David Piccione.com

On the first of August, I stopped watching TV cold turkey. I wasn’t a huge TV watcher to begin with, but I often found that sitting down to watch the news at six ended with me watching the news at 11. Five hours of channel flipping, not really watching anything important.

So I quit. Going into the second week of September, I’ve only watched half a football game - this because I was sick and didn’t feel like doing anything at all.

What’s TV worth: Nothing.

To tell you the truth, I don’t miss TV in the least. What’s changed:

• My nights are longer once I get home from work
• I’ve been much more productive with personal projects
• I’ve spent more time with my son
• I’ve read more
• I’ve had some great Scrabble games with my wife

It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s made me a good deal more content with life in general. As a nice side effect, I’ve actually cut down on the regular weekend video rental as well.

Give Up Your Addiction

I’d recommend that everyone give up TV for a month and see what results. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

In my previous post about goals, I focused on using goals as a defined endpoint. In other words, having a clear destination that we intend to reach. As with many things though, understanding where you would like to end up is only half the task at hand. Actually getting there is the other half, and to be successful in getting to your destination you need to be as purpose driven in the journey as you are in defining that destination.

In order to achieve your goals, you need to live by a strategy.

Execution Matters

Your strategy will dictate how you execute your life. It will allow you to make individual and independent decisions in a manner that moves you closer to your goals. It enables you to accept risk where necessary, play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses and most importantly, enjoy the journey of achieving your goals. A clear strategy will allow you to act purposely, in control of your situations, as opposed to reacting instinctively to short term awareness. Whenever you find yourself reacting and not acting, you probably aren’t moving towards your goals.

Dealing With Yourself

Think of a great king preparing to do battle with a foe. Behind him, his army. He has spent months if not years preparing his troops for this day. During his training, he’s learned that they do some things very well, but are poor at others. They may have the best fitness, but lack enough cavalry. They might have great leaders, but wavering loyalty. The whole army might be sitting in a bad position; weaker than normal, or they may be on top of a hill with the best possible sight-lines.

In the same way, understanding yourself is the foundation to creating a good personal strategy. You’ll get the most out of things if you work in favour of your strengths and interests, and focus less - but at the same time be aware of - your weakness. This personal assessment process is continual, and the results vary depending on what type of environment you are currently in. Not only does it matter what you are, it matters where you are.

Dealing With Information

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.Donald Rumsfeld

This quote was ridiculed with great glee by those who figured they knew better. Although it won’t win any awards for literature, it is nonetheless an important truth. When you live strategically, you need to classify incoming information in one of the three categories that Rumsfeld refers to in order to successfully process it and act in on it.

Known Knowns are things that you are aware of: your strengths, your weaknesses, the givens of a situation. Let’s think again about our king. He knows that his army has strong infantry, but no horse support. He knows the terrain in front of him, since he can see it. He also knows that he’s got a reserve division hiding behind the next ridge.

Known Unknowns are like blank lines in a sentence. We know that something goes there, we just don’t know what it is. Our king knows that his enemy is in front of him, but he doesn’t know their size, composition or shape. Known unknowns are the things we try to react to by anticipation - the king sends riders to peer into the forests ahead, looking for answers.

Unknown Unknowns are the gotchas of life. These are the events that hit us from out of left field. Our king doesn’t know that the division hiding on the other side of the ridge has been destroyed by the main enemy force. He can’t react or anticipate this event because it doesn’t fit with the information he is receiving from his current vantage point. Unknown unknowns can only be reacted to, and never anticipated.

Strategically dealing with information means understanding the known, seeking the “need to know” and reacting to the unknown when the time comes. Understand that which you must, anticipate the things you can, and disregard the unknown until it becomes relevant.

Dealing With Individual Situations

If we understand ourselves, and we understand how to process information, we can deal with situations as they arise in a manner that is purpose driven and not haphazard. The key here is to deal with life by anticipating outcomes whenever possible. When we’re hit with too many “unknown unknowns”, we move into fight or flight mode. When this happens, we start to make individual decisions based on the fastest possible positive outcome: thinking on how to make our current situation better.

