CHAPTER 3

When Rubber Hits the Road: Making a Plan—and Sticking to It

When I reach a goal I cross it off and set a new one.

—Katie Ledecky, record-setting Olympic swimmer

Now that you’ve defined your dream and started sharing it with the world, it’s time to go about making it a reality! But before you can start chasing after your dream, you have to figure out how to do so. How can you most effectively strive toward your dream? Most dreams are not accomplished through one action or in one moment—instead, they are the result of a multitude of smaller actions over time, all of which combine and build toward a larger goal. To turn a dream from an abstract “maybe” to a concrete “definitely,” you have to determine what all of these smaller actions should be and when (and how!) you’ll achieve them. To put it simply, you’ve gotta make a plan! In this chapter I’ll share with you how I made my own plan to achieve my big dream (and what’s changed along the way!), dive into why making a plan matters so much, and walk you through how to make your very own step-by-step plan to reach your dream.

I made my very first plan to achieve my dream of becoming the first astronaut to walk on Mars when I was eleven years old. I had already spent several years being loud and proud about my dream, and eventually someone in my life heard me, believed in me, and stepped in to help guide me toward achieving it. My mom—my first and biggest supporter—challenged me to put together a plan of how I would go about accomplishing my astronomically challenging dream. She asked me to honestly consider how difficult it would be to take all of the steps that would lead up to me someday walking on the surface of Mars. It was the first time I’d thought about my dream in such concrete terms.

That night I dove voraciously into research. I searched for what past and current astronauts had done to become astronauts. I made a list of all the things that I thought would help me down the path of becoming an astronaut. Then I arranged those things in chronological order to show when and how I would achieve each of these smaller steps. I had my first plan, and it included multiple decades’ worth of actions that I would need to take to someday walk on Mars. The very next day I brought my mom a written copy of this plan.

Despite the fact that much of what was on my very first plan ended up not being a part of my real path toward Mars, I will always be grateful that my mom challenged me to create it at such a young age. Creating this plan early on taught me how to plan for my future—a very necessary skill. Having a plan also helped me believe in my own ability to accomplish my dream, and helped me prove to others that my dream truly was achievable. Essentially, having a plan not only gave me a path forward toward achieving my dream, but also gave me confidence in myself and my abilities.

This first plan was a jumping-off point for me—the actions that I took as a result of this plan helped me focus on what was important in my journey at the time: excelling at school, participating in athletics, and sharing my dream with others. Because I had a plan of action, when I was loud and proud and shared my dream with others, they saw that I was serious. And because people saw that, they took me seriously, and presented me with amazing opportunities, like attending launches, special tours of space facilities, conferences, and more. I was able to meet incredible people who would later become mentors, and to have experiences that sharpened and directed the focus of my dream. All of my future plans, and subsequently, the actions I’ve taken over the past decade, are because I learned from that first plan how to chase after a dream.

Making your first plan (or if you’ve already made a plan, further refining your plan) is important. Making and following plans is a skill that will help you throughout your entire life and can be learned and improved, but only if you start somewhere and then work at it! And as it did for me, making a plan toward your dreams will help you gain confidence in that dream, discover exactly what you need to accomplish to reach your dream, and set you up to start taking actions toward success. Read on, and utilize the activities in this chapter, to start developing your skills as an organized dream go-getter!

MAKE YOUR PLAN!

The basic formula for making a plan is: do research, brainstorm the goals you’ll need to accomplish to achieve your dream, break these goals up into smaller actions and steps, write it all out, ask someone else to help review it or review it yourself (or better yet, do both!), and finally, revise your plan as time goes by. That may seem like a lot of things, but don’t worry, I’ll break each of them down.

Do Your Research!

The very first thing to do as you start making a plan to achieve your dream is research! Search for anything and everything that can give you information on how to achieve your dream. Try to find out what materials or resources you might need and how you can get them, who can help you reach your dream, and what the requirements and recommendations are to get to where you want to go.

For example, if your dream is to be a competitive figure skater, your research might include reading about what previous and current professional skaters did on their path to success—how many hours a day they practiced, what types of sacrifices they had to make, what things outside of skating (such as dance lessons or strength training) they did to support their training, and what their attitude or outlook was during their early years as a skater. You could also look for local competitions to enter and scholarships or grants to help fund your future advanced training.

The types of things you’ll look for will vary depending on your dream, but the same basic questions remain no matter what your dream is: Has anyone accomplished this dream in the past, or done something close to it? How did they do it? What resources did they have that you might also need? How can you get those resources? Who can help you?

