By Brian Tracy
Your success in life is determined, to a large extent by your ability to
think, plan, decide, and take action. The stronger your skills are in
each of these areas, the faster you will achieve your goals and the
happier you will be with your life and career. Personal strategic
planning is the tool that takes you from wherever you are to wherever
you want to go.
Difference between Train and Plane
The difference between people who use strategic planning to organize and direct their lives and those who do not is like the difference between
taking a train and taking a plane. Both will get you from point A to
point B, but the plane-personal strategic planning-will get you there
much faster and without frequent stops.
Systematic Way of Thinking
Skill in personal strategic planning is not something you are born with,
like eye color or perfect pitch. It is a systematic way of thinking and
acting and is, therefore, something you can learn, like riding a bike or
changing a tire. With practice, you can master the many different
elements that make up this key skill, and you will get into the rhythm
of thinking and acting strategically for the rest of your life. When you
do acquire rhythm, you will realize extraordinary results. Your life and
career will take off, and the sky is truly the limit.
Save Time and Money
Why is strategic planning and thinking so helpful? The answer is simple: it saves you an enormous amount of time and money. When you review and analyze key strategic questions of concepts of your career or business, you find yourself focusing on the critical tasks necessary to achieve
your goals. At the same time, you stop doing those things that keep you from achieving success. You do more of the right things and fewer things that get and keep you off track. You set performance goals for people and projects. You become skilled at measuring and tracking results. You move into the express lane in both work and life.
Design Your Life and Career
Your goals in personal strategic planning are similar. The key
difference is that rather than improving your return on equity, your planning efforts will allow you to realize a greater return on energy.
You might say that personal strategic planning will increase your return on life. A business measures its equity in terms of financial capital. On the other hand, you measure your personal equity in terms of your own human capital. Your personal equity consists of the physical, emotional, and mental energies you are able to invest in your career. Set a goal of
achieving the very highest return possible on the investment of your
energies.
Critical Question
Ask yourself this critical question: What is it that I do especially
well? Examine the areas where you excel or are clearly superior to
others in your field. You need to know what you can claim as your
personal competitive advantage. This is the lifeblood of personal
strategic planning. Your success is tied directly to how excellent you
become at the most important part of your work.
Action Exercise
Clarify your career or business vision. What could your ideal career or business look like? What could you be doing most of the time? How much would you be earning? What kind of people would you be working with?
What level of responsibility would you have? What kind of industry would you be in?
Edited by: Lawyer Asad
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