The Essential Guide for How to Begin to Start Doing Something That Matters by Michael Bungay Stanier

“How to Begin” by Michael Bungay Stanier is a game-changing roadmap for anyone stuck in a rut. This powerful book offers practical strategies to kickstart meaningful projects and achieve personal growth. It’s a must-read for those yearning to make a difference but unsure where to start.

Ready to transform your life? Dive into this review and discover how to turn your dreams into reality.

Genres

Self-Help, Happiness, Relationships, Parenting, Personal Development, Personal Success, Self-Improvement, Personal Growth, Leadership, Productivity, Psychology, Growth Mindset, Motivation, Career Guidance, Life Skills, Goal Setting, Business

Stanier’s book is a step-by-step guide to overcoming inertia and pursuing worthwhile goals. He introduces the concept of a “worthy goal” – something that’s thrilling, important, and daunting. The book is structured around eight questions designed to help readers identify and commit to their worthy goal.

These questions cover aspects like defining success, understanding potential impact, assessing personal readiness, and anticipating obstacles. Stanier emphasizes the importance of starting small, embracing failure as a learning opportunity, and maintaining momentum through consistent action.

The author provides practical exercises and real-life examples to illustrate his points. He encourages readers to step out of their comfort zones, challenge self-limiting beliefs, and take calculated risks. The book also addresses common pitfalls like perfectionism and fear of failure that often hinder progress.

Stanier’s approach is holistic, considering not just the goal itself but also its alignment with personal values and long-term aspirations. He stresses the importance of self-reflection and continuous learning throughout the journey.

Review

“How to Begin” is a refreshing take on the self-help genre. Stanier’s writing style is engaging and accessible, avoiding jargon and complex theories. The book’s structure makes it easy to follow and implement the advice.

One of the book’s strengths is its emphasis on actionable steps. Each chapter ends with practical exercises that help readers apply the concepts to their own lives. This hands-on approach increases the likelihood of readers actually making changes, rather than just passively consuming information.

Stanier’s focus on “worthy goals” is particularly noteworthy. By encouraging readers to pursue projects that are both personally meaningful and beneficial to others, he adds depth to the typical goal-setting process.

However, some readers might find the book’s structure repetitive. The eight questions, while comprehensive, can feel redundant at times. Additionally, those looking for in-depth psychological insights might find the book lacking in that area.

Despite these minor drawbacks, “How to Begin” is an invaluable resource for anyone feeling stuck or unsure about their next steps. It provides a clear framework for turning vague aspirations into concrete plans. Stanier’s conversational tone and relatable anecdotes make the book feel like advice from a trusted mentor.

In a world where it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by options or paralyzed by fear, “How to Begin” offers a practical and inspiring guide to taking that crucial first step. It’s a book that not only motivates but also equips readers with the tools they need to turn their dreams into reality.

Who is it for?

• Self-improvers stuck in a rut
• Thinkers and doers
• Anyone who wants to live their best life

Recommendation

Answer the call to your inspiration and start working on your “worthy goal” – one that excites you, but also slightly terrifies you, one that fulfills you, but also gives more than it takes. In this practical and compelling text, author and entrepreneur Michael Bungay Stanier offers his “How to Begin” process to help you jump-start your journey. His sensible advice and easy-to-follow exercises guide you as you work toward your goal, but also help you pinpoint what might be holding you back from crossing the finish line. Let Stanier challenge you to unlock your greatness.

Take-Aways

• Unlock your ambitions to make a difference in your life and in the world around you.
• Set a “worthy goal” that is deserving of your time and energy.
• Build on your worthy goal’s first draft by getting feedback and measuring its feasibility.
• Finalize your worthy goal draft by measuring if it’s truly “thrilling, important and daunting.”
• Reflect on previous “false starts” and current behaviors that may hinder your progress.
• Recognize the human tendency to favor the status quo.
• Consider the personal qualities you will enhance, but also the risks you take, when pursuing your worthy goal.
• Take small steps forward by testing frequently to ensure your plan is solid.
• Use your support system, and determine who should join you on your journey and who shouldn’t.