There are many ways to go about finding out what you need to know. A few methods might include:

☑Looking online or at a library for information about how others have accomplished the same dream that you have. A great way to find this information is by making a list of those people and then reading their Wikipedia pages, looking for books about them, or reading their websites or blogs (if they have one!). While it can be interesting to look at people who accomplished your dream decades ago, in the interest of making your plan as relevant as possible, you’re probably better off looking at recent examples.

☑Finding out about any requirements or recommendations that you’re likely to come across on the way toward reaching your dream. (Requirements and recommendations can be different! For example, the requirements to be a NASA astronaut include good health, a master’s degree in a related field, and a minimum of three years of work experience. But the recommendations, which most astronauts in the last couple decades have done, include working in remote/dangerous and high-stress environments, having flight or scuba experience, and getting advanced graduate degrees.) Requirements will form the base of your plan, and recommendations will help you fill it in more. Once again, the internet is your friend here!

☑Talking to people who are involved in the field your dream lies in. (For example, if you want to make the high school volleyball team, you could reach out to the team’s coach or a current player and ask them some questions!) Finding people to talk to in your field of choice may seem challenging at first. Teachers, mentors, and parents can help guide you to find the right people to talk to.

Break Your Big Goals into Small Steps

To become an astronaut, the list of actions I needed to take included things like attending a good university, becoming a scientist, and learning foreign languages. Each of these items could then be broken down into smaller goals. For example, attending a good university was dependent on getting good grades in middle and high school, taking advanced classes in math and science, getting high SAT/ACT scores, having a strong list of extracurricular activities, and being able to show a good history of volunteering. Each of these could then be broken down even more into smaller goals and steps, such as finding a tutor for subjects I was struggling in, planning out my class schedule every semester, studying and doing my homework on a regular basis, and more. The big idea here is to break your dream down into smaller component pieces, all of which will collectively add up to be the whole dream.

Oftentimes our dreams can seem almost impossible to us. When you’re just starting out on the path toward your dream, it can seem really far away. But our dreams are definitely achievable! Creating a plan to achieve our dreams can help us untangle them and make them more approachable. Breaking down our big dreams into smaller steps helps us see how, exactly, they’re achievable and helps us start taking actions toward accomplishing the seemingly impossible. When I was eleven years old and thinking about someday walking on Mars, that seemed like an insurmountable dream. It was so far out in the future and would require so much more than I was currently capable of—how would I ever go about achieving it? Where should I even start trying? Once I made a plan and saw the steps that I needed to take, including the steps that I could start with even at that age, all of these worries faded away. It was much easier to just think about what I needed to do to graduate high school and get into college than it was to think about my dream as a whole. I had a jumping-off point that seemed much more attainable at the time.

Write the step/goal that you chose:

My goal is . . .

 

 

Challenge yourself to think of three smaller steps that you can break that goal into:

To achieve my goal I will . . .

1.

2.

3.

Make these smaller steps real by estimating the dates/times that you hope to start and/or finish each by:

I will start/finish this by . . .

1.

2.

3.

To create your plan, you should make sure that each of these component pieces you’ve identified are of the right magnitude—that they’re reasonable. Think about each of these miniature goals as if they’re a stepping-stone on the path toward your dream. A path is really hard to walk on if the stepping-stones are too far apart from one another; likewise, it’s difficult to continue down the path toward your dream if the individual goals are too disconnected. Feel free to take some of these smaller goals and break them up into even smaller steps—whatever makes the path toward your dream seem more manageable and your dream appear more achievable to you.

One other important thing to remember: as you work on creating this plan, you’ll want to include steps and goals of different sizes. If you make all of your goals too big, you’ll fail to achieve them frequently enough to stay motivated (or maybe won’t even be able to get started on them at all!). Conversely, if you make all of your goals too small or easy, then, even as you achieve each one, you won’t feel like you’re making progress toward your dream. It’s important to have a good mixture of goals—some that make for low-hanging fruit and others that make you stretch a bit more.

Set SMART Goals!

Having a plan with well-defined goals is super important. But if those goals aren’t the right kinds of goals (as we just discussed above) you’ll be setting yourself up for failure instead of success. Luckily, there’s a handy acronym to help you set the right kinds of goals to achieve your dream: SMART goals! The acronym SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. Let’s break those five words down and look at what each of them actually means in terms of goal setting and dream go-getting!