The problem is that we often lose sight of our goals and end points when we’re forced into this mode of thinking, and this becomes even more true if our goals and strategy for achieving them is poorly thought out and understood. As our king learns that the enemy is a lot closer than he thought, and he’s now down a third of his army, what action should he take? The answer depends on his goals, and his strategy to ultimately achieve those goals. If he’s attempting to crush his enemy, he may well decide to join the battle, hoping that a tired and bloodied foe is now weaker. But if his goal is to take the closest city, he may decide that it’s best to ignore the fighting and race to the unprotected treasure.

His decisions are guided by what he’s trying to gain, and how he’s already decided he wants to get there.

Focus on the Big Picture

Without a strategy, our king will make haphazard choices in reaction to the situation he is faced with, instead of controlling the situation based on his larger objectives, regardless of what is thrown at him at a given time. How you lead your life can be controlled by having a clear and concise strategy to achieve your defined goals.

There is no magic bullet that is a guaranteed winning strategy because there are no two people that are living the same lives. Your strategy should be designed by you in conjunction with your goals and expectations for life.

It’s all about acting on purpose, even in times of great doubt and uncertainty. If you can do this, you’ll be all the more successful at reaching your goals.

Up until a few years ago, I thought people who consciously set goals were a little obsessed with living life according to some unseen code instead of enjoying that which was happening all around them every day. I suppose I could be forgiven for this. People often have an “either or” attitude to approaching things in life - it’s all or nothing like some sort of with us or against us dichotomy. I feel for these people.

My current outlook has me approaching life a little differently. I’ve come full circle in the realization that living for a purpose is as enjoyable - in fact more so - than living solely in the moment. Rather than being mutually exclusive, the two philosophies can work together. As such, setting goals has become an important part of my thinking. In today’s post, I’m going to write a little bit about why and how I set the goals I do. Tomorrow, I’ll speak to acting towards your goals by discovering a personal strategy.

What Are Goals?

When we refer to the word “goal”, what exactly do we mean? Often, a goal contains two things: a task or challenge that must be completed or overcome, and a date or deadline by which it will be accomplished. Without one, the goal is not effective; merely a hope or dream.

For many, these goals become hard targets - a point of measurement that defines success or failure. When linked to a specific time or date, they often reduce one’s choices in life to always attempting to achieve one goal or another. I find this approach to limiting, therefore I reject this definition and replace it with one that holds a goal to be a “milestone” of sorts - a point of evaluation, that until reached is strived for, once achieved celebrated, and when found wanting re-evaluated.

This approach holds the goal simply as a pathfinder - a stepping stone that translates hope into reality, vision into existence. When the desired end point changes - as life itself changes - the goals accommodate accordingly.

Looking at goals like this tends to adjust the way you approach life. My goals are larger and more encapsulating than others’. For example, it’s been a long time goal of mine to eventually become a pilot. Another to be financially independent, yet another to run my own business, and of course to raise my son (and his future siblings) to be successful - respectable - human beings.

For some, my goals may seem too feeble. For me, I keep them as direction points, guiding my decisions along the way. They’re open to being re-prioritized based on things that happen in my life. I don’t let my goals control me - I control them!

Why Set Goals At All?

Have you ever met a person that lived each day as if they were identical? Get up, Go to the same job, come home to the same house, watch TV, go to bed. Day in, day out. If you ask them where they see themselves in five, ten or fifteen years, they make a funny quip or change the subject. The truth is, they don’t know. They either haven’t thought about it, or are so thoroughly defeated by life that they understand desire only as something never attained.

These are the people who have no goals.

Having a goal doesn’t necessarily mean it will be accomplished. In fact, that isn’t really the primary benefit to setting goals. The reason is that a vast majority of us - myself certainly included - perform best when we have a purpose. That purpose is your goal, and the act of having a goal allows you to improve your life right now - today. Goals give you hope, allow you to have passion, aide in your decision making and let you take risks.

The Long Term Outlook

Keeping goals long term and of the big picture is keeping the end in mind. Your goals act as a compass: your own moral guide when confronted with choices in life. Because you know where you’d like to end up, you’re aware of how a particular choice you make will interfere (or not) with you achieving a particular goal.

Life is about living, but having an intended direction makes living enjoyable. Living without purpose, or living exclusively for one, can be debilitating. Setting loose, long term and big picture goals is a good way to find balance.

But once we know which way we want to go, how do we set about achieving anything? Clearly, a goal means that there is an expectation it will be achieved. Tomorrow, I’ll cover the concept of living strategically, and how you can use this to move your goals into the “done it” column.