Do you have a goal in mind but struggle with getting started? Or are you more like a “serial beginner” who keeps starting new projects and then abandons them a short while later? Regardless of what category you fall into, HOW you start matters!

“You want to shake things up and make a difference. You want to learn and grow. You want to use your power for good. And you’re ready to begin.” – Michael Bungay Stanier

In this book summary, Michael Bungay Stanier offers sensible guidance on identifying a “worthy goal” and working toward it until completion. Let Stanier challenge you to unlock your greatness!

How to Begin (2022) argues that you unlock your greatness by working on the hard things. The things that matter. Not to your partner, friends, or family – but to you. The hardest part isn’t the work itself, though. It’s identifying the kinds of projects that are worth investing your time in. Projects which give your life meaning. And that’s what this book is really about: helping you discover worthy goals.

Tools to help you travel your own path.

Many self-help books are like trains: they travel a pre-established route toward a known destination. The journey’s planned out and the book in your hands, or on your screen, is your ticket. You just have to get on.

And you know what? That’s often the best way to travel. You don’t always need to figure everything out for yourself. Good advice from experts can be the fastest way to get where you want to go.

Let’s say you generally try to eat a balanced and nutritious diet. It keeps you healthy and energetic, and you tend to be more productive and in a better mood when you pass on the chili-cheese french fries and opt for the spinach salad. But being healthy and energetic isn’t really your life goal. It’s more like a means to an end – it helps you do the other things you care about. So you don’t really need to know everything there is to know about nutrition. You don’t need to know why spinach is good for you. You can reap the rewards of healthy eating – energy, productivity, and all the rest – by doing what the experts say you should do.

These summaries to How To Begin, by Michael Bungay Stanier, take a different approach. Unlike most self-help experts, Stanier doesn’t merely offer instructions for how to live your life. Stanier understands that no one can tell us what matters to us. We have to beat our own paths, because the path that leads you to deep fulfillment might be a dead end for me – and vice versa.

In other words, these summaries are not a train ticket. They don’t identify a “final destination” that we all should aim for. We each have our own personal destinations – our own goals. Precisely what those goals are will vary person to person. What shouldn’t vary, however, is the qualities those goals possess. It’s the qualities that your goals possess, not what your goals are, that will make them, to quote Stanier, “Worthy Goals.”

Life is short and, as far as we know, we only get one shot at it. There isn’t time to pursue dead ends. That’s why we owe it to ourselves to get these big goals right.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to be doing in these summaries. So let’s take a look at the tools that can help you plot a path toward your Worthy Goal.

Along the way, you’ll also learn

• What makes a Worthy Goal truly worth your time;
• How to stress-test big life projects before committing to them; and
• When to call it quits on one project and start another.

Worthy goals have three distinctive qualities.

So Worthy Goals possess certain qualities – to get even more specific, they possess three distinctive qualities. Every Worthy Goal should be daunting, important, and thrilling. To get a better grasp on this, let’s look at a person’s life. We’ll follow him from boyhood to adulthood, and, as his life unfolds, let’s see if his life goal possesses those three qualities – if it’s truly a Worthy Goal.

Reader, meet Paul. Paul is a sweet, sensitive, intelligent boy. He does well in school. He studies hard. In his spare time, he loves to draw, to play piano, and to daydream. By the time he’s 18, when it’s time to head off to college, he has lots of options. His parents, pragmatic people with their heads very much not in the clouds, gently urge him to choose a “safe” career – and sweet, sensitive Paul, not wanting to disappoint his family, acquiesces. He goes to med school, does exceptionally well, and becomes a doctor.

And his job is fine. It’s definitely not boring. He has to solve new problems every day. He’s constantly learning and improving.

It’s also valuable. Not just in terms of his paycheck, though that’s definitely a factor. Paul believes that one should be of service – that one should give to the world more than one takes from it. He often reminds himself of this. He’s proud to be of service to others, though he’s not necessarily burning with passion for his work.

So, here’s the question. Does the goal that Paul has spent his life pursuing – the life that he has chosen for himself – count as a Worthy Goal?

