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Psychological distance (official name: Construal level theory) is a theory that describes how we think about - in our case - a goal. Your Goal will usually involve an event/ activity, people and objects. So if the event/ activity is a long way off, or you haven't really thought about it, or you consider it to be unlikely, you will think of it in more abstract terms. If you don't know, or haven't met, or haven't thought about the people involved, you will also think of them in more abstract terms. The same is true for the things, or objects, involved in the goal. As we get closer to an event/ activity with the people and objects involved, we think of it in more concrete detailed terms (official name: Concrete construals). Abstract thinking loses its value. We make plans that we act on. Research shows that if we can learn to apply concrete construal level thinking to a goal when there is normally the abstract thinking of psychological distance, we are more likely to achieve the goal. Let's put this into practice. Last week you created your first draft of your Short Term Milestones. Now that you understand about reducing psychological distance by using more concrete detail, please click through and amend as necessary. While you do, make sure they're SMART as well:  [cm field_name=”My Short Term Milestones”]  

Last week you created your first draft of your Medium Term Milestones. Now that you understand about reducing psychological distance by using more concrete detail, please click through and amend as necessary. While you do, make sure they're SMART as well. The Medium Term Milestones you wrote: [cm field_name="My Medium Term Milestones”] There's now a final step in your 'Milestone' thinking. We need you to think about the milestones that would make you know you're as prepared as you can be to achieve your goal. These are your Long Term Milestones. Think of these Long Term Milestones as the longer term biggest steps you will have to have taken to make progress to your Goal. Some people find it easier to think of the kind of milestones they would be proud to tell close friends and family they'd achieved. For example, the runner with the goal of completing their first marathon may have a half marathon as a shorter term milestone and 20 miles/ 32km as a medium term milestone. A Long Term Milestone in this case may be to complete the full marathon training programme and feel ready for the race. Change 'My Short Term Milestones' and/or 'My Medium Term Milestones' as required if these make more sense now. [cm field_name="My Long Term Milestones”]

This is when everything starts to come together. This is Your Goal: [cm field_name="My Goal"] It should be nearly there. Your SMART reviews last week should have covered most things. One final check is to ensure you are happy that it clearly reflects what success looks like for you. Sometimes when people have been through the Milestones review process their assessment of success changes. For example, if your Goal is to launch your own business, you may have initially thought you'd be happy with a comfortable six-figure income lifestyle business. In reviewing, you may decide that you want to make more of an impact and shoot for a £1m/ $1.4m revenue business. Click through and redraft your goal to reflect a clear definition of success for you. Your last couple of SMS texts got you thinking about Drivers of Success. In the last couple of days you've been reviewing/ creating your short/ medium/ long-term milestones. You now need to start an initial draft list of your Drivers of Success. Think about your successful achievement of your Goal. What would have gone right? What drove your success? For your Goal to have been achieved, what had to go well? Think about the detail: skills, training, logistics, events, decisions. We'll use a detailed example at this point as by the end of this week we need you to have an exhaustive list of your Drivers of Success of your Goal. Don't worry - you know us by now - we'll work with you closely on this point as it's vital! If we continue with the 'setting up your own business' example (target £1m/$1.4m Revenue in 3yrs), an initial draft list of Drivers of Success would look like:

1. An honest competitive understanding (without this you can't assess whether 2-3 below are sufficient)
2. A clear value proposition (need/ want solved) - this is the 'Why' your business should exist
3. A clear definition of what your business sells, to who, and what sets it apart from the competitive landscape. What will make you unique compared to others? You need a clear definition of what enables this difference.
4. Business/ commercial models (pricing/ terms/ profitable delivery etc.) that attract clients
5. A marketing and sales strategy that achieves your target revenues
6. A people hiring/ outsourcing/ partnering plan that enables the above business to be run
7. A finance plan (budgets, cashflows, equity/ debt raise etc.) that supports the growth of the business