Specific: Don’t set vague goals—smart goals are well defined! You’re much more likely to be successful at achieving your goals. To make any goal specific, make sure it answers these three W questions:

  • Who does the goal involve? Is it just you, or does this goal involve others?

  • What exactly do you want to accomplish with this goal?

  • When do you want to work on this goal? When do you want to achieve it?

Measurable: Set goals that have measurable outcomes. It’s easier to follow through on a goal if you can measure your progress toward it as you go. It’s also much easier to feel empowered after you’ve completed your goal if you actively recognize when you’ve actually achieved it! Think of these things as ways to keep the mental momentum going. To ensure that your goals are measurable, ask yourself the following questions:

  • What criteria will indicate that you’re making progress toward achieving your goal?

  • What will achieving this goal look like? How will you know that you’re done?

  • Does your goal have times or dates attached to it?

Achievable: Your goals should be within your ability to achieve. If you set goals that are too big for you (right now), or too far in the future, you’re setting yourself up to not achieve them! Setting achievable goals doesn’t mean, of course, that you shouldn’t feel challenged by your goals—they can be difficult, but still attainable.

Relevant: Make sure that you’re setting your goals for a particular reason—smart goals should serve a purpose to you! To double-check that a goal you’ve set is relevant to you and your dream, ask yourself these questions:

  • Why are you setting this goal?

  • Why is it important to you?

  • How will it help you achieve your dream?

Timely: Set goals that include start and end dates or times. Establishing goals that are set to be accomplished too far in the future (without intermediary goals or steps to break up that time) makes it less likely that you’ll stay both motivated and organized to achieve them. Choosing time-bound goals also ensures that you can achieve them within the amount of time you have available! To ensure that your goals are timely, make sure that you have a clearly defined timeline for them, including how long you want to spend working on your goal, when you’ll start working on it, and when you expect to achieve it.

Setting goals is a tool to help you achieve your dream! Planning out what you’ll need to do (and how you’ll do it) will help you feel motivated and empowered to go after your dream. Goals also help you focus on and determine what will actually help you succeed, and then use your time and resources to your best advantage. But like most tools, goals have to be used correctly to work. At best, incorrect goal setting will result in wasted time and effort—but at worst, it can negatively affect your ability to succeed and even cause you to lose your motivation and confidence in your ability to reach your dream. Utilize the SMART goals method to ensure that you’re getting the most out of the goals you’re setting so that the hard work that you do can help you achieve your dream!

  1. I want to read more books.

  2. I want to become a better artist.

  3. I want to get drafted to an NFL team.

  4. I want to perform in the school musical.

  5. I want to save money for college.

Write It Out!

By now you’ve determined the smaller component pieces that will help you start working toward reaching your dream, and it’s time to actually write out your plan! Writing it out (rather than just thinking about it and keeping it inside your head) is super important. Oftentimes the action of writing something down (and then rereading it out loud) can help you find things you might have missed when you were keeping it all in your brain. Writing your plan down also makes it seem more tangible and real, ensures that you won’t forget any of your smaller stepping-stone goals, and gives you something to look at to remind you of your bigger dream.

To create your written plan, organize all the ideas that you came up with during your research into chronological order. Determine which steps should come first, what’s after that, and so on. Look at each of these steps and think about how you’ll accomplish each one. Next to each step, write down anything that you think you’ll need to have or do in order to achieve that specific step.

It’s also a good idea to think about whether there might be anything that could stand in your way of accomplishing each step. The best way to not let obstacles get the better of you is by preparing for them beforehand! For each obstacle that you foresee, ask yourself how you think you’d react to it and whether there is anything you might be able to do to get around it. Some of these obstacles might never happen, but it’s better to think about them and put together a plan B that you never have to use than it is to need a plan B and not have one. This is one of the incredibly powerful things about making a plan for your dream—it allows you to think more critically and at a more nuanced level about accomplishing your dream, and in doing so, to avoid and overcome obstacles that might stand in your way.

Of course, it’s impossible to predict all the obstacles that might come along—life is unpredictable! It’s completely okay (and normal!) to run into roadblocks and challenges while pursuing your goals that you didn’t anticipate and that you’re not prepared for. Here’s the great thing though—preparing for potential future obstacles (even if you never end up facing the particular challenge you prepared for) will help you gain the skills necessary to deal with anything you encounter—even if the obstacle you run into isn’t something you expected. Every dream that is worth doing is something that challenges you, and as such, will have