It’s definitely daunting. There are new challenges every day – life-and-death situations requiring great mental and moral strength. It pushes him, expands his limits, keeps him evolving, which is what a daunting goal should do. And it’s obviously important. He’s serving others in the most dramatic way possible: saving lives. He’s giving back, improving the world in a palpable way, which is what it means for a goal to be important.

But is it thrilling? Remember, all Worthy Goals possess three qualities, and being thrilling is the third. It should be exciting. It should speak to your values. It should be bold, fun – something you don’t have to do but that you want to do.

And here’s the thing: Paul has an itch. Deep down, he feels that being a doctor is not good enough. Something’s missing. He just can’t put his finger on what that something is. Maybe you feel the same way. We can do better than ticking two out of three boxes.

Imagine a three-legged stool with one leg shorter than the others. Can you use it? Sure, it works. But it’s always going to be uncomfortable to sit on, and it’ll never hold the full weight of your ambition and talent.

So how can we improve that wobbly three-legged stool? Let’s keep that image in mind as we move into the next chapter.

It all starts with a crappy first draft.

Making a stool, real or metaphorical, is like making anything else. It starts with an idea, a design. And it doesn’t matter where that idea comes from – what matters is that the idea is there.

OK, let’s get practical and do an exercise together. Think of an idea for a life-project you want to work on. We’re going to get that idea out of your head and into the world.

In order to do that, we have to start with a sketch. It doesn’t need to be a completely fleshed-out concept. It doesn’t need to be a masterpiece – it just needs to be on paper. Tangible. Real. It’ll be messy, a little vague – a bit crappy. But that’s OK. Let’s make that crappy first draft. This is good enough for now, because nailing our Worthy Goals at the first attempt is pretty much impossible.

And there’s all kinds of reasons for that. Often, like Paul, we just can’t find the right words to pin down what’s missing. But don’t be too philosophical about it. Make quick word associations and move on. For example, if your goal is “Go to bed at 10 p.m. every night,” you could jot down the following: early night equals early start, equals more energy over the day, equals more energy after work, equals more time for X, Y, or Z project. So, Make quick word associations for your goal and move on. Give yourself 10 minutes for this task.

Remember to aim for a goal that’s worthy of your time. So, when you’re writing it down, ask yourself if it’s daunting, important, and thrilling. Is it something that’s going to push you out of your comfort zone without being impossible? Is it going to connect you to the world in some way? Does it excite you?

Keep those word associations flowing and see how far you can get. Now, can you put it all together in one short mission statement? Think of statements like “Create a new, top-notch podcast” – which is the author’s Worthy Goal.

Is it going to be perfect? Nope, probably not! But it is a start.

Check your goal is feasible before moving forward.

OK, you’ve got your first draft down. Bravo. Now it’s time to put your Worthy Goal through its paces.

Think of it as a stress test. How sturdy is it? Does it support the weight of your ambition, or does it look like it’s going to wobble? We’ll start with the spouse-ish test.

Here’s the idea. You’re going to run your idea past the person who knows you best. It’s spouse-ish because it doesn’t have to be an actual spouse. It could be your best friend, or your sister, or your partner. Point is, they’re someone who’s heard it all – your jokes, your dreams and ideals, your hang-ups. They have a sense of who you are, what you stand for, and where you are in life. They care.

Your sketch is still on paper. It sounds great, but it’s still abstract. It could easily stay there, tucked away in a drawer, but you’re about to change that. You’re going to both make yourself accountable and give yourself a reality check. Scary? Sure. Necessary? Absolutely. We all have our blind spots. Catching problems early is going to save a lot of heartache later on.

So what can you expect? Chances are, you’re going to hear one of three things from your spouse-ish person. “Yes, brilliant – do it!” “No, that’s nuts – don’t do it!” Or “Yes, it’s a great idea, but you’ve been talking about it forever; just do it already!”

Look out for extreme reactions. Positive feedback isn’t a green light, but it’s a great sign that you’re on the right track. Nor is a negative response a red light – it’s simply a warning telling you to check you haven’t missed something important .

That brings us to the second test – fitting your project into the Goldilocks Zone.

If you know the fairytale Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you’ll remember a little girl trying three bowls of porridge. One was too hot; another too cold; the third, though, was just right.