Hopefully you started to think about prioritisation earlier. We now need you to firm up your Draft Drivers of Success into initial Drivers of Success. These can be changed later. There are a number of different ways that you can sort your Drivers of Success. Some people find that they sort according to the Drivers they feel weakest in, or least certain about. Others are clear which Drivers are the most important and list them in this way. A sequential list - more like a timeline - is equally valid as people run through what has to happen in order. The most important thing as you go through the following process is that you're sure you've captured all of the Drivers of Success required for your goal. By thinking about prioritisation you force your brain to think again in concrete ways rather than being theoretical. Don't forget about your Learning Strategy, including consulting your experts, at this stage; they will often be the ones who are clearest on your Drivers of Success. Here's another challenge: we want 7 - that's right, seven, Drivers of Success. We've found this is absolutely the best way of making you think exhaustively about everything that needs to have come together for you to achieve Your Goal. So, at the bottom of this email we'll remind you of your Draft Drivers of Success. There are then seven links for you to capture your seven Drivers of Success in priority order (to the extent you can prioritise now) - don't forget you will be able to change these in the future. [cm field_name=”Draft Drivers of Success"] [cm field_name="First Driver"] [cm field_name="Second Driver"] [cm field_name="Third Driver"] [cm field_name="Fourth Driver"] [cm field_name="Fifth Driver"] [cm field_name="Sixth Driver"] [cm field_name="Seventh Driver"]  

Now that you have the 7 Drivers of Success for your goal and you've thought about what perfect looks like, you're ready to score your ability to achieve each Driver. Imagine that 5 is perfect and 0 is zero ability to achieve the driver. How do you score against each Driver? You need to be honest as a failure to do so could lead you to fail to work with sufficient effort on a vital area for the achievement of your goal. When you have scored each of the Drivers of Success you will be working out how to measure your progress against each Driver and how frequently you will measure your progress. The most important element is then the development of actions (training/ learning/ work etc.) against the measured gaps between you and perfect for each Driver. This is all to come. First, against each Driver below, please score where you are now against each Driver: [cm field_name="First Driver"] [cm field_name="First Driver Initial Score"] [cm field_name="Second Driver"] [cm field_name="Second Driver Initial Score"] [cm field_name="Third Driver"] [cm field_name="Third Driver Initial Score"] [cm field_name="Fourth Driver"] [cm field_name="Fourth Driver Initial Score"] [cm field_name="Fifth Driver"] [cm field_name="Fifth Driver Initial Score"] [cm field_name="Sixth Driver"] [cm field_name="Sixth Driver Initial Score"] [cm field_name="Seventh Driver"] [cm field_name="Seventh Driver Initial Score"]

This week has been hard and heavy on the doing, rather than the learning. You may feel your most concerned so far about the size of the task ahead of you, and the amount of work required. This is deliberate as next week we focus on the science of commitment and motivation to face up to the challenge Keep going: you're moving through some of the most difficult bits of goal preparation to ensure your success. This week you have learned:

• Thinking about future events as though they are about to happen, and planning them in as much detail as you would then, improves your chance of achieving your goal (Construal level / psychological distance theory) - this is the reason for all the Milestone and Driver of Success work.

• Made a concrete commitment towards Your Goal; A purchase, race entry or registering a business or profile
• Used your Learning Strategy & called on expert knowledge to realistically assess the time & effort involved in achieving Your Goal
• You detailed the Milestones that would make you know you were as prepared as you can be to achieve your goal [cm field_name="My Long Term Milestones”]
• You completed an initial list of your Drivers of Success [cm field_name="Draft Drivers of Success"]
• You then refined this list into a prioritised list of seven Drivers of Success, giving the Drivers an initial score against a 'perfect' achievement (being a '5'):
  • [cm field_name="First Driver"] [cm field_name="First Driver Initial Score"]
  • [cm field_name="Second Driver"] [cm field_name="Second Driver Initial Score"]
  • [cm field_name="Third Driver"] [cm field_name="Third Driver Initial Score"]
  • [cm field_name="Fourth Driver"] [cm field_name="Fourth Driver Initial Score"]
  • [cm field_name="Fifth Driver"] [cm field_name="Fifth Driver Initial Score"]
  • [cm field_name="Sixth Driver"] [cm field_name="Sixth Driver Initial Score"]
  • [cm field_name="Seventh Driver"] [cm field_name="Seventh Driver Initial Score"]
• At the start of the week you received a letter from an older, wiser version of you: [cm field_name="A Letter to Yourself in a Bottle"]

