Goal Secret #1: Think longer.

“We usually overestimate what we think we can accomplish in one year, but we grossly underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade.” – Tony Robbins

This quote reveals a secret that evaded me for years. I’d frequently have a vision of a very large accomplishment and know that I should work to achieve it. But I’d set an arbitrary deadline for the end of the quarter or the end of the year, often underestimating how much time and effort would be needed to accomplish it.  Then the self-imposed deadline would come and go, and I would become frustrated or discouraged. (Sometimes even frustrated enough to stop working on the project.)

One secret to achieving more is to think longer: longer-term. Nothing really ends on December 31, so there’s no reason to assume your project should. Get rid of any arbitrary timelines in your goal-setting process.

Instead, dream your big dream, and think about how much you could accomplish in a decade. Then work backwards from there. How much progress do you need to make each year? Each month? Each day?

Now, make success inevitable. Schedule 30 minutes out of each day to make progress towards your goal. Create a list of everything you can think of to do and complete 3 items each day. Over one year, you’ll have dedicated over 10,000 minutes (or almost a full month’s worth of working time) and completed over 1,000 tasks. In a decade, that totals nearly 2,000 hours and 10,000 tasks.

Imagine what you could accomplish with dedicated focus over that length of time.