Setting goals – the key to your property investment success – Part 2

So by now, if you’ve been through part 1 of this goal setting series AND you’ve taken the time to think it through and put something down on paper (or on computer!) then you should have a brand new shiny set of property goals for yourself.  Congratulations!  You are now a step ahead of the vast majority of people!

This, however, is not the time to sit back and relax, because the defining mark of those who are successful is that they take action.  So what we are going to do now is to look at our goals and write down the actions that we need to take to move toward and achieve our goals.  There are a few different ways to approach setting your actions, so I’ll be describing the way that I go about it – not that this is the only way, so feel free to amend the process to suit your needs.
When you’re writing down actions there are a couple of things to consider – overwhelm and the need for a ‘quick win’.

Overwhelm – you don’t want to overwhelm yourself, so although it’s tempting to write down a list of 30 things you need to do to achieve just one goal, it may be better to ‘chunk’ some of these actions into one step or to simply focus on the next few actions.  Things seem much more difficult and so much more of a chore if there is a list of 30 things standing between you and your goal.  Exactly how many actions you should write is up to you, however, the idea is that you should be able to look at your list of actions and not be daunted by this list, but rather excited to get started!  For me, I like to write down all of the the steps I’ll need take to get to my goal but then I’ll only focus on the next three things that need to occur and write down actions for these three things.  This way I’m not overwhelmed by how many steps I’ll need to take, rather I am focused on taking action.

Quick Wins – It’s important to get yourself some ‘quick wins’, so I think it’s a great idea to set yourself one or two small and relatively easily achievable actions to get started with.  This has the effect of giving you momentum.  As my good friend Den says, it’s much easier to steer a moving ship than it is to get the ship going in the first place!  Anthony Robbins also has a great philosophy on this.  He says ‘never leave the scene of setting a goal without doing something toward the attainment of that goal’, so he suggests that one of your actions should be something that you can do right now, straight away.

So let’s try an example to get you going:

Goal: To complete a renovation project by December 30th, 2011.

Firstly, I write down all of the steps I’ll need to undertake:
– Educate myself about renovation process
– Assess finances
– Area selection and due diligence
– Property selection and due diligence
– Purchase
– Preparation – materials, trades, etc
– Renovation
– Sale
– Settlement

Now I’ll focus on the next three things I need to do, ensuring that I have some ‘quick wins’.  So my first three immediate actions are:

1. Watch all DVD seminars from ‘Property Systems Complete Renovation System’ and read manual.  (Note, this is a great renovation product from Dean and Elise Parker, we’ll look at this in some detail in another post!).
2. Write down my current financial situation
3. Visit mortgage broker to discuss borrowing capacity and preparations (e.g. pre approval).

Once I have these things underway or completed I’ll look at the next step in the process and create my next three actions.

A great tip for you is to write all of this stuff down, your goal, the steps in the process, the actions for each step and so forth.  Why?  Well if, like me, you are planning on undertaking many property projects in the future then it pays to start getting your systems and checklists down so that you can begin to develop well managed and repeatable processes that you can use in the future.

So there you have it!  That’s what I do to get some action underway on my goals.  You may wish to give this a try or come up with your own system that works for you – the key thing is to make sure you get your ship moving by taking action.

In part 3 of this goal setting series we’ll look at tracking your goals, so stay tuned for that one!