Breaking down the Drivers of Success unlocks the four ways that specific, difficult goals lead to higher performance than no goals or 'do your best' goals. Taking each Driver and then reducing it down into Sub Drivers gives you the raw material required to take action, and apply the science of goals. If we use the earlier 'setting up your own business' example (target £1m/$1.4m Revenue in 3yrs), the first Driver of Success was 'An honest competitive understanding'. This could then be broken down into initial Sub Drivers as follows:

1. A review of competitor value propositions (why they say they exist)
2. A review of competitor products/ services
3. A review of competitor target audiences
4. A review of what sets competitors apart from each other including a clear definition of what enables this difference.
5. A review of competitor pricing
6. A review of competitor business/ commercial models
7. A review of competitor sales and marketing tactics, methodologies and practices
8. An assessment of the economic environment in which you are looking to operate, and likely impact on you
9. An evaluation of the political and legal environments in which you are looking to operate, and likely impact on you
10. An analysis of target customer trends

1. Choice/ Direction - you focus on activities that will help you achieve your goal and away from those that don't
2. Effort - effort is activated and stimulated in proportion to how difficult the goal is to achieve
3. Persistence - people spend longer on a specific, difficult goal than a vaguer, easier goal
4. Strategy - we work harder at selecting the correct strategies to achieve the task. We often have to adopt a knowledge or learning strategy to respond to what is required to achieve the specific, difficult goal

Or even plate-spinning would be great?..... You're about to enter a more difficult phase in your goal setting and achievement journey. To get you to achieve your Draft Goal, we now need to start to run activities in parallel. This requires your trust, but this is where Constant Mentor comes into its own as a programme engineered to make sure everything is happening at the right time to ensure you succeed. Go with the flow and as always - just do. Trust your instincts on your answers and actions and don't procrastinate. Everything we work on can - and probably will - be tweaked as we progress, and remember that your Goals area on the Constant Mentor site is where you go to check/ change everything. This week we will be breaking down your draft goal into short and medium term milestones that will make the achievement process easier to handle. Think of these milestones as the bigger steps you will have to have taken to make progress. They may be the same as the solutions to your blockers we looked at last week, or they may be different. Don't worry about this. Some people find it easier to think of the kind of milestones they would be proud to tell close friends and family they'd achieved. For example, runners with a Draft Goal of completing their first marathon may have achieving a 10k and then a half marathon as milestones. Entrepreneurs with a Draft Goal of creating a £1m revenue business may have £100k and £500k as milestones, but may also have a new product launch or new offices as indicators of successful progress. So, let's start easy with some short term milestones for your Draft Goal: [cm field_name="My Draft Goal"] Write a first list of [cm field_name="My Short Term Milestones"]

We got you to describe your Vision of Success early in the first week. You wrote: [cm field_name="My Vision of Success"] Excessive goal fantasizing is however proven to lead to underperformance in achieving goals. The issue is that you have to act to achieve; just thinking about it does nothing...to a degree. The Short Term Milestones exercise yesterday is the first of a number of planning stages required to get you visualising steps and process to achieve your Draft Goal. This visualisation of steps and process is at the heart of how 'visioning the future' is proven to improve goal achievement performance. We overcome the planning fallacy (human's impressive ability to always underestimate how long/ hard something will be), and we also start to deal with our emotions; the anxiety surrounding failure and procrastination are reduced. We end up loving visualising steps and process because it lets us know what to do, and where we need to learn/ seek help if we can't do it. The science behind visualisation has taken leaps forward in recent years with the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) - a technique for measuring and mapping brain activity. It has been discovered that we use the same brain network to remember the past as well as to imagine or visualise the future. The power of visualising short and medium term milestones now takes on a deeper importance. Think about how real something feels to you when you remember it: you re-live it in your head and heart as the memory triggers emotions. Visualising the steps towards your ideal future and Draft Goal, including as much detail as you can imagine, activates and unlocks so many of your resources. As well as the practicalities referred to above, as fundamentally goal-oriented creatures a lot of deeper things happen to us that we are only just starting to understand through research. If we do it right, we may unconsciously think and feel we have achieved the goal. This gets really exciting with new insights into our brain networks. The task positive network (TPN) is a network of areas of the brain activated during action on focused, attention-demanding tasks. The default mode network (DMN) is generally considered to be the opposite of the TPN and 'is a network of brain regions that are active when the individual is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest' - Wikipedia. The function of the DMN is currently unclear, whereas the function of the TPN is clear. However, specifically personal goal-directed planning has been proven to cause the DMN to activate. So we're working at the outer limits of what we can currently prove with scientific research, but detailed step-by-step personal goal-directed planning visualisation is utilising both networks of the brain. Our assertion is that more of our resources - conscious and unconscious - are activated and then oriented to achieving our goal by going through this process. Overnight we'd like your first draft list of [cm field_name="My Medium Term Milestones"]  

