To make maximum progress at anything, you can either hope and pray that whatever youāre doing right now is going to get you closer to your ideal outcome or have metrics that you can use to track your progress.
And this applies to basically everything you can think of.
If you were a Pastor, how would you know if your church was growing? You would check to make sure your attendance is increasing over time.
If you were a content creator, you would check to see that your followers or subscribers are growing over time.
As a teacher, you would test your students, and their scores would determine if they are progressing or not.
Thinking that things will just fall in place somehow and everything will magically work out is just plain delusional.
Imagine a teacher just coming to class, teaching for 1-2 hours, and leaving without getting any feedback from the students. Week in, Week out.
How does such a teacher know whether his teaching methods are working or not? How does he know whether heās a good teacher or not?
Makes no sense.
One of the things that I strongly believe we need as humans is clarity. Knowing exactly what to do to get an outcome.
An easy example I can think of here is a Rubikās cube. If youāve ever tried to solve one before (assuming you donāt already know how to), itās basically impossible. At least it feels that way.
Thereās a natural craving our brain has to try figuring it out but if you donāt have the knowledge of the required algorithms, you just wonāt be able to solve it. No matter how hard you try.
As humans, we crave certainty. Do ABC, get XYZ.
Thatās why the educational system is widely accepted and recommended.
Go to school for the first 20 years of your life, get your degree, get a job, and earn your monthly salary to provide for your family.
Weāre not going to go down that rabbit hole right now, but my point is that we feel more confident and secure when we perceive that weāre on the right path.
However, one area where we seem to throw this concept out of the window is when it comes to our progress in life as a whole.
Come to think of it. How do you know if youāre moving forward in life? What metrics do you use to track your progress?
Is it the amount of money in your bank account? The number of followers you have on social media? The impact that youāre making with your life?
A lot of people say impact, but how do you even track impact?
Something I spend a lot of my time thinking about is where I want to be, and the lifestyle that I want to have in the future; What do I want a day in my life to look like? What type of house do I want to live in? What do I want my priorities to be? What type of people do I want to be surrounded by?
I honestly think this is the first step to achieving anything - Firstly finding out what the ideal outcome is.
I like to do this through what I call the āMental Mirror Exercise.ā It basically involves you:
Pouring out all of your thoughts regarding a particular thing (your ideal life in this case) on paper. You can use a guideline of questions to make this easier.
Looking at all of the information that youāve written down from a third-person view and making sense of it in a way that helps you gain clarity.
We wonāt dive too deep into this, as itās not the focus for now. I call it the āMental Mirror Exerciseā because it allows you to mirror your thoughts on paper and look at it from an objective, third-person pov.
One thing to note is that youāre most likely not going to have a full picture of exactly how you want your ideal future to look, but it will get clearer as you progress.
After writing out your ideal outcome, the next thing you want to do is figure out the metrics that youāre going to use for tracking your progress.
Iāve heard people use several frameworks like:
Health, Wealth, Love, Happiness
Family, Friends, Health, Work
Family, Fitness, Fun, Finance
and many others. However, Iāve been able to coin one for myself that I think encompasses all of the important areas. It was also heavily inspired by Apostle Selman.
I call it āThe FOREST Framework.ā
F - Following your Purpose: Your lifeās work
O - Optimal Health: Your physical wellbeing
R - Rich Relationships: Family & Friends
E - Expanding your Mind: Belief Systems, Knowledge & Ideas
S - Spiritual Growth: Your relationship with God
T - Thriving Finances: Your career or business
This pretty much covers all of the areas that you would need to optimize for you to reach your ideal outcome in my opinion.
So how can you make use of this framework?
The first step would be to write down some of the things you can do in all of the different areas that would get you to your ideal outcome. You want to keep this short and simple to avoid getting overwhelmed.
Hereās mine:
F - Following your Purpose: Learning & sharing my ideas through content
O - Optimal Health: Gym 4-5x / week
R - Rich Relationships: Check up on my friends & nurture quality relationships
E - Expanding your Mind: Consuming information that challenges me & gets me thinking
S - Spiritual Growth: Praying & reading my bible
T - Thriving Finances: Outreach & Content for my business
The next step involves taking out some time at the end of every week to do the Mental Mirror Exercise. The goal is to figure out how Iām making progress in these areas.
As long as Iām making improvements in these different areas week after week, Iām good.
Donāt get me wrong though, there are definitely weeks where I donāt make as much progress as I want to or any progress at all for that matter. However, Iāve come to understand that this is part of the journey.
When I have times like this, I try not to beat myself up (this is something I struggle with) and to just ensure that I make the changes necessary to get back on track.
So hereās the summary:
Figure out your ideal future using the Mental Mirror Exercise
Find out what actions you need to take for every metric in the FOREST Framework
Do a daily/weekly review to ensure youāre making progress in the right direction.
Thatās it.
Enjoy your week.
- Eyitemi Fadayomi
"...Thinking that things will just fall in place somehow and everything will magically work out is just plain delusional." - lines here hit hard.
Great work Gee!
This hits hard.
With this type of people in Nigeria, I believe we must get to the top. Amen.