In astronomy, there’s what’s called the Goldilocks Zone. It’s the part of space near a star where a planet’s water remains liquid. If a planet’s too close to the star, the water boils off. If it’s too far away, the water freezes. In the Goldilocks Zone, you have liquid water – the precondition of life as we understand it.

Some goals are too small and granular. Being in bed by 10 p.m. is a good example. Others, like finding happiness, are too big, too abstract. What you’re looking for is a goal that feels just right. Your project should fit into a Goldilocks Zone, which is why this exercise is called the Goldilocks test. You’re looking for that perfect balance – meaningful but realistic, inspiring but doable.

So, how did your Worthy Goal fare after the stress tests? Still wobbly? No worries – just go back to the sketch and make the necessary tweaks.

Small tweaks can make your goal much clearer.

Let’s recap. You’ve run your first draft past a spouse-ish person, so it’s out there in the world. You’ve also thought about its weight and heft. Can it be done? Is it worth doing?

Did your goal pass these stress tests? Yes? Great! You’re ready to start working on your final draft.

Here’s how.

There’s a restaurant in Toronto the author loves. It rates its dishes with a “heat scale” that stretches from 1 to 20, or from mild to crazy hot.

OK, but what’s this chili scale got to do with anything? Well, you can also measure your Worthy Goal on a similar scale. You don’t want it to be insanely spicy – that’s too much sweat and pain – but it can probably do with a bit of an extra kick. Amping up the power of your goal is often as easy as adding a single word or short phrase to your mission statement.

And that’s our next exercise. You’ll want to give yourself around 15 minutes. You’ll also need pen and paper, the notes app on your phone, or anything else that writes. Ready? Nice. Okay, here we go: How can you add some spice to your draft? Let’s look at the kinds of words you could add.

For starters, let’s consider “time.” Think about when you’re going to working on your goal – is it a full-time commitment, for example, or more like five hours a week? Deadlines also give you lots of choices. By tomorrow? Within four weeks? By the end of the year? By 2040? Before I die?

Next, ask yourself how you’re going to work. Will it be with a team or alone? Willingly? Joyfully? Passionately? All-in?

What about your project’s reach – is it geared toward the place you live or an international audience? Do you want 1,000 local customers or ten million global subscribers?

You can also consider outcomes. There’s lots of descriptors to choose from – think profitable, sustainable, helpful, lucrative, freeing, or fulfilling. You can aim to be in the top ten, five, or three percent. Your goal can be transformative or a best seller. It can be recognized or loved or valued.

Then there’s standards. Are you professional, extraordinary, or elite? Too high-flown? What about competent or just good enough.

While you were adding all that extra spice, how did your mission statement change? Those vague descriptors from your crappy first draft should have started to firm up and become more precise.Remember the author’s crappy first draft – “Create a new, top-notch podcast”? Well, when he refashioned his draft after going through this exercise, he liked the word “new.” It’s precise and meaningful. “Top-notch” was too vague. It had to go.

After experimenting with more adjectives and adverbs, he tried qualifying the time and outcome of his project: “Launch a new podcast that is in the top 3 percent of all podcasts within 12 months.”

That’s his final draft. It’s a lot tighter, right? See if you can make your mission statement as impactful.

Take stock of the risks and rewards of your goal to find out if you’re ready to commit.

You’ve got your final draft. It’s exciting. Meaningful. Challenging. Maybe a bit scary. That’s good. It’s supposed to be daunting, after all. You’re almost ready to commit.

But there’s one last test to run.

The American artist Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side comic strip, has a cartoon of a paunchy moose slumped in front of the TV on a beaten-up old armchair, beer in hand. He’s the perfect picture of “stuck in a rut,” albeit in animal form. His moose wife has just answered the phone.

With her hand covering the phone’s microphone, she tells him: “It’s the call of the wild.” The joke, of course, is that no one is less likely to respond to the wild’s call than Larson’s chair-bound moose. But what about you – are you going to answer? Will you take on this goal, or let the opportunity pass you by?

It’s not nice to think about that possibility, but it’s a vital part of this journey. And the thing is, there are reasons to ignore that call. Yes, the status quo has its rewards, but staying in your comfort zone also has its costs. In our final exercise, you’ll be stacking those rewards and costs up against each other.

