From time to time, all of us set for ourselves a new goal or take on a new challenge, and too often we don’t achieve what we want to. There may be as many reasons for this as there are individuals, but often we either don’t make a plan for what we want or we don’t follow through with plans we make.
Someone fashioned this insight into a pithy motivational phrase – “Successful people plan their work and work their plan.”
Motivational phrases can be pretty trite, but at their best, they convey a practical truth succinctly, like this one does. It clearly and economically gets right to the point – your success will depend on your effort – and goes hand-in-glove with another phrase I like – “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
The bane of people who can be dreamers like me is that we get excited to take on goals too easily, and end up with nothing more than starry-eyed wishes. Learning to play the guitar was like that. I wanted it, but didn’t work at it, so I got nowhere and gave up (although I did realize that the guitar probably didn’t mean as much to me as I had thought).
Yet, even when I go after other, more important things, I can get side-tracked. I’m good at the planning, so it’s not that. My downfall is trying to change too many things at one time, taking on too many goals and not being able to work on them all. So naturally, they don’t get done because I am spread too thin and focused in so many directions, which is really a kind of lack of focus when you think about it.
“Successful people plan their work and work their plan” is a simple little expression, but if you think about your unfulfilled goals and the frustration you feel about them, it may be that it’s a saying that could be the secret to making them work.
