How to prioritise our goals

Once we get going, it’s easy to create a long list of what we want to achieve in life. If, however, we want to achieve goals in a short time period, what's the best way of prioritising?

A solid technique comes from American investor and philanthropist Warren Buffet. His five-step method works as follows:

Step 1. List your 25 personal and professional aspirations for the next 12 months.

Step 2. Put a circle around the five most important. 

Step 3. Check again that these are the ones that mean the most important

Step 4. Write an action plan for how you’ll achieve these five goals. Take into account what resources you’ll need to draw upon.

Step 5. Until these top five goals are achieved, regard the remaining 20 goals as distractions. Once they’re achieved, you can turn your attention to the 20 and go through the same process with them.

THE 80:20 RULE
We can also consider the impact of the Pareto Principle – which states that 80 per cent of outcomes arise from 20 per cent of causes. 

Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto made the case for the ratio in 1896 while at University of Lausanne. He identified that around 80 per cent of the land in his country belonged to 20 per cent of the population. 

We can apply this more generally in our lives. For instance, it’s likely that 80 per cent of satisfaction during our leisure time comes from 20 per cent of our hobbies and pastimes; we wear 20 per cent of our shoes 80 per cent of the time, 80 per cent of our preferred news will come from 20 per cent of sources.

So, if we apply this principle to our goals, we can deduce that 80 per cent of our fulfilment will come from striving towards and achieving 20 per cent of our goals. 

We can still achieve our long list of goals, it’s just a case of knowing which ones we’re going to achieve in a particular period. That’s when we’re better off prioritising.

So, when it comes to goal setting, it’s about being specific about what we want, how we’ll achieve it and by when. A strong focus and regularly reviewing progress will get us to where we want to be.