Let’s start with the rewards. The biggest prize is maintaining what you have. That looks different for each of us, but the themes are usually pretty similar. You get to keep the comfort, status, and authority you’ve built up over the years. You stay in control. If you don’t try something new, you can’t fail. You’re not going to disappoint yourself or others. It’s safe. Tried and true. Comfortable.

The downside is that none of those things are going to unlock your greatness. To do that, you have to work on the hard things. Risk something. Enter unfamiliar terrain. So let’s get onto the exercise.

Start by asking yourself how you benefit from not taking on your Worthy Goal. You might find that the status quo lets you keep your options open. Or maybe it’s money or status that you’re afraid of losing. Or your project might force you to admit that you don’t know as much about something as you like to think. Maybe it allows you to keep telling yourself a comforting story, like success being down to blind luck, not hard work.

Give yourself ten minutes and list all the rewards in a column. This is hard work, but keep digging. You’re going to unearth some powerful stuff.

Once you’ve got those rewards down on paper, create a second column. This is where you’re going to list all the costs of not pursuing your Worthy Goal. What happens if, like Larson’s moose, you don’t answer the call. What opportunities are you foregoing? It might be the chance to meet interesting people or master skills that lead to more fulfilling work. Or it could be that you’ll resign yourself to the idea that you’ve already peaked.

Give yourself another ten minutes.

Now that you’ve filled these two columns, pick the three biggest rewards and costs. How do they stack up? Which way does the balance tip? You can do this part of the exercise in your head. You might find that the whole thing is pretty much redundant – you already know the answer.

That could go one of two ways. If the rewards outweigh the costs, don’t worry. It’s much better to find that out now, rather than weeks, months, or years into a project that wasn’t quite right for you. If that’s where you find yourself, take the off-ramp and circle back to the beginning of the process. Rethink your goal. Does it need a few tweaks, or do you want to pick a new aspiration?

If the costs of refusing the call outweigh the rewards, you’re ready for the final step: commitment.

Don’t get caught in endless planning – take action, and as you do, evaluate your progress.

We’ve covered a lot of ground. Your goal has been drafted, redrafted, refined, finalized, and tested. In short, you’ve done your due diligence. You’ve cleared the biggest hurdle. You’re ready to begin.

That means leaving the planning stage and actually doing the work. Remember, endlessly reworking to-do lists can be a form of pseudo-action – it’s a way of tricking yourself into believing that your procrastination is achieving something. The key is to actually move forward.

If it’s a book you’re writing, write it one page at a time. If you’re building a community organization, fund it one phone call at a time. Ongoing commitments to small steps of action make the difference. So take the necessary actions.

Chances are, you’re going to be working on your Worthy Goal for a while. Depending on your project, it might take months or years or even decades. So, it’s important to take time out to evaluate your progress.

If you want to maintain momentum, it’s a good idea to take a break every six weeks. That’s enough time to make real progress but not long enough to wrack up serious sunken costs.

Take a few days off to evaluate the previous weeks. What are you happy about? What went wrong? Do you want to continue with this project? If so, what’s your target for the next six weeks?

Breaking your Worthy Goal down into small chunks like this makes it feel much more achievable.

We owe it to ourselves to make the most of our time on this planet. That means doing something that matters. No one can tell you what that might be. You have to decide for yourself. The best way of figuring that out is to set a goal for yourself and put it through a series of tests. Is it thrilling and challenging and important? Do the people who know you best think it’s a good idea? Is it better than the status quo? If the answer to those questions is yes, you might just have found a Worthy Goal.

Summary #1

A life well-lived is full of worthy pursuits.

A worthy pursuit is something you find thrilling (you’re eager to wake up each day to do it), important (it will benefit more than just yourself), and daunting (requires dedication and experimentation).

Identify a worthy pursuit this year by considering pursuits in three possible areas: projects, patterns, and people.

• Project pursuits focus on achieving something – “Create a podcast that gets 1,000 downloads in a month.”
• Pattern pursuits involve new ways of being and behaving – “Wake up at 6 AM every weekday to read and journal.”
• People pursuits are about improving your interactions with people – “Be a better friend”, “Be a more patient and playful parent”, or “Be a confident team leader.”

