Though he actually gives credit to a “statement [he] heard long ago in the Army,” President Eisenhower is commonly credited with the idea that “plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” This is absolutely true when considering the arc our lives will take both personally and professionally. Not only is the planning important, but the recognition that it’s bound to go off the rails at some point is just as important.
There is only one opportunity to choose how we will spend each day, and what direction that day will move us. Like our military work, our broader lives can also fall victim to the crush of the urgent but unimportant. Before we know it, months or even years have passed without moving closer to the things of value we hoped to accomplish. To combat this, we need a strong goal achievement process that helps us break an operation into phases and key tasks. Done right, a strong goal-attainment strategy can help us counteract the daily distractions that pull us away from attacking the intermediate tasks.
Many believe analog tools are still best suited for this task. With open-ended pages, blank lines, and plenty of margin space, we can monitor progress, make changes, and scratch through mistakes as we work towards achievements. That said, having a tool with a strong structure already in place can help guide our planning and goal achievement.
In the past year, I have found Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner (FFP) an outstanding tool that provides a deliberate, purposeful, and reflective process for reaching one’s goals. Members of the military profession will easily draw parallels between the planner’s elements and processes like MDMP and after-action reviews.
The planner’s greatest strength lies in helping break large goals into daily tasks. It also breaks goals into two broad types: achievement or habit. Unique pages are provided to list and track your progress with each of type. Because the FFP team doesn’t have any idea what point in the year any user will pick up the FFP, each planner is structured the same, so you may not use every page in every quarter and each edition starts with annual goals.
To develop annual goals, break it into as many areas as make sense. I chose areas such as personal, professional (civilian career), financial, marriage, spiritual, military, etc. Similar to mission analysis, this gives a chance to anticipate what one might want to accomplish in the next few years. From there, identify what makes sense for the next 12 months, and into which quarter each might fall. The planner format makes this simple: for example, I knew based on school dates that getting qualified as a Civil Affairs officer would fall into quarters two and three, and I could spend the first quarter focused on other targets. With each goal, the planner also has space at the bottom to note how you will reward yourself once you complete the goal.
Once your goals are laid out, the FFP moves into its actual function as a weekly planner. At the beginning of the week, you identify your Weekly Big Three, the three key tasks you need to accomplish this week to move closer to your goals. Past that, every single day has its own two-page spread. One side is for your daily big three—a further break down of what it takes to accomplish your weekly big three—and your agenda for the day. You can see how this starts to become very similar to a military operation in its break down of tasks into smaller and smaller bites that feed the task above. The other side of the spread is for notes.
At the end of each week, the Weekly Review pages are an awesome progress-review tool, a chance to recognize your wins for the week, think through what you did well, and what you can improve; and then identify a new big three for the coming week.
There is even more depth to the planner as you dig through it such as the Rolling Quarters and Ideal Week pages. Rolling Quarters is your long-term calendar to block off key events and important dates. The Ideal Week allows you to block time to help yourself visualize how you want to spend your time. You can mark off hours for working out, office time, family time, community involvement—whatever is important to you. The point is that you are deliberate in your process. Just as you budget your money, also budget your time. It is a very finite resource.
Lastly, the Full Focus Planner Thinktank is a very active Facebook support group where users discuss best practices and provide support. Hyatt and his team are very active in the group and consistently seek feedback and update the planner accordingly. It truly is an active community with a publisher who works hard to make the product the best it can be.
The new year is upon us. Maybe you accomplished all you wanted to in 2018, but maybe there are things rolling around in your head you just can’t seem to get focused on. Having a strong goal-attainment process in place could make all the difference in 2019. Whether you choose the FFP, another analog tool, or even a digital tool, be deliberate. Write your goals down. Which ones will you start attacking on 1 January?
MAJ Brad Barron commands HHC, 431stCivil Affairs Battalion. He was previously an infantry officer in the Arkansas Army National Guard. MAJ Barron has served from the platoon to combatant command level with active duty time at National Guard Bureau and Headquarters, United States Central Command. In 2017 he deployed to CJTF-HOA as a liaison officer to the French military in Djibouti. The opinions expressed above are those of MAJ Barron and do not represent product endorsement by the Field Grade Leader.