Q4 Week 2: Visualize Your Target
Painting the picture of what achieving your goal looks like
Welcome to Week 2 of Quarter 4! You're officially in the implementation phase now, which feels both exciting and maybe a tiny bit terrifying. That's totally normal! You're building something important!
Last week, we consolidated all your strategic decisions into your Big Plan Workbook foundation. You hunted down key insights from previous quarters, organized everything into one document, and selected your specific target goal for this quarter. Hey, no more scattered puzzle pieces! Everything you need to move forward is now in one beautiful, organized place.
This week, we're building on that organized foundation by painting a detailed picture of what "success" looks like when you achieve your target goal. We're getting specific about your vision so you can actually plan toward something concrete instead of just hoping things work out somehow.
Getting specific
A lot of people set goals like, "I want to start my own business" or "I want to get a better job" or "I want to be happier." But those aren't actually goals, they're just...big huge wants without certainty or direction! It reminds me of when Airbnb gives you the ambiguous radius for where the rental might be located instead of showing you exactly what the address is. Or like your friend texting you 'pack for our day trip!' but not mentioning you're going to that indoor skydiving place that's also somehow a salad bar. You end up getting confused and overwhelmed and somehow only pack Tums and a pair of underwear.
When your goal is vague, your brain has no idea what to work toward and things can get overwhelming or cause you to fall off quickly. But when you get specific about what the exact goal is and what success looks like, feels like, and functions like in your actual life, that's when your brain can start making a real plan. That's when you can look at a decision and think, "Does this move me closer to my weird wonderful vision or does it move me further away?"
Your success, not theirs
Before we dive into visualization, we need to remember what success means to YOU. The world has very loud opinions about what success should look like when it comes to achieving goals. Big numbers! Fast growth! Viral moments! Being featured in publications! Making six figures! Having a team of 47 people! And if you don't meet that, it feels like you've failed.
But you get to define what success in your goal means for you in a way that's more aligned. Your version of success might be getting 3 orders in your first month. It might be landing a stable UX job at a company whose mission you believe in. It might be attending an open mic once a week and slowly building your audience.
Sometimes your success won't involve impressive numbers at all! Maybe it's about feeling energized by your work instead of drained. Maybe it's about using your unique abilities every day. Maybe it's about making a small but meaningful difference in people's lives. All of these are valid, beautiful definitions of success because. What matters is that you question traditional success markers and ask "do I actually care about that?". Maybe you will, and that's okay too. Confidence in your decisions is all I ever want for you!
