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Warren Buffett’s 5/25 Strategy: How to prioritize your goals

Warren Buffett’s 5/25 Strategy: How to prioritize your goals

Nutshell:

Focus on a limited number of goals

Warren Buffett, an
investor and the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has built a fortune of wealth—a net
worth close to $89.2 billion. Warren Buffett uses highly effective strategies that
help him to get more done in less time than most people achieve in a lifetime.

In a conversation between
Warren Buffett and his Pilot, Buffett recommended a strategy to help prioritization that always stuck with me. It’s simple, clean, and helps get to the heart of what you should be working on.

Warren Buffett’s 5/25 Strategy

The story started when
Warren Buffett has a conversation with his private jet pilot, Mike Flint Who had piloted for Buffett for 10 years. Flint was a successful man in his field.  Buffett said to him, “The fact that you’re still working for me, tells me I’m not doing my job. You should be
out, going after more of your goals and dreams.”

Buffett then walked Flint
through a simple 4 step process to gain clarity on priorities and achieve goals.

Step 1: define your top 25 goals.

The first thing Warren
Buffett asked Flint to do was to list the most important career goals he wanted to achieve in his lifetime. These would total to 25 goals.

Flint spent some time and
came up with the 25 career
goals that he felt were most important to him.

Tip:

Take your time in this stage, it is the time to write down every goal you have in mind. What you most passionate about? What would you feel amazing to achieve? What keeps you up in the night?
What do you want to do right now?

Step 2: Draw a circle around your top 5 goals.

Once Flint compiled his
list of 25 career goals,
Buffett asked him to draw a circle around his top 5 most important goals. Then, Buffett
asked, “Are you sure these are the absolute highest priority for you.” Flint
replied, “Yes.”

Tip:

This is will be a
difficult stage because each goal sounds important for you, but hang on, don’t give up, go through the list and reflect. Elimination concept will help you,
start to eliminate goals that are good to have, do not actually fulfill your passion and desires, what is not really important for you now, and then start to focus on what is the most exciting and got the highest priority for you.

Step 3: Focus on Your Top 5 Goals.

After the brief discussion,
Flint said to Buffett, “Warren, these are the most important things in my life right now. I’m going to get to work on them right away. I’ll start tomorrow.
Actually, no I’ll start tonight.”

Tip:

Those top 5 are now your to-do list, give your attention and focus on those 5 goals and only those! Do not move on to any other thing before you achieve those 5 goals.

Step 4: Avoid the 20 goals (avoid list)

Buffett replied, “but what about these other 20 things on your list that you didn’t circle? What is
your plan for completing those?” Flint replied swiftly, “Well the top five are my primary focus but the other twenty come in at a close second. They are still important, so I’ll work on those intermittently as I see fit as I’m getting through my top 5. They are not as urgent, but I still plan to give them
dedicated effort.”

After a moment of silence, Buffett looked straight into Flint’s eyes and said, “No. You’ve got it wrong Steve. Everything you didn’t circle just became you ‘avoid at all cost list’. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve
cussed with your top 5”

Tip:

Strictly consider the bottom 20 as your avoid list, even if you feel overwhelmed, struggling with progress, procrastinating, etc. don’t fall back on items 6-25. Even if they sound achievable.

If you reflect effectively on the 25 goals and select your top 5, then follow your decision and don’t allow your self-doubt to control you. When you think about those goals, ask yourself why? Is there something on your top 5 list you should be doing? Is there are obstacles shown up in the road to achievement? How would you deal with this? What the one step you can take now toward those top 5 goals?

Apply 5/25 Strategy on every aspect

The strategy does not
only apply to a career, but it also applies to every aspect of life. Whether it
is life goals, career goals, leadership goals,
etc. you can apply the 5/25 strategy for better focus and prioritization of
your everyday goals.
For Example:

Relationships

List down your relationship goals i.e.
spend more time with family, friends, the team at work, networking, etc., then
decide your top 5 goals
and focus on these only.

Business

List down your business goals i.e. to
launch your new startup idea, build your marketing strategy, fundraising, hire
more staff, etc. and focus only on the top 5 goals.

Tip:

Apply the same on all
life aspects and goals.

Say no to the Inessential

Time and energy are limited resources, wasting them in too many wish lists will lead you nowhere. I
emphasize “Saying no to the inessential goals) in my life coaching, executive coaching, and most importantly career and teenagers coaching sessions with my clients.

Stop spreading yourself thin by chasing too many goals at the same time. That makes you easily distracted and lose focus. Start to apply Warren Buffett’s 5/25 strategy is an effective tool that will help you prioritize your most important goals and achieve results in life.

I share the same strategy
with my client in life
coaching, executive
coaching, career
coaching and teenager
coaching during the sessions in Dubai and online in different other
cities. Use this simple strategy in everything such as short term goals, personal goals, yearly goals, health goals, education goals, etc.

Final thoughts:

Try this strategy today,
see how it will help you to effectively prioritize your goals and stay focused. Focus on what is really
important for you now and forget the rest.

Feel free to email me Coach@modelawer.com
if you need any support from my side or have any questions.

What is Self awareness and how it reduces stress!

What is Self awareness and how it reduces stress!

In nutshell

We don’t spend time with ourselves for ourselves!

You are Scrolling down on Instagram and see a photo of food and that trigger “WOW, I am hungry”. But what triggers the feeling of being stressed in you? What triggers the anxiety in you?

When suddenly you remember a bad meeting you been into today, a crucial conversation you had with your boss, pending report you did not finish today, financial issues you are facing and so on.

When those thoughts pop-up in mind, what happens next? Self-inner talk starts, and a long dialog starts to take place between you and your self, a small control tower in your brain called hypothalamus decides to send out the order; the stress hormones!

Stress leads to sleepless nights, exhaustion, excessive worry, lack of focus, and irritability. Even physical symptoms – like rapid heart rate, muscle tension, and headaches

If you let yourself with the flow and did not stop to think about all this, you are putting yourself on autopilot mode and allowing those thoughts, behavior and reactions to control you.

How to reduce stress and avoid anxiety?

Ask yourself what triggers the stress in you?  What initiates those thoughts and inner talk? How do you feel in that state? How your body reacts? and that what is called Self-awareness.

What is self awareness?

 Self-awareness is simply giving time to get along with yourself Understanding your personality, your values, your relationships, and your beliefs. Self-awareness includes understanding how you process your experiences. Ability to manage the self and its feelings, reactions, habits, and behaviors

Why self awareness is important?

Self awareness is one of the most life fundamentals and the most ignored one as well.

It is the awareness of your body responses, thinking patterns and thoughts, including feelings, desires and the way you react. Plus, and most importantly how these relate to each other – awareness of how the mind-body connection reacts with the external world.

As I mentioned if your mind reacts to thoughts in pilot mode, then they control you! If you want to control them, you should focus and identify the triggers as well as how your mind processes them?

Start with the stress and anger moment. Think about;

  • what made me stress?
  • What I have thought about it?
  • What and when this situation happened?
  • Who is involved?
  • Is it one-off or repeatedly happening?
  • How I reacted at this moment? And keep digging deep!

Discovering the trigger and how your mind reacts until it gives the order to be stressed is the self-awareness.

Example, while you are at home watching a movie, then all of the sudden you feel your body getting tense, heartbeat increases slowly, there is a vague image hits your mind about that bad meeting you had with your boss a few days back and in seconds you get stressed and all your mood changes! Let’s reverse it;

  • what made me stress?  That image about the meeting
  • What I have thought about it? How unfair my boss is, he never listens to me, I can’t express my thoughts with him, I cannot even defend my point, and so on
  • What and when this situation happened? A meeting with my boss four days back
  • Who is involved? My boss
  • Is it one-off or repeatedly happening? Yes
  • How I reacted at this moment? I freeze, my body got so tensed

Can you see how things became more logical, now what should you do?

Practice self reflection decides what is in your control and what is not and get yourself together to let go.

How to practice self awareness?

Look at yourself independently

See yourself as you really are! Though identifying and writing the following Self-perceptions;

  • Things you are good at
  • Things need to be improved.
  • Things you are proud of.
  • Your childhood and what made you happy back then.
  • Seek honest feedback from someone you truly trust, about what he/she sees and feels you?

In the end, you will come out with a fresh new perspective on yourself and your life.

Keep a journal. 

It sounds an old fashion, but it is proven to be a mind relive and I recommended to my clients in life coaching sessions, writing almost everything you want in a journal relive the mind of those ideas and free up space for new information.

I advise my coaching client to a specific time on the day to write down their thoughts, feelings, ups, and downs for the day. This will lead to self-reflection

Tip: you can use a journal apps which most of them has a password to keep your data protected

Define and set your goals

Dreams without goals are just dreams! That stays in our mind and keep it busy without directions or vision. Turn your dreams or even small things you want to accomplish in the short and long term into a defined SMART goal and break them into sub-goals that make you taste and celebrate small wins. Setting and achieving goals is a lengthy process, so you Download Modealwer app that helps you in creating your life goals, career goals, leadership goals, productivity goals, financial goals, and stay on track. Also,

Self reflection

In order to have self-awareness, performing self reflection is a must. Again I advise my clients during the life or executive coaching sessions to preform self-reflection at least once a day and gradually increase to be done right after an even take place that they feel they need to reflect. For example, an argument took place with their spouse or tough meeting at work. Self-reflection applies to you as a person in any situation you face in life and or as a leader in your organization.

Final thoughts

Magic won’t happen overnight; self-awareness is a process just any other process that needs time and commitment. During this process if you got hit by those inner thoughts which you aware it will lead you to stress, change your body state stand up, take a walk, shake your body, etc. start a positive inner talk, tell yourself it does not matter, it does not worth, go more into positive talks where the sky is the limit! That may work especially if you started before a significant emotion take control.

What Is a SMART Goal? And how to make your goals SMART?

What Is a SMART Goal? And how to make your goals SMART?

All of us have dreams. We dream of a better life, a healthy life, job advancement, business growth and lots more. However, dreams without goals are just dreams!

Setting goals for things you dream to reach in life is a must, however, you need to ensure that it won’t end up as just an unfulfilled dream.

The more your goal is clear and defined the more you will reach it, on the other hand, the more your goal is vague and general the more it will end as just a dream!

For example, I want to lose weight Vs I am overweight with 15Kg and I want to lose 5KG by end of this month. Which sounds clearer and well defined, first of the second statement?

Vague goals lead you to endless loops of hopes, ups-and-downs, work hard and reach nowhere and end with frustrations.

What is a SMART goal?

In 1981 SMART as an acronym came to life in issue or management review by George T Doran. It is attributed to Peter Drucker’s management by objectives concept.

It is a way to make sure that your goals are clear and reachable, SMART acronym stands for:

  • Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
  • Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
  • Achievable (agreed, attainable).
  • Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
  • Time bound (timely, time-based, time-limited, time/cost, time-sensitive).

SMART goal has erupted in the corporate world; however, it applies in every type of goal we set.

Let’s have a look at the above example:

  • I want to lose 5KG: Specific, Measurable and Realistic
  • By the end of this month: Timely

How to Set a SMART goal?

1. Specific

SMART goal should be crisp clear otherwise you won’t be able to focus, this involves the related “W” questions, such as:

What specifically I want to achieve?

Who is involved in this goal?

Why do I want to archive this goal?

Example: I want to lose 5KG (not just lose weight)

2. Measurable

SAMRT goal should have a measurement tool. How will you know that you achieving the goal, if you don’t have a measurement tool? You need a measurement to assess progress and stay motivated. This involves the related “How” questions.

How much? How many? How I will know?

Example: I will weigh myself every week and expected to lose 2 KG first week and a KG each following week.

3. Achievable

SAMRT goal should be reachable. Yes, the sky is the limit! But this for your dreams. However, in goals, you need to set achievable milestones. Stretch your limits but make your goal reachable. Follow the baby-steps concept and set sub-goals if needed. Nothing happens overnight.

What resources do I need?

What skills do I need?

Do I need support?

What is out of my control?

Example: what is more achievable losing 15Kg in a month or three months with commitment?

Tip:

While setting a goal, be aware if someone else or specific circumstances may have control over it, if yes, define clearly what is and what is not in your control?

4. Relevant

SMART goals should be realistic. This step is about ensuring that your goal is important to you and relevant. It also involves ensuring that you will be committed to it.

Is it really important?

Is this the right time?

What would I feel after achieving goal of my dream?

How would I stay committed?

Example: being overweight is affecting my health and appearance negatively, I am tired of this, I want to lose weight, I want a better life and I will do it.

5. Time bound

SAMRT goal should have a target date. Without a target date, you are leaving your goal subject to procrastinating and mostly it won’t happen. A deadline makes you focused and works toward accomplishment. It answers the “When” question.

When I will achieve it?

What are the milestones?

Example: Lose 5KG by end of the month.

Tip:

While setting your time plan, take into consideration everything else in your plate, distractions and out of control factors.

Final thoughts:

Wish list remains a wish list and dreams remain a dream unless you set a SMART goal and remain committed to achieving it.  When I work with a client in a life coaching session or Executive coaching session, I ensure that my client has set a clear and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely) goal. Setting a goal is the first step in achieving what you dream for, however, the way down is not easy, you stay committed, focus and measure the progress and completion down the road.

Start today and turn your wishes into action plan goal using the pattern and tips.

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