What should be your strategy for 2017

If you do not like to go with the flow and hope for a case, you need a good strategy for 2017. Entrepreneur Darius Foro tells how to make long-term plans for the life and career.

Darius Foro (Darius Foroux)

Entrepreneur, author of Massive Life Success and founder of the online courses Procrastinate Zero.

Every year I put aside everything and focus only on one thing: the strategy. I'm doing this for the last 5 years.

Life in nature - it is a tactic.

• You respond to emails.
• Do you go shopping.
• You drove my mother to the doctor.
• You talk to the customers.
• You pay your taxes.
• You write the code.

All of the above - pure design. And it's the only way to bring the case to the end. Nevertheless, it is quite ordinary things. And life is much wider.

How about your long-term plans for the life and career? When you think about these things? Most people probably will say never.

I do not know about you, but I never let let your life to chance. I can sometimes go to the casino and roll the dice, but I certainly will not be left to chance when it comes to my business and my life.

Why? This life is not my own. This is life and my family, and half a dozen of my staff.

That is why every individual and every business needs a strategy.

What is the strategy?

Most people do not even ask this question. Just head it comes to any idea, and they call it a strategy.

The word "strategy" comes from the Greek strategos, which literally means "commander." Strategy and understand how generalship as the ability to command and lead the military campaign as a whole, to take the decision on what to use force when the act on which the bridgehead to fight and how to carry out maneuvers to achieve advantages.

Robert Greene, "33 strategies of war"

Taking the Green's book, I define the strategy as follows:

• arts to achieve results;
• application of the ideas in practice.

When you plan your strategy, you need to think about all the things that are learned and decide how you can apply them in practice, to achieve the desired results.

It should look like this process? I've got it goes something like this.

1. Delegate or suspend execution of the tasks in the next week.
2. I read a little book about strategy.
3. Look at its strategy for 2016.
4. See, that went well.
5. See, that did not go very well.
6. Why?
7. What can be improved?
8. Now it's time to think about the future.
9. What are the most important priorities for 2017?
10. For life, business, relationships and health.
11. Be realistic.
12. But do not think too mundane.
13. While not worry about how to carry out the plans.
14. Read more books on strategy.
15. Again, look at the most important priorities for 2017.
16. To reconsider their decision.
17. When the priorities are clearly defined, it is time to consider how to implement them.
18. Split priorities for action.
19. Add a task to your schedule and calendar.

As you can see, in this process, more art than science. This is my personal approach. For example, last year, at about this same time, I decided to fly in 2016 to publish two articles per week. This proved to be a good strategy.

Some people come up with excuses like "I have no time for strategy." Well, it's your life. If you want to focus on short-term affairs in the present, it is also a strategy.

The main thing in this case - solveWhat to do next year. Solution - this is the most important aspect.

You can make in your life a million things. But you remember the famous proverb about a man who tries to do everything at once? Run after two hares, you will catch neither. Do not forget about it. If you try to do too many things at the same time, you will lose.

If the strategy is an art - to get results, you have to ask yourself: how to achieve them?

Performance - the key to results

That's why I created a course on productivity and the achievement of results. I have not opened courses on marketing, not started a course on blogging, was not the course of business. All of this knowledge will be useless if you can not achieve their goals.

Be honest with yourself: do you know how to finish? If you can not reach the goals - learn.

I do not really do well in school. But then I started to learn. And four days later she received a master's degree, get a job, start a business, write a book, and so on. It's not rocket science. Just execution.

For me it is time to look back and think about the future in 2017. I did not come up with some brilliant things. Nothing that could change the world.

For me, most of all, this year will be the same as the previous one, with some minor changes and innovations. Maybe I'll record a podcast. Maybe I'll write a new book. Maybe it will open a new course. Or a new business.

I do not know yet. Ah yes, now is the time to draw up the strategy.

What about you?

P. S. Here are three very good book on the strategies that I recommend:

• «War Craft"Sun Tzu - an overview of the strategy. The book is very short. Read it if you do not want to read a book by Robert Greene.
• «Strategy"Jerry I. Porras, Michael Porter and others - a strategy for the business.
• «By myself"Marcus Aurelius - a strategy for life.