We mentioned in previous interventions that publicly declaring your goals too soon can lead you to fail to achieve your goal. Theories for this include that you trick yourself into a sense of achievement just through the act of announcing your goal. The work you have done on blockers and short & medium term milestones goes a way to solving this. You now need the commitment that public declaration forces on you. Get the timetable on the wall at work/ in the family calendar. Announce it on Facebook/ Twitter and start to tell everyone you meet. Reward is closely tied to public declaration as a motivator. Decide on a reward against each short and medium term milestone. You can announce these as well if you want. Obviously make sure the rewards don't undermine the goals (think weight loss and chocolate cakes or paying yourself a big dividend and starving yourself of investment capital). Decide on your big reward for when you achieve your ultimate Draft Goal: [cm field_name="My Draft Goal"] Your need for knowledge/ skills and expert help will start to become apparent. You won't be able to complete certain aspects of the planning in the coming weeks because you lack the understanding of what is required. Equally you may not be able to achieve your Draft Goal without support. Start to identify who or what you need. Have to hire a coach? Buy a book? Research online? Take a course? The most important thing is to recognise that failure to pursue knowledge/ skills and expert help is a significant cause of goal failure. The best people continually invest in their learning strategy. Put down your first thoughts on your Learning Strategy here: [cm field_name="My Learning Strategy"] Will Smith's character in 'After Earth' says, "Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future". If we fear our goals it shows us that we have not sufficiently taken control of our plans to achieve our goals. We will use your fear going forward as an indicator of where you need to invest more time and intelligence. Will's character says, "Danger [of failing to achieve your Draft Goal*] is very real, but fear is a choice". Obviously this programme aims to remove or absolutely minimise the danger, but too many people don't invest enough in sufficient planning. *our addition in brackets :-)

'SMART goals' is one of the most searched for Google terms relating to goal setting. It is an acronym which provides a framework to test that a goal is sufficiently described and set in a way that increases your chances of delivering it. Over the coming weeks of detailed planning we will be applying SMART to your Draft Goal as we finalise it. We will also be applying SMART to pretty much everything we work on surrounding your goals: short and medium term milestones, solutions to blockers as well as the drivers of success we will start work on next week. Think of SMART as being a kind of checklist to avoid woolly goal language that you can't take action on. This is so important because a goal is essentially an instruction or commitment to yourself. If you don't talk to yourself in the right way, you're not going to get yourself to change. We'll deal with S and M today (!) and A, R and T tomorrow. S is variously defined as specific, stretching, strategic, significant, smart?, small!. Specific is the best definition for us to use. As we learnt in week 1, specific difficult goals are scientifically proven to lead to higher performance than ‘do your best’ goals or no goals at all. So think who, what, where, why, when. M has less alternatives. Meaningful and motivating are used as well as the most common - that we will also use - Measurable. Measurable has two components: first is that by trying to apply either an objective or subjective measure of success for a goal we are usually forced to be even more specific about our goal. Secondly, as we execute on the goal, the measurement gives us feedback which research says is critical for us to perform against the goal. In fact, when performance feedback is withheld in goal experiments, goals become ineffective in improving performance. Basically, if you don't know how well you're doing against a goal you don't push yourself in the right way. So think about that first time you will measure progress. Can you do it? Are the measures objective or subjective? Overnight start to think about how your Draft Goal wording starts to change when you apply the above. A reminder: [cm field_name=”My Draft Goal”]  

