If you have been following my posts about the S.M.A.R.T. approach to goals, you will remember that I talked about breaking down your goals into more manageable pieces.  Today, I received a funny email from a good friend, Fred Free, and it made me think of this concept from another perspective.

When you breakdown your goals into small pieces you greatly increase your chances of achieving that goal. While you go through this exercise, however, ignore the impulse to look for complicated solutions. Instead, look for ways to simplify and find tasks that you can complete easily.

Take a look at the picture that Fred sent to me. Titled “Ikea to sell cars”, it shows how a car sold by Ikea might look when you take it out of the package and take it all in. Of course, the benefit to Ikea is that you only need one tool to complete the entire task (you are always left with extra bits and pieces, so maybe you  will get a few extra features thrown in for free).

In your own life, though, would you ever expect to achieve your goal with one tool if it required the number of steps suggested by this picture? (By “tool”, I mean the skills and resources you have personally, or those that you can beg, borrow, buy or steal from others) Of course not! You will likely need a variety of tools along the way.

So don’t look at the picture of the car, or your goal, as a massive task to undertake with only one tool. Look at the individual pieces and figure out what tool you need to complete that one step.

Your goals are unique and cannot be achieved by shopping at a big box store. So don’t take the Ikea approach to your goals. Break them down and complete the tasks one at a time.