Buffett's secret to achieving goals: 2-List Strategy

Source

When we write down personal goals, we usually write as many as we can but oftentimes, most of them remain semi-achieved, others are temporarily parked and some are never even started.

When I started realizing this, I started limiting my personal goals to 3 to 4 per year max.   It sounds very few but when you have a full-time job, trying to achieve 3 to 4 personal goals on your free time is a lot.    In fact, I can't even work on all 4 goals at a time.  I can only work on 1 or 2 at a time before I move on the next.   This is also because I'd rather do a great job in completing one than have 4 semi-achieved/half-baked goals.

So it seems that having a long goal list is counter-productive, right?   That's what Warren Buffett thinks too.  He is for eliminating, sometimes important goals, in order to focus on the few that will bring the success we desire.

I was actually surprised to read about Buffet's stance coz most books encourage writing as many goals as we can.

To illustrate Buffett’s way, there’s this story about his personal pilot and how he helped him to focus and prioritize his goals using a 2-list strategy.

First, Buffett asked his pilot to carefully think about, and write down his 25 top goals. When he came back and presented this list of 25, Buffet asked him to pick out the top 5 most important goals. Thus, at this point, there are 2 lists:  the list of 5 goals and the list of 20 remaining goals.

The pilot thought he would then focus on his top 5 and work towards the other 20 if he could find time.  But Buffett told him that that is actually the path to becoming unsuccessful.  Rather, Buffett said, the pilot should throw away the list of 20 – no matter how seemingly important they are – and focus solely on the top 5.  His reason is because the list of 20 would be a source of distraction that would prevent you from focusing on the top 5.  The article which I read suggests another alternative - instead of throwing the list of 20, you can make it as your "Avoid-at-all-cost list" - in short, it's a reminder of what you shouldn't focus on. 

25 and 5 goals are a lot for me. I think my 2-strategy list is just composed of 10 and 4 max.  I sound like such an under-achiever. 😂

Anyway, no matter how many are our goals, the biggest takeaway is we need to learn how to prioritize, focus and stick to completing the important few rather than be busy trying to accomplish a lot but end up not completing anything. :)