly goals: it is much
easier to plan in a concrete way when the time frame is as short as one week.
You can plan your meals and exercises for the next seven days quite easily.
You already have an idea of the commitments you will have next week.
You know your body’s condition, if you have any injury, if you have a birthday party that
week.
If your goal was due in three months time, or in six months or a year, it would be very
difficult to be sure about all that.
The second stage of PDCA is the D in “Do”, which means taking action.
Here you need to spend the next seven days implementing what you have planned.
You need to eat the meals you wrote as your plan and do the exercises you planned to do.
When that week goes by, you will enter the third stage of PDCA: “Check”.
In this stage you will compare your plan with reality.
For example, you had planned to do calisthenics on Monday, Wednesday and Friday before going
to work.
So?
Did you really do it?
If you did, how did the exercises go?
If you didn’t, what went wrong?
It is also during this Check stage that you will objectively verify whether you reached
your Weekly Mini Goal or not.
Your goal was to lose one kilo.
So, you have to weigh yourself or measure your percentage of body fat to check in an
objective way whether you lost a kilo or not.
Adjust your Mini Goals week after week until you achieve your final goal.
Now a week has gone by and you have checked whether you have managed to achieve your goal.
The last step of the PDCA cycle of constant improvement is the Act.
You must adjust your actions to keep improving week after week.
For example, let us imagine that you achieved the goal of losing a kilo a week by using
the Paleo Diet and doing calisthenics.
What can you adjust to improve your results even more next week?
What meals did you like better and which ones did you like less?
What exercises were more enjoyable?
Do you have any wounds or an injury that forces you to change the calisthenics exercises to
something different, like walking or swimming?
If you weren’t able to achieve your weekly mini goal and you did not lose that one kilo
you had planned, what went wrong?
Could it be that losing one kilo in just seven days was too big of a goal?
Should you change your goal to losing half a kilo next week?
Or could it be that the diet you chose is not working out well for you?
PDCA is a cycle.
So, at the end of this stage of action (Act), you must return to the Planning phase.
With all that information you have in your hands, it is time to set a new Weekly Mini
Goal.
If everything worked out fine, your plan can be very similar or even the same as last week’s
plan.
Maybe you even want to challenge yourself a bit and try to increase your objective by
ten or twenty percent.
But if the previous weekly goal did not go well, the new plan must contain the necessary
adjustments.
Every week, you will complete a cycle.
The Weekly Mini Goals will give you immediate feedback in a short period of time so that
you can keep your excitement, seeing the results happening in real time and being clear about
what is working and what is not.
By the time some weeks have passed by, you will be much closer to your old ambitious
goal.
Do you understand the paradox?
By reducing your goal’s size, you will be able to gather real small results every week.
And those accumulated results will become a big goal in the end.
Goals cannot be confused with dreams.
Be specific and practical so that your Weekly Mini Goals work out well.
You must have realized that the Weekly Mini Goals require a much more concrete planning
than the long term ambitious goals.
Very often, when we set ambitious goals in the long term, what we are actually doing
is expressing some of our dreams.
When you say you want to “Save a million in your account in five years by opening your
own successful company”, you may even deceive yourself and think that you are creating a
SMART Goal, but, actually, you are just dreaming way too high.
There is nothing wrong with dreams.
You just need to be clear about what is what and not be mistaken by abstract dreams for
supposedly specific goals that never get to become true.
It is alright to dream of becoming a millionaire if that is important to you.
But for that dream to become true, you need to take action.
Think about dreams and ambitious goals as a kind of guide that tells you where you want
to get to.
And think of Weekly Mini Goals as the thing that defines the actions you are going to
take today, tomorrow and the next seven days to be able to get a bit closer to those dreams.
In order for the Weekly Mini Goals to work out fine, you need to be very practical.
What is the measurable goal at the end of the week?
What are the necessary actions?
What days and what time will you perform those actions?
Are they marked on your calendar?
Have you managed your time well to do the things you planned?
Being practical also means checking everything that worked and did not work.
It is learning to say no to other commitments.
It is reducing your objectives to an amount you can handle.
It is making a commitment to follow what was planned.
Of course this is much more work than simply dreaming of saving a million in your account
by opening your own successful company.
And that is why a lot of people still prefer drawing ambitious goals that never get fulfilled.
So, if your objective is to really obtain those goals, in practice, in real life, in
a concrete way… you cannot be afraid of hard work.
You must leave dreams in the field of dreams and get down to work to meet your goals.
And do it week after week, hitting or missing, but always improving a little bit every seven
days.
The Weekly Mini Goals work because they are more concrete, more reachable and they give
you immediate feedback, which help you adjust your actions according to your needs.
The main difference with ambitious goals is the time factor.
With Small Goals, you have just seven days to achieve your objectives and that is why
you must plan and take action managing your time in the best way possible.
If you want to learn to manage your time better and reach your objectives, I invite you to
watch a special class from the Productivity Ninja course about time management.
You can watch that class right now by accessing https://arata.se/timemanagement