Think of a pursuit in one area you want to make a priority this year. Then transform it into a worthy pursuit by increasing the thrilling, important, and daunting scores to at least a 6/7.

1. Increase the “thrilling” score: think of how you can make your pursuit a fun intellectual challenge and a vehicle for becoming great at something you’ve always wanted to be great at.
2. Increase the “daunting” score: draft different versions of your pursuit by tweaking the scope and timeline until you discover your “Goldilocks Zone” – something not too hard, but not too easy – a goal within the realm of possibility that you cannot achieve on cruise control.
3. Increase the “importance” score: increasing your “importance” score may require you to increase the scale and reach of your pursuit OR simply notice how your pursuit is indirectly improving people’s lives (like how embarking on a fitness pursuit can increase your longevity and allow you to have a positive impact on your kids’ lives for longer).

When you increase your pursuit’s thrilling, daunting, and important scores to 6/7 or higher, it becomes a worthy pursuit and an irresistible quest you must begin. If not, add a killer action verb. Michael Bungay Stanier found that “Launch a podcast” motivated him far more than “Create a podcast.” When I upgraded my pursuit from “Complete five sets of push-ups or pull-ups every day for the rest of my life” to “Crush five sets of push-ups or pull-ups every day for the rest of my life” I was far more excited to get out of bed and do my first set each morning. Here are seven great action verbs you can put at the start of your pursuit and make your pursuit irresistible: transform, launch, crush, devour, revive, supercharge, and kickstart.

Commit

After you’ve crafted a worthy and irresistible pursuit, you must commit. Commit to your pursuit by explicitly stating why the pursuit prizes far outweigh the status quo prizes.

Every pursuit is like a trip through the galaxy on a rocket ship – you try to stay on course but are constantly pulled off course by the gravitational force of giant planets and stars. Those planets and stars represent the comforts you currently enjoy – status, authority, familiarity, and control.

• Take two minutes to list the prizes you will enjoy if you do NOT start your worthy pursuit and maintain the status quo. Then list the prizes you expect to receive if you do pursue your worthy goal.
• Take two minutes to write out the punishments you’ll face if you maintain the status quo and the potential punishments you’ll face if you pursue your worthy goal (temporary setback, frustration, and embarrassment).

If you can identify more worthy pursuit prizes than status quo prizes and fewer worthy pursuit punishments than status quo punishments, you are ready to begin your worthy pursuit and produce unstoppable momentum with a reliable practice.

Create a reliable practice

A reliable practice involves a series of small steps you trust yourself to take consistently to keep your worthy pursuit alive. Find your practice through experimentation and iteration – try several recommended methods until you find something that works for you, then simplify and streamline it. Through a series of weeklong experiments, I found that doing each push-up and pull-up set to half exhaustion with more than 15 minutes between sets (as renowned strength coach Pavel Tsatsouline recommends) and adding air squats as a third exercise option led to a consistent strength practice.

“(Seek) simplicity on the other side of complexity.” – Michael Bungay Stanier

Summary #2

Unlock your ambitions to make a difference in your life and in the world around you.

Happiness seldom comes from obtaining status and financial success. Mostly, it comes from living a full life and doing things that matter. Tap into your ambitions and stretch your capabilities to take on worthwhile challenges. Channel your talents and ambitions to enhance not just your life, but also those of others. For example, chair a team dedicated to a worthy project, discover a new technology, start a podcast or volunteer in your community.

“We unlock our greatness by working on the hard things.”

Directing your ambition proves difficult without having a clear idea about how to start. You need a reliable process – one that helps you clarify your goals, however big or small, and commit to achieving them. The “How to Begin” process offers you practical and reliable steps that help you:

• Set a “worthy goal” that excites you but also positively serves the bigger community.
• “Commit” to your goal, but also recognize the risks and sacrifices you must make.
• “Cross the threshold” by starting small, envisioning yourself at your best and engaging others on your journey.

Set a “worthy goal” that is deserving of your time, attention and energy.

You have limited time in your life to make a difference, so define your worthy goal and ensure it rates high with these three qualities:

1. Thrilling – When you consider this idea or project, you get excited, because it resonates with you. You think “I want” and not “I should.”
2. Important – Your idea contributes to others around you, either on a small scale, such as improving a relationship with someone, or on a large one, such as starting an organization.
3. Daunting – While this idea excites you, it also stretches your talents and capabilities, pushing you to work outside your comfort zone.

Don’t settle for two out of three. For example, an important and daunting goal that doesn’t excite you lacks the stimulation you need to sustain it, while a thrilling and important goal may not present the challenge you need.

“With thrilling, important and daunting established as the base, you’re ready to look for your worthy goal.”

To help yourself see opportunities, classify your goal in relation to the following dimensions:

• “Sphere” – Does it involve work – a team or organization, for example – or not work – like family or a community.
• “Scale” – How broad or narrow is its influence? For example, with a work project, does it affect one team, or the entire organization?
• “Class” – What is the context? Does your goal relate to other projects, people or behaviors, or some combination of these?

Even if you don’t feel ready yet, write a short statement – a first draft – of your worthy goal, describing your purpose at a high level. Don’t aim for perfection at this stage; revise and expand on your stated goal later.

Build on your worthy goal’s first draft by getting feedback and measuring its feasibility.

Examine your first draft and get feedback by doing the following:

• Talk your idea through with someone close to you, such as a spouse, a best friend or a sibling. This person knows you the best and can assess you and your idea with a perceptive and insightful viewpoint.
• Ask yourself for whose sake you’re doing the project. Does your goal bring you personal satisfaction, or do others benefit from it as well?
• Analyze your idea using the “Goldilocks Zone” test: Is your idea too big, too small or does it feel “just right” in its scope, size and difficulty? Will you be able to follow through?

“Locating your worthy goal in the Goldilocks Zone is the way to ensure it has the right amount of heft.”

Make another attempt at your draft to give it more concrete direction. Using verbs to describe your intent more accurately creates a more actionable project. If your first draft already includes a verb, ensure it illustrates the real challenge you envision. For example, you might change “stop being CEO,” which doesn’t tell the full story, to “manage the transition out of the CEO role,” which more aptly describes the objective. Strengthen your draft with actionable verbs such as launch, write, build, organize or dismantle.

Finalize your worthy goal draft by measuring if it’s truly “thrilling, important and daunting.”

To ensure your goal’s draft meets the challenge, use the “voting test,” ranking your draft against the three criteria, thrilling, important and daunting, each on a scale of seven. For example, if your worthy goal expands on something you’ve done before, you might rank it 4/7 for thrilling. If you see your challenge as critically important for yourself and those around you, rate it 7/7.

“The voting test helps you reset how you’re feeling about your worthy goal.”

Tally the three ratings. If your total score is lower than 18, add zing to your statement. Consider the following areas to increase focus and energize your worthy goal:

• Spell out the level of commitment, or the time and energy you’re willing to devote to it – for example a few hours a week or full-time.
• Specify a time for completion, such as next month or within a year.
• Expand on the quality of the deliverable, such as professional or handmade, extraordinary or good enough.
• Detail your desired outcome. For example, for book sales you might choose simply profitable or bestseller.
• Continue to revise your goal with additional considerations. Once you feel your worthy goal statement captures the essence of the challenge, begin to commit to your goal.

Reflect on previous “false starts” and current behaviors that may hinder your progress.

When undertaking new challenges, consider how you have approached big goals in the past. Reflecting on previous false starts will help you identify why you made little or no progress. Perhaps you listened to others telling you to stop, you lost interest, you didn’t know whom to ask for help, or you didn’t see immediate progress and got discouraged.

“It’s difficult, perhaps impossible, to achieve your worthy goal if you don’t know where you’re starting from.”

Also consider current behaviors that hinder you from achieving your worthy goal. These include actions that take time and energy away from your efforts, such as relaxing your standards, so your goal feels less significant; committing to other projects, causing you to put your goal on hold; or over-researching to the point of inaction. Don’t forget to examine behaviors that you don’t demonstrate, such as not attending conferences or not giving yourself adequate time frames for completion. Analyzing these behaviors for clues and patterns allows you to move forward with clarity.

Recognize the human tendency to favor the status quo.

Most people tend to favor the status quo. But what are the consequences of not changing? Much like a cost-benefit analysis, weigh the pros and cons of keeping the status quo. First, ask yourself what you gain when you forgo this opportunity to challenge yourself, then look for patterns to see what these “prizes” reveal about you.

For example, by not committing, you have more control in your life, you have time for other projects and you don’t risk failing.

“We need the energy to break the bonds of the status quo. That happens when the punishments (the price you and others pay for you not taking on your worthy goal) outweigh the prizes (the comfort of things staying as they are).”

Next, weigh the costs of accepting the status quo. You lose an opportunity to see a big project through to the end, to realize your full potential or even to master a new skill. Beyond your personal “punishments,” also consider what others might lose, such as learning from what you and others on your project have to share.

Now, measure the pros against the cons. If you lean toward the status quo, you might want to re-examine the prizes and punishments to change the balance, or recast your goal to make it more enticing.

Consider the personal qualities you will enhance, but also the risks you take, when pursuing your worthy goal.

Committing to your challenging goal yields additional benefits to you, personally:

• External benefits include potential financial gain, positive reviews or notoriety.
• Internal benefits include the chance to nurture basic human needs, such as affection, freedom and identity, and to enhance personal qualities with which you resonate, such as generosity, adventure, leadership or insight.

Realizing both your external and internal gains through this challenge will help you unlock your potential, spark personal growth and achieve your best.

Yet with any new adventure, you also make sacrifices. Perhaps you no longer have time for certain activities or community work. You might risk experiencing disappointment if your project fails. Weighing the benefits and risks will give you feedback on where you stand.

Take small steps forward by testing frequently to ensure your plan is solid.

When you invest your time and energy into a worthy goal, you want to give yourself assurances and dodge some of the hurdles you could encounter. Doing plenty of testing, and collecting and analyzing data allows you to take logical next steps toward your goal.

“With small steps, you’re doing two things. First, fueled by curiosity, you’re collecting feedback… Second, you’re mitigating risk.”

Consider these three commonly used testing strategies:

1. Remember the times when you’ve been at your best to help you realistically measure risks. Recalling how you successfully handled challenges and navigated similar scenarios in the past psychologically prepares you for the future.
2. Launch small-scale experiments that test your assumptions. Learn from the experiments to understand how much time and money you’ll need or whether you need to pivot. The test may also effectively gauge your excitement.
3. Commit to a practice: repeat small experiments and recognize your progress. For example, if you plan to write a book, and you test spending 10 minutes per day writing, stretch the ten minutes over time to see if you have the discipline and focus to follow through.

As you venture forward, you will have moments where you doubt yourself. Remember your best self to push through these anxieties. At the same time, try the “This Not That” tool, where you use simple descriptions to recall your best performances in your past.

For example consider how, in meetings, you performed well when you were calm, not reactive, or on successful projects, you felt energized, not burdened. Create your own list that amplifies your emotions at your peak and use these when you feel discouraged.

Use your support system, and determine who should join you on your journey and who shouldn’t.

You need other people to support you. First, find out who shouldn’t join you on your journey – such as those who take more than they give, or make you move forward with trepidation. Leave behind anyone who makes achieving your worthy goal harder than it already is.

“It’s good to have good people around you. Particularly when you’re journeying into the future.”

Conversely, surround yourself with a collection of supporters who will help you make a difference in achieving your worthy goal:

• The steady warrior stands by you through thick and thin.
• The healer encourages you when things turn sideways and coaches you to strive for your best self.
• The teacher offers guidance, insight and logic to help you see through any obscurities.
• The visionary pushes you to reach for more than you think you can accomplish.
• The challenger teasingly disrupts you to push you off the comfortable path.

About the author

Michael Bungay Stanier is the bestselling author of the Coaching Habit, a book about management that has sold close to a million copies and garnered over 1,000 five star reviews on Amazon. He is also the founder of the learning-and-development company Box of Crayons, well-known podcaster, and consultant with clients around the world.