🤠 How To Defeat Your Goliath with a Few Milestones

Day 36:   Sometimes You Need to Stop and Recenter   

by Edward Smith

10 Aug 2020

Milestones Let You Press Pause 

In this article I'm going to talk about milestones.   Milestones are your friend.   They keep your dreams on track.

Milestones let you take a big unwieldy thing and break it into a set of smaller pieces.   Those pieces are easier to manage, and you can get to know them better.   

Milestones also let you slow down time.    They give you space.   You can breathe, review things objectively, and readjust things.   This is vital, because you can get back on track before you get too lost.    

It's like having an experienced and loyal guide.   The guide might let you wander around for a bit so that you gain some experience and see things first hand, but the guide never abandons you.   

When things turn ugly, the guide suddenly appears, takes control and leads you back to safety.   They were always there behind the scenes, keeping everyone together and on target.   Milestones work the same way.         

Long Term Goals are Too Big to See All At Once

With long term goals, when you start out, you can't see or understand everything up front.   It's too big, and there are too many moving parts.

To make it more complicated, many of the pieces are foreign to you.  If you already knew everything you wouldn't be trying to change anything.  

With long term goals, you don't have all of the experience when you start.  Things don't work the way you expect.   If that happens, you'll be glad you had a milestone in place.  You can set a date to stop and review, look things over, and readjust.   Now you're back on track, and you're doing things smarter.

Losing Weight Might Require You to Wait

For instance, you might know that you want to lose weight.   You might not know how to do it.   You might think a gym will solve your problem.  You talk to skinny people.   They talk about going to the gym, so you decide to make that your long term goal.  

You start going to the gym, but once you begin, you find out quickly the gym has hours for public use and private use.   The public hours conflict with your working hours.  You can't be in both places at the same time.   Your original plan needs to be readjusted.      

Now you got the scheduling thing taken care of, but this gym thing is still not working out.   Sounds like you might need another milestone.

You might find you can't work out for as long as you thought you could.   Your body is too weak.  It  needs to become stronger before you can handle tougher stuff.   You might need to do things in stages.  You might need to go slower.   You might need to switch to a lighter routine.   

Milestones show you your progress.   You can see where you wanted to be, and where you actually are.   When you can do that, you can start targeting the right things at the right time.          

Pushing Forward Without a Milestone can be Dangerous

In the gym example, you could ignore the details and push forward.   It might work out, but chances are pretty good you're going to hurt yourself.   Was it worth it?    Probably not.    When you think about it, that's how many injuries occur.  

We all come equipped with a super computer for a brain.   We're not equipped with stupid.   Stupid is just what others call it when when we fail to look at the details before we do something that could have been prevented.      

It's not that we think we can outrun a moving car.  We just decide to cross the street at the wrong time because we didn't take speed and distance into account.    People don't get bitten by dogs because dogs have teeth.   People get bitten by dogs because they stick their hands too close, and fail to recognize when a dog is angry.    

Milestones are what keep you safe.   They make you stop and think.   You get a second to assess potential risk.   You get to step back when something looks too dangerous or harmful.    That makes the difference. 

Conclusion

In this article, I talked about milestones.   If you're going to go do something that you know will take time and effort, you better have a set of milestones in place.   Without a milestone you're going to get lost.   You're going to discouraged because you won't see progress.   You won't know why.   You won't have looked at it in the right way.  It will be a mystery.   

Long term goals work like a conversation.  They start out looking one way, but can quickly change as new information becomes available.   You want to remain attentive.   You also want to listen to your guide.   Don't get lost.   Don't wander off.   Create a milestone, stop and review everything, see what works and doesn't work, readjust, and let your next step take you forward towards your dream.   

You're on your way!   Next stop!   Mission Accomplished!