Yesterday we understood SMART as an acronym which provides a framework to test that a goal is sufficiently described and set in a way that increases your chances of delivering it. Think of SMART as being a kind of checklist to avoid woolly goal language that you can't take action on. This is so important because a goal is essentially an instruction or commitment to yourself. If you don't talk to yourself in the right way, you're not going to get yourself to change. Yesterday we dealt with the first two letters. To continue: A is the first place where science takes you away from your normal definitions. Google gives us attainable, achievable, assignable and agreed upon. Action oriented or actionable is what we use. Two reasons: first, assignable and agreed upon suggest that others are involved in your goal setting process. They are - loosely - as we will see later in the programme, but only in support. You are absolutely central to your goal achievement efforts. The second reason is that action makes everything come alive. Words and plans are dead until you act. So describe your goal in terms that means you know what to do. R brings further science into the definition. Relevant and results-oriented are valid, as are rewarding yourself, rewarding and recorded. But they lack the challenge and interrogation of Realistic?. This is where self belief and commitment - the core drivers of goal achievement - kick in. The performance of scientific study participants with the highest goals was over 250% higher than those with the easiest goals. So you need to balance reality with difficulty and question whether you're pushing yourself hard enough in the goal you're setting. You want to live in the question mark at the end of Realistic? for a while and come out the other side with a 'yes, it is just about realistic'. This is when you've got the balance right. T pretty much always relates to time, but is variously described as timely, time-bound or time-based. Trackable is another option. We use Timely because the ordering of your goals, or the sequencing of the steps to achieve the goal (the focus of future weeks' programmes), is critical. Yes, you need to allocate sufficient time or be deadline driven but these tend to be relatively simple tasks vs. ensuring that your Draft Goal correctly reflects the timeliness of your endeavour. So, your Draft Goal in achieving your first ultramarathon would need to reference achievement at marathon, 50k and 80k/ 50 miles first. As long as you this T causes you to think over time horizons and start to prioritise activities or sub goals, then it is doing its job. Over the next few days we want you to start to redraft/ reword your Draft Goal wording to apply the above. We now want you to move to work on [cm field_name=”My Goal”]. A reminder on your Draft Goal: [cm field_name=”My Draft Goal”]

The pace has increased this week slightly hasn't it? Please keep up. In the first week one of the SMS texts said, 'Be clear. The reason why most people don't achieve their goals when started? Failure to appreciate the amount of hard work they have to put in'. This week you have learned:

• Beware of your draft goal becoming a blocker in itself. We fear failure, and goals can threaten us if we don’t have a clear plan
• The multiple aspects of goal setting require you to trust the Constant Mentor programme and keep up with your actions (see below)
• It can help planning to work back from a goal. Imagine you just achieved Your Draft Goal. What was the last big 'breakthrough' step you had to take to achieve it?
• A first reference to the importance of action in goal-setting: "That which we call thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement" - John J. Ratey, Spark
• The importance of action focus in planning. Excessive goal fantasizing is proven to lead to underperformance in achieving goals. Visualising steps and process lets us know what to do, and where we need to learn/ seek help if we can't do it.
• Public declaration of goals at the right time (when you have done some detailed planning) forces commitment on you.
• Sensible rewards will motivate you to move between milestones. Not cake and Porsches with the first sign of success!
• Failure to pursue knowledge/ skills and expert help is a significant cause of goal failure. The best people continually invest in their learning strategy.
• Your fear of your goal going forward as an indicator of where you need to invest more time and intelligence in planning. Listen to it.
• The importance of mentally or physically creating a visual of how your short & medium term milestones connect. What's your process to achieve each?
• The scientifically-supported SMART is Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic?, Timely
• GE CEO Jeff Immelt “established aggressive goals only after he assessed how the organization might go after them” - Ram Charan
• First Principles Thinking requires you to look at the fundamentals of how to achieve your goal. Don't lazily accept 'facts'

• A first list of your Short Term Milestones: [cm field_name="My Short Term Milestones"]
• A first list of your Medium Term Milestones: [cm field_name="My Medium Term Milestones"]
• Your first thoughts on your Learning Strategy[cm field_name="My Learning Strategy"]
• Redraft/ reword of your Draft Goal wording to apply SMART. Work on My Goal: [cm field_name=”My Goal”].

Imagine you received a letter from yourself, but written by an older, wiser version of you. What would you tell the younger, current version of yourself? You know yourself better than anyone else if you're honest. What words of insight would you need to receive now to best set you up to achieve Your Goal? This is important because you're about to go into a period of even more detailed planning. Keeping with, and trusting, the programme and continuing to invest in the hard work and momentum required is now critical. Please write [cm field_name="A Letter to Yourself in a Bottle"]