Today we’re talking about goal setting; it’s a continuation of the content we’ve been putting out around planning to make 2022 a great year for your business. Now that you know what you want, it’s time to create a plan to make your goals happen. Like I always say, clarity creates confidence and ignites momentum.

Think ahead to a year from now. And imagine you’re sitting in the same location as you are today, and you’ve just experienced your best year ever. How would that make you feel to have it happen? What would it do for your confidence and your sense of accomplishment? It’s a powerful feeling. So let’s get to it.

The exercises that we’re talking about in this post can be found at simplifyingentrepreneurship.com/goals. The one we’re going to talk about today is called the one-page PROP. PROP stands for Purpose, Result, Obstacles, and Plan. It’s an easy framework that allows you to organize your thoughts around an idea so that you can assign importance, relevance and reason to whatever it is that you’re trying to do.

P: Purpose. Why is this goal or project even important?

R: Result. Your desired outcome. Do you want more time? More money? People want to feel better, they want to look better, they want to satisfy their wants and reduce their worries. Are the results negotiable or non-negotiable? In other words, is it a nice-to-have outcome or need-to-have outcome?

O: Obstacles. The fears and the barriers that you may encounter. They may be internal pressures, or external ones. They may be from above, like your board of directors, banks, or your boss. They may be from below, like a supply chain issue, or they could be from the side, like your clients or your competitors, your team members, your suppliers, or other partners.

P: Plan. How are you going to get through your obstacles and make this thing happen? If you’ve laid out the purpose, the result, and your obstacles as clearly as you could, the plan should almost slap you in the face. Write everything down as it comes to you; don’t worry about putting it in sequential order. And make sure you write down a deadline for your goal. Goals need to be time-bound in order to be effective.

Once you’ve filled out these portions of your worksheet, fill out the column on the side titled “Who.” Who comes to mind when you ask yourself “Who can help me achieve this goal?” It could be multiple people or just one person, but if you have at least one person you can write down, it will help you feel just a little more confident in your ability to achieve this goal.

Once you have your worksheet filled out, put it into whatever organizational system you use, whether it’s a physical planner or a project management tool like Trello, which I’ve talked about before. Ultimately, you just need a system that works for you, and for all the people involved in the project to know what the plan is, when it needs to be completed, and who is ultimately responsible for making it happen.

What the worksheet does is ensure that the goal or project is even worth starting. If you’ve completed the page and aren’t feeling confident about it, it’s okay to let it go right then and there. That’s the beauty of using a tool like this—once you’ve filled it out, you should know if it’s just another idea or whether it’s truly worth pursuing.

You’ve may have heard me talk about a model that I have called the wheel of momentum. If you need a little more clarity, especially if it’s a bigger goal or project, I like to add in this exercise, which really only takes about another five or 10 minutes. You may be thinking: this seems like a lot of work. But if they’re bigger goals, you want to make sure that you’re doing them for the right reason, that they align with your mission, and that it’s going to help you get to where you want to be. This upfront time can save you an enormous amount of time, money, and frustration if you simply take the few minutes to do this exercise.

There are six parts to the wheel of momentum: clarity, confidence, competence, cooperation, capacity, and creativity. You’re going to be grading yourself on each of these. I like to use a scale of one to ten. You’ve heard me say constantly that clarity creates confidence and confidence ignites momentum. This model is where that whole framework comes from, because confidence gives you the courage to move ahead. And once you’re confident, then you’re going to be working on building competence. This could be either internal competence or external competence, but raising your competence levels is what’s going to make this thing happen.

Cooperation is number four, and cooperation and confidence are often linked very closely. You’re often looking for collaborators in order to expedite your idea. Dan Jackson wrote a book with Benjamin Hardy called Who Not How that talks about this very idea. So if you haven’t read it, put it on your reading list.

So once we’re feeling that we have competence, we’re looking for increased capacity. Remember, as you go through this list, you’re rating yourself on each of these categories so that you’ll have a better understanding of what you need to work on and the area that you need to shore up in order to make this goal come alive.

Once all of these first five areas are in good shape, it allows you to be creative around the idea again—the objections, the frustrations and fears have already been thought about and clarified, and it opens you up to the true potential of the idea. Once you start thinking creatively about the idea again, you go back and get clarity about the bigger thinking you’re doing around the goals, and the whole wheel starts again. Developing your thoughts in a structured framework will allow you and all of those around you to succeed because you’ve communicated your ideas clearly. But in order to communicate clearly, you need to have clarity; you need to have all of these structures in place so you can speak to it.

Now you can see how this all comes together. If you incorporate these tools into your life, you will enjoy more freedom, more clarity and more success. You’ll communicate more effectively and enable alignment with your family, your team, your clients, your partners, and just about anyone else that you talk to. So remember, don’t let fate dictate your future. You’ve got this. It’s time to activate!