So you have a goal…now what? Process, process, process.
Thank you for joining me as I share my experiences and insights from the front lines of Life!
For those who are new, my name is Kit and I’m a rising sophomore at Babson College, currently interning at MassChallenge Boston for the summer. If you haven’t read my last (and first) blog post, please do so here. It’s a quick read and will help contextualise the rest of this post!
Congratulations, you have thought of a life goal. Give yourself a pat on the back and annihilate that donut you’ve been fantasizing about. Now go get a box of tissues and prepare to cry through the rest of this post because, I’ll be honest, thinking about the life you want is the easy part. Here comes the challenging part: achieving the life you want. But hey, what’s life without a challenge?
So immediately what 5/7 people do when they have a goal is to list the actions needed to achieve their goal, and then begin executing on it. This works great – if you are the same person at 40 as you are at 20. Newsflash: your goals will change because people change. While it may come as a surprise to some of you that people do change, what doesn’t change is process. What is process? Process is a series of steps based on principles. This differs from the list of actions needed to achieve a goal because the former is theoretical while the latter is practical. Abstract thinking may be a novel experience for some so I’ve illustrated the differences below:
| Practical (Actions) | Theoretical (Process) | |
| I like chocolate milk | Observation
|
|
| Chocolate is brown so it must come from brown cows | Hypothesis
|
|
| It seems brown cows make normal milk | Experiment
|
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| Where the chocolate cows at? | Repeat
|
There is a reason the scientific method has stood the test of time even though there have been an uncountable number of scientific revelations. Process is constant. Of course, there are improvements and tweaks in process but let’s not get pedantic. I know this seems daunting – where do you start? First, get a new box of tissue papers. Secondly, start with your goal and work from there. For example, I want to be an entrepreneur and run my own business (goal). So I construct a process to give focus and direction to the actions that I will need to take.
| Practical (Actions) | Theoretical (Process) | |
|
Start my own business |
Goal | |
|
Matriculate at Babson, the #1 college for entrepreneurship |
Knowledge | |
|
Attend as many business events as humanly possible |
Network | |
|
Learn execution skills from an internship |
Skill |
While this is a simplification, the main takeaway is to have a process behind your actions. If you don’t have a process or methodology guiding your actions, it makes adapting to change much more difficult. And in the 21st century, adaptability is the name of the game. Remember when putting ‘proficient in Microsoft Office’ on your resume meant something? Pepperidge farm remembers. I cannot stress the importance of establishing a process that works for you because it will be a tool you can use in every aspect of your life.
This is quite a bit to take in (oh hey, maybe you should have a process for digesting new information – wait, you take notes in school? Congratulations, that’s a process. Please don’t take notes for this though) so once again, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions. Now go forth and construct a process that makes sense and works for you. It doesn’t matter what you get – just enjoy the process.
Have a great weekend.
Best,
Kit