Ready fire aim. Not my original idea, in fact I’m sure that you have probably heard it before. The truth is though that it is so valid and so true that I believe it is well worth repeating here and writing about.
This basic strategy is a strategy that is going to bring you a lot of success if you adopt it into your life and employ it correctly. It is a great tool to overcome a number of obstacles and develop a number of very useful skills. Here is the basic ready fire aim strategy.
Ready, (have a goal)
Decide what you want and set a goal. Goal setting is covered in a section of its own on this site. Review this section if you are not sure and set the target. Without goals you simply have nothing to fire at, you are guaranteed to miss.
Fire, (take action)
Notice how firing comes before aiming? A goal gives you a general target to shoot at, if you have a goal you are at least going to shoot in the right direction (more or less). Look at how the military aims its artillery. A round will be fired in the general direction of the target and then corrections will be made based on where that shell lands. Without the first shot being fired, the target would never be found. This leads to the third step.
Aim
After taking action, evaluate the results and make the necessary adjustments. Don’t become too attached to any one way of doing things, be open to correction and pretty soon you will be moving at speed towards your goal.
There are also some other advantages to this method of going about things.
Defeat procrastination
With the ready, fire, aim approach there is simply no excuse whatsoever to not take at least some kind of action. You are not looking for perfect results, you are looking for any result at all! Simply taking action is a positive result. Every step you take is a successful one as long as you keep taking them.
Avoid over thinking problems
Over thinking a problem can cripple you into inactivity. While I do advise giving some thought to your actions before taking them, needing to know every little detail and every outcome in advance will slow you down to a crawl. “Just do it” like Nike says.
Action, action, action, this is what is needed, stop talking and start doing! Good luck