Despite what we tell others, deep down, many of us think we’ll fail when we try something new. One of the places the assumption of our failure pops up is in the way we think about planning our goals. I’ve seen it over and over again: people automatically assume that they’re going to fail, and most of their plans revolve around preventing failure.
Instead of going that route, assume you’ll succeed and then figure out how you’re going to do it. While this reframe has a heavily linguistic component to it, it has an important practical component to it – it makes success the primary consideration.
When success is at the forefront of your plans, it makes you think about what success looks like. Sadly, many of us know what failure looks like, but we rarely take a second to think about what success looks like. Not knowing what success looks like is like starting a trip knowing all the places you don’t want to go but having no idea where you do want to go.
Once you know what success looks like, you can identify all the parts of the plan that will make success less likely – I call these parts drag points because of the way I think about planning. Imagine that your plans are like airplanes; they’re designed to get you somewhere. The smoother and more aerodynamic a plane is, the less energy it requires to keep moving. But if it has a lot of places that increase drag, it has to fight against those drag points the whole time.
Airplanes have to fight drag; it’s a known phenomenon and engineers design planes based around the fact that there is drag. Likewise, many of our plans have their drag points; if we’re honest, we know where we’re likely to go wrong and what types of things are likely to mess us up. For instance, if you’re wanting to write an ebook but know you have trouble organizing your ideas, you need to come up with a plan that addresses that drag point. Note here that you’re still not assuming failure: you’re assuming you can write the ebook, but to write the ebook, you’ll need to do something to overcome the natural drag you’ll face.
When assessing drag points, it’s critical that you’re honest with yourself. If you really don’t like doing something or you’re not very good at it, put that on the board as a drag point. This lets you have an action plan for those points; you can either make a plan for improving your competence or you can figure out ways to minimize the actions you don’t want to do. But ignoring the fact that it’s there is an invitation for disaster, because, should you succeed, those drag points will become even harder to deal with. The faster you’re going, the more you have to fight against drag.
When we start from the assumption that we’ll fail, it’s hard to figure out where to start; after all, whatever we do is not likely to work anyway. But when we start from the assumption that we’ll succeed, we can identify what we need to do to get moving and what will drag us down. The assumption of success gives motivation, and identifying what needs to happen gives clarity and actionable steps.
Think about your plans. What would be different if you just pretended you would be successful? What is preventing your success, and what can you do about it?
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I like the idea of drag points, because the airplane metaphor makes sense to me. Airplanes also have to take off into the wind, an incredible amount of resistance yet that is necessary. So sometimes “takeoff” can really feel like pushing through headwinds, but maybe for a good reason.
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Man, planning for success is such a different vantage point for me! When I look on the past year, I *have* done really well, but it was definitely fear-driven. Desperation works, I guess.
But I can see how excitement can work even BETTER. And definitely cause less stress along the way. Now. How to incorporate this into my actual outlook on life? That’s the tricky part.
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Drag points… awesome idea! I talk with my clients about procrastination habits and the idea of drag points tackles the concept from a different angle. I can see already how the idea can work in my own battle against my Somedays.
Thanks!
.-= Alex Fayle | Someday Syndrome´s last blog ..Seeing Bad Habits as Good Traits =-.
this is excellent. You are right that we often start right from the beginning worried about failure and how to mitigate it rather than success and how to achieve it. Must ponder this more.
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Assume you will succeed and establish reasonable objectives. Perhaps a simpler outcome or an alternative would be more satisfying for life in general. To achieve that objective that we have decided on we do need to carefully establish a detailed plan.
“Our plans miscarry if they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.” Lucius Seneca (3-65)
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I really like this perspective. For me, focusing on the negative aspects of things always tends to make things go wrong. It’s like whatever you put too much energy in tends to become reality. Not talking about the Law of Attraction here, just the fact that we tend to make decisions based upon our perspective and have the habit of sabotaging things if we get too scared.
I like a lot what you say about drag points. It’s a great reminder to be positive about it what you want to do, but not jump in blindly and foolishly. It’s always good to be aware of our weaknesses as long as they don’t cause us to become immobilized in the process.
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Stumbled upon this post via your twitter feed. Awesome reframe. Particularly thought-provoking that a suggested related post is about 21 tributes to failure. Going to read that one next