I spent many years in business learning how to accomplish goals. I was obsessed with it. So much so, that one day, as I was listening to a cassette tape in my car on the way to the office, a gentleman by the name of Brian Tracy shared a brand new concept called a “to-do list.”

Yep, this was a brand new concept back in the ‘70s: write down what you wanted to get done for the day, week, or month on a sheet of paper and then start to do them. Once you completed a task, check it off. Before that, most people were carrying around their to-do list in their head.

I was so impressed with this revelation that I purchased plane tickets for all the key employees of the company and flew everyone from New York to Boston to participate in an educational seminar on improving productivity in our Photo Processing Laboratory and Retail Locations. Little did I realize that it was Brian Tracy himself who taught every key employee of my company the value of planning and creating to-do lists. That simple process required everyone to pre-think. You had to sit down, think of what you wanted to get done, figure out where, how, and why. Then you had to write it down before you started to get it done.

At the time, we never realized that the man standing in front of us would go on to become a superstar.

From Wikipedia: Brian Tracy is a Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author. He is the author of over seventy books that have been translated into dozens of languages. His popular books are Earn What You’re Really Worth, Eat That Frog!, and The Psychology of Achievement.

When I attended the College for Financial Planning in the ‘90s, they educated me much more formally on basically the same processes, just much more expanded. The Financial planning process is a precise process for achieving targeted financial goals. But it can be used universally. It will also help you to develop a realistic, implementable plan (The To-do List).

Start Your To-Do List

Why so much fuss about creating a plan? Because people are not superhuman. Most people can not juggle six things at once. Having a plan, a set of blueprints, right in front of your eyes can help you see a bigger picture. The fact that it’s written down and in front of your eyes allows you to make changes in advance, rather than doing the “oops we goofed.”

Plus, you get a chance to study the changes and see how those changes impacted the entire project. And all of this even before you actually do it. That is pretty cool stuff.