You Have Goals!

Every Saturday morning I sit down with my Weekly Plan and Launch — a planning tool I created years ago that helps map out the week with intention, connecting daily actions to longer term goals across six areas: morning routine, character, personal goals, professional goals, growth, and gratitude.

I’ve used it for years. I give it to my clients. I believe in it.

By the way, if you'd like a copy, just drop me a message at [email protected] and I will send it your way.

This weekend as I was sitting down to complete it, I caught myself writing something I’d been writing for about two months as one of my daily disciplines.

Exercise.

Just that. Exercise. No further detail. No specification of what that actually meant on any given day.

The thing is — I work out with my trainer Brendan twice a week, and my strength training commitment is four days a week and has been for several years. A couple of months back, while working through some injuries, Brendan asked me not to train on my own for a while so he could supervise and make sure I wasn’t making things worse. Which made complete sense. So I adopted that.

But then, as I was cleared to add days back in, I noticed something. I wasn’t doing it. I was walking. I was rebounding. I was moving — and telling myself I was exercising — but the strength training had quietly dropped to just the two days with Brendan. And because I had written exercise as my commitment rather than strength training 4x per week, I could look at my tracker and check the box.

Technically.

I was keeping the word. But I had drifted from the commitment.

The GPS problem

Think about what happens when you get into your car and open the GPS without giving it a specific address. Maybe you type in a city. Maybe just a neighborhood. The GPS does its best — but without a precise destination, it can’t give you a precise route. You might get close. You might wander. You might eventually arrive somewhere that looks like what you wanted — but it took far longer than it should have, and you’re not entirely sure you ended up in the right place.

That’s what a vague commitment does. It gives you a general direction without a destination. And without a destination, you can’t know when you’ve arrived — or whether you ever will.

Specificity is the address. It’s the latitude and longitude. It’s what tells you not just where you’re going but exactly how to get there and whether you made it.

Where this shows up in your world

Take the word prospecting.

Most LOs have it somewhere in their week. On a calendar, on a plan, in their head. And most of them, if you asked them what it meant, would give you a general answer. Reaching out. Making connections. Working the pipeline.

But prospecting isn’t a category. It’s an action. And without specificity, it means nothing.

Who are you prospecting? A referral partner you’ve been meaning to call for three weeks? A past client who bought two years ago and is probably thinking about their rate? A new agent you connected with at an open house? Those are three completely different conversations requiring three completely different approaches.

What does it actually look like? A phone call, a video text, an email, a drop-by? Each one carries a different energy, a different level of intention, a different impact.

And perhaps most importantly — do you treat it like a real appointment? Something you would never move, cancel, or let quietly disappear into the day? Or is it the first thing that gets bumped when something more urgent arrives?

One word. Three layers of vagueness. And the gap between what you meant and what you actually did lives somewhere inside all three.

The practical work

Look at your commitments for this week — written or unwritten — and ask one honest question about each of them: Is this specific enough that I would know, without any doubt, whether I kept it or not?

If the answer is no — get more specific. Not to make it harder. To make it real.

The GPS doesn’t need your good intentions. It needs the address.