How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything

Today’s Skill: Long-term Vision

Heading into 2025, I set a business goal to start this newsletter and I challenged myself to publish it every week for 52-straight weeks.

Today, I’m proud to say, this is issue #52!

But, this isn’t about the achievement, this is about raw focus.

I knew I was going to get pulled in many directions and see “shiny objects” glimmering all around me, appearing that they mattered more in the moment.

But, I had a vision of where I wanted to go and I needed to be hyper-focused to get there.

→ Remember, we physically can’t do everything.

We have a hard enough time doing a handful of things.

But, what is the ONE THING we can do?

What is the One Thing, that if you looked back on it this time next year, you’d be proud of yourself for sticking with it?

I know this is a newsletter about Sales Skills but this goes well beyond Sales. I am a believer that all of it meshes together and carries over into other aspects of your life. So, if your ONE THING is running a marathon, phenomenal! If it’s learning piano, outstanding! If it’s doubling your revenue, you got this!

Whatever it is, how can you ensure you’re going to accomplish it?

6 Leading Indicators of Success

I’d encourage you to get out a piece of paper and a pen to write this all down!

1. Choose It

What one goal do you have for your personal life or business? Don’t overthink this.

If you struggle with this, use Brian Tracy’s method for picking it. He says to make a list of 10 goals and circle the one that pops out as the most important. It’ll be very obvious in the sea of average goals you’ve written down.

My thought: What might not give you the “quick win” but helps build a foundation for the person or business you want to aspire to.

→ “Hard” isn’t a bad thing here.

2. Define It

Picking it is not enough, we have to be clear on when we know the goal is met. How can you put guardrails around it? What are the boundaries to let us know if we are on track or not?

This isn’t about the “How”, this is about the “What”. How will come with planning, What gives us the specifics to plan against.

Examples:

• If you are running a marathon, signing up for the race gives you a specific date to shoot for.

• Publish one newsletter every week in 2026 is better than “publish a newsletter”.

• My friend has a goal to do 100 speaking engagements in 2026. It’s not “do more speaking than last year”. He’s put some parameters around it to make it clear.

→ That’s how you start to define the goal.

3. Schedule it

When are you going to work on achieving this goal?

Declaring we’re going to do something is great but will we show up on the challenging days when we might not want to?

Look at your calendar and plan it now before anything else can get in it’s way.

In Steven Pressfield’s book, “The War of Art” he writes, “There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”

One of the best lessons I’ve learned to ward off resistance and make it achievable is by shortening the amount of time you spend on the task at the beginning. You’re more likely to achieve something if you do it for 15-minutes consistently then trying to work on it for 2 hours.

It’s okay if you don’t hit it 100%, but you’ll have a way better chance with it’s locked into your calendar.

→ Momentum is your friend, you can always recalibrate.

4. Remove Barriers

Throughout the year you’re going to get pulled in many directions. Distractions will appear. Get ahead of them now.

Create a “Not-To-Do list”. What would be on the list that you will say no to?

What has to be removed in order to make way for this goal to get achieved?

Examples:

• I’m not going to travel to any conferences outside of my city.

• I’m not going to go on social media for more than 1-hour a day.

• I’m only going to allow myself two “coffee meetups” per week.

→ Put a few in the “I’m not doing this” category and feel lighter and more focused immediately.

5. Future Thinking

Answer this question honestly:

“For my goal to be achieved, what 3 things would have to be true in order for that to happen?

→ There is no right answer, only a chance to put more definition around this goal.

6. Turn it around

Imagine your friend told you about their goal and was excited to work toward it. Then, they asked you for advice. What would you say?

Think to yourself:

“What is one piece of advice I have learned from my own experiences that would help them hit that goal?”

Sometimes the truth comes out when we aren’t shining the light on ourselves.

→ And that truth might be the thing you need when it gets hard.

Final Thoughts

Goals get missed when they don’t get focused on.

I know this exercise is hard. We have to choose one thing while not choosing others.

But, this is exactly how next years version of yourself is going to be better than this years.

→ You’re going to prioritize and focus.

And then you’re going to hold yourself accountable to do what you said you were going to do.

Because whatever the goal, it compounds and expands into other areas of your life.

Those areas get better because of the work you did on this ONE THING.

And it confirms the sentiment, “How you do anything is how you do everything”.

Your Action Item

Think about this deeply and write down your answers.

Put this piece of paper somewhere you can see it.

Read it often.

Use your daily actions toward achieving it as continued motivation when the new year has come and gone and the overwhelm hits.

→ It’s not going to be easy but it’s going to be so damn worth it!