The secret to achieving big goals is something I learnt from a talk STW’s COO Chris Savage gave one day at work. He illustrated the lesson by recounting a story of his son playing rugby and the same lesson also appears in Brian Tracy’s book Eat That Frog.

The lesson is “set short term achievable goals”.

775km is a hell of a long distance. It’s a long car ride and seems an almost impossible distance to walk. But I did walk it, in 28 days without a rest day. I did it by setting goals for each day. I’d find a town that was 25-30km away and aim for that. Walking 6km/h that’s only half a days walking. Most days I’d finish just after lunch.

Some days I’d walk less if I took some time out to do sightseeing, one day I stretched and did over 40km. The point is I was never looking at the big number. Day to day it was irrelevant, and scary.

The big goals are only ever relevant before or after you achieve something. “How far did you walk” I’d get asked, never “how far did you go each day”. It’s the same in business. People are only ever interested in what results you achieved, not what you got done in any particular day. However, breaking it down into achievable goals is the only way to get there.