Learning how to achieve your goals using small actions is one of the most important life skills that you can develop. It is easy to get stuck or even change course when one of your goals seems too big or too scary to accomplish. However, regardless of the size of your goal, you can accomplish it by focusing on one small action after another. What separates successful folks from others is that they know the secrets of how to effectively transform a goal into actions that produce the results that they seek.

The Game of Chess

One of the best examples of using small actions to produce a desired result is the game of chess. In chess, the ultimate objective (referred to as "checkmate") is to trap your opponent's king so that no further moves can be made. When you accomplish this goal, the game is over and you win. However, the point at which checkmate occurs usually requires a well-developed strategy and a series of many moves before the game ends.

The same applies to your goals in life and business. The achievement of a goal doesn't just happen. It requires you to figure out what you need to do to accomplish the goal over time. The good news is that anyone can accomplish goals in rapid succession when you break them down into small actions. The key is knowing how to take that big and scary goal and turn it into a manageable set of tasks. Here are three things to make it easy for you to identify the small actions that will show you how to achieve your goals.

3 Keys To Using Small Actions

1. Sequence - The sequence of actions that you take is always important.  Rather than generating a random list of actions to take, focus on identifying a series of actions that bring you closer to accomplishing your goal one step at a time.  Once you have this sequenced action list, tackle the first action on the list and make sure that it is complete before moving onto the next.

2. Size - Try to break your actions into the right size.  If you come up with an action that you can complete in two minutes it's probably too small.  Conversely, if you identify an action that requires days of work it is definitely too big.  Try to chunk your actions into things that you can accomplish within 4-8 Action Units (1-2 hours) of focused work.

3. Support - For each action that you identify, think about whether it is an action that you must complete by yourself or if you can enlist assistance from someone else.  As much as possible, try to identify actions that you can outsource or delegate to other people.  This allows you to focus on taking other actions at the same time and helps you to speed closer to your goal.

Just like chess, any goal can be broken into a series of small and manageable actions to convert a seemingly overwhelming thing into an achievable reality.  Remember these three things the next time that you have a goal that you would like to achieve.  They are the secret to how to achieve your goals and how to achieve them fast.

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• Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned. ~Peter Marshall
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