Imagining your future is usually right brained: your creative center generates a story for a future that could plausibly happen. It hits the highlights, and it puts magical arrows between them as if one event leads inexorably to the next. Get into MIT, start a successful company with your smart roommates, and retire early to a country that you can’t pronounce the name of.
But the arrows are wrong. They skip important chunks of the story, and you generated the whole thing backwards anyway.
It turns out that right brained planning uses the same cognitive process as creating a fictional story. When you generate the narrative that leads you from your present situation to your goal, your brain works backward, inventing events and circumstances that fit together like the plot of movie.
It’s a story that makes perfect sense: if you heard that it actually happened you would believe it. People go to MIT and get rich all the time, so we’re told.
But a story isn’t a plan, and the problem is that just because a story “makes sense” in retrospect doesn’t mean it’s likely to happen and it doesn’t mean you know how to make it happen.
I was starting to get an inkling of this problem when I was still writing as Ken Sharpe. My plan to have a big exit for at least $2 million wasn’t really a plan at all: it was just a story.
To solve my problem I invented Goal Mapping*. A goal map is literally a map that contains the exact steps to get from where you are now to your goal. I started by simply making a flow chart:
Click to Enlarge
Goal Maps have:
Also notice:
If you know my story, you’ll recognize the path on the top of that flow chart as my original plan, and path going down the middle as very nearly what I ended up doing.
The act of making this flow chart forced me to create a plan out of my story. Here’s how it helped:
It’s possible to build a goal map with any tool you want, including paper and a pencil. I created my original goal map above in an open source flow chart application called Dia. Anything can work, but I always wished there was software that:
No software like that existed. Now it does.
Barely Visible Screen Capture, Tah dah!
Building a goal map used to be a cumbersome process, but in the next week I’ll release an early version of the goal mapping software I’ve been building over the last two weeks. It’s free and web based, so there’s nothing to buy or download. I’ll give you the link, you’ll build a goal map.
It’s useful in its current state, but I’m hoping to get feedback from those who use it so I can make a tool that will stand the test of time as an intuitive and useful way to plan for the future.
Exciting things are coming up!
UPDATE: My Goal Mapping has been released! Check out this post for details.
* I’m aware that Brian Mayne of Lift International has something called Goal Mapping also. It’s not the same thing. I didn’t know about Brian when I originally created the technique years ago, and I agonized over what to change the name to now, but in the end the name is just too perfect: it’s literally a map you follow to the goals you set. It’s a goal map. What else could it be?
Kudos- this is something I have thought about creating for some time… not exactly the same, but the core essence. A goal creating software that helps you choose the most ideal and likely path for success!
I’m happy to see someone that ran with it!
Awesome–when you try it out in a little, let me know how I can make it live up to what you had in mind.
You might want to consider a color-blind-friendly color scheme and using more than one cue for conveying meaning.
See, for example:
http://www.colourlovers.com/web/blog/2010/03/17/be-kind-to-the-color-blind
Michael, I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t even CONSIDER that, but I’m really glad you brought it to my attention, because I really should have. It’ll be addressed before release. Thanks a lot, seriously.
Glad to be of service.
If I may add along the theme of helpful advice, having email alerts for comment replies would be great.
.-= Michael Shynar´s last blog ..The Future of Thrillers =-.
Done, let me know how it works.
Pete, I have to say that I really love your blog. I look forward to more great posts!
Thanks a lot, I appreciate the support 8)
Pete,
Ironically, the day I read this post I was decompressing at work after having given a training on the many different types of flow charting and process mapping used in organizations implementing process improvement projects. Doing research I found dozens of websites, all with partial information but each trying to sell their own widget to simplify the task. I was so frustrated with the lack of reliable and complete information that I decided my next project would be to create an open source repository of templates and information on creating each of the half dozen types of process maps I presented.
I’d love to help you get this off the ground because I think this area of the interweb is over hyped due a recent influx of corporate interest, yet generally uninformative.
[...] is Vegas. The question is how to get there. Which is why the universe has blessed us with incredible people like Pete Michaud. Ciao….. __________________ "Then hold yourself in the place of requesting guidance to [...]
[...] finally ready! As promised, the alpha version of my Goal Mapping software is [...]
Have you seen the iPhone app headspace? It is similar but of course can’t give you a path. I really like the environment of it though.
[...] things but still ending up miserable. On the other hand, it is also the only part of you capable of forming and executing an analytical plan, of building the technology upon which we’ve come to rely, of consciously choosing a path [...]