Kayla

"Write down your goals, and look at them every day"


Writing Down your Goals
by B. Eugene Griessman
Programs on Time Management and Prodictivity, Leadership, and Abraham Lincoln
Editor of the Achievement Digest
6525 Riverside Drive
Atlanta, GA 30328
404-256-5927 800-749-4625
www.AchievementDigest.com

"The most important question to ask about your priorities is the first question on the list: “Will doing this help me reach some important goal in my life?” The legendary hotelier Conrad Hilton attributed his career success to the power of a goal. But Hilton did more than write down his top priority. Here’s the story.

The great depression was not kind to Hilton. After the crash of 1929, people weren’t traveling, and if they were, they weren’t staying in the hotels Hilton had acquired during the boom years of the 1920s. By 1931, his creditors were threatening to foreclose, his laundry was in hock, and he was borrowing money from a bellboy so he could eat. That year Conrad Hilton came upon a photograph of the Waldorf Hotel, with its 6 kitchens, 200 cooks, 500 waiters, 2000 rooms, and its private hospital and private rail[at]road siding in the basement. Hilton clipped that photograph out of the magazine, and wrote across it, “The Greatest of Them All.”

The year 1931 was “a presumptuous, an outrageous time to dream,” Hilton later wrote. But he put the photo of the Waldorf in his wallet, and when he had a desk again, slipped the picture under the glass top. From then on, it was always in front of him. As he worked his way back up and acquired new bigger desks, he would slip the cherished photo under the glass. Eighteen years later, in October 1949, Conrad Hilton acquired the Waldorf.

That picture gave Hilton’s dream shape and substance. There was something for his mind to focus upon. It became a cue for behavior, serving the same function as Helen Gurley Brown’s magazine that she always keeps on her desk.

I never met Conrad Hilton, but I do know someone whose career has been similarly transformed by goals. His name is Homer C. Rice, long-time athletic director of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Rice has been so successful that his peers in the National Association of Collegiate Athletic Directors annually con[at]fer an award named for him on the nation’s top athletic director.

Rice began his coaching career at a rural high school in Kentucky. He eventually moved to a larger high school, where he compiled an incredible win-loss-tie record of 101—9—7, with seven undefeated seasons, a 50-game undefeated streak, and five straight championship years. He subsequently became a universi[at]ty coach, a professional coach, and a university athletic director.

How did he do it? Rice began to read all the books he could find on achievement. He observed that many of those books rec[at]ommended writing down what you want to attain—your aspira[at]tions, your goals, your dreams. The young Kentucky coach began to do just that, and he wrote beside the goals the dates for attain[at]ment, plus a plan for achieving them. One by one, almost by magic, Rice began to reach the goals he had written down. He was so pleased with the outcome that he began to teach his play[at]ers to do the same. He still does.

When I taught management classes at Georgia Tech, I some[at]times invited Rice to make a presentation. The last time I had him do it, he showed us a set of 3 X 5 cards. Then he said, “These are my goals—one on each card. I take them with me everywhere. When I’m at the airport waiting for a plane, I’ll pull them out and begin to read them. The real fun is expecting them to happen.”

He believes goals should be written clearly and concisely. Reading the goals aloud at least twice each day helps imprint the goals on the unconscious mind. “Be patient, be relaxed, be confident,” he says. “If you deserve what you are asking for, it will come to you.”

Lewis J. Walker, former national president of the Institute of Certified Financial Planners, was asked by a newspaper reporter recently to describe the fundamentals of a sound investment pro[at]gram. They chatted for awhile and finally the reporter asked, “What keeps people from being successful?”

Walker replied, “Fuzzy goals.”

The reporter asked Walker to explain what he meant by fuzzy goals. He replied, “A few minutes ago, I asked you what your goals were, and you replied that you wanted to have a cabin in the mountains someday. That was a fuzzy goal. Someday is the problem.”

“Your goal isn’t specific,” Walker told her. “And because it isn’t specific, it’s not very likely to happen. If you truly want a cabin in the mountains, you will need to go find the mountain, find out how much that cabin that you want costs today, and with inflation, how much it will cost, say, five years from now. Then you will need to determine how much you’ll need to save per month to realize that goal. If you do that, you probably will have a cabin in the mountains. If you don’t, it probably won’t happen.” Dreams can be delightful. But fuzzy dreams, uncoupled from an action plan, are delusions. They are rusting boxcars on a sidetrack.

Walker says if you want to have a million dollars by the time you’re 65, and you’re 30 years of age, you can have that if you will simply put back about $90 a month and let it compound. Or, Walker says, you can hope to have a million dollars one day. If you don’t do anything specific about it, you can count on the lottery."

From the Book : “Time Tactics of Very Successful People” McGraw-Hill, Inc

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