Working Toward Your Goals
To achieve your dreams, create a plan of action.
Living your life with a clear conceptualization of where youwant to end up is what Benjamin Franklin meant by living "tothe purpose." Franklin developed a plan for his entire lifewhen he was still a young man and tried to live up to it. You needto live a purposeful life with your own set of values.
Before you can clearly see your future, you must clearly seeyour present. In other words, to get to point B, you must firstknow the location of point A. You establish point B when you creategoals for your life. You establish point A when you create your ownset of values.
Creating your own set of values is a necessary step for gettingfrom point A to point B. Most focus solely on point B--the goals orpersonal mission statement. We never consider point A. That'sunfortunate because point A is where you are today or where you areat the beginning of any new stage in life. Franklin clearly definedboth his point A and point B. His point A was his set of personalvalues that comprised his basic identity. His point B was his planfor his life. Franklin armed himself both with a knowledge of whohe was and where wanted to go. Is it any wonder that he is stillstudied as a model of effectiveness?
Excerpted from Ben Franklin's 12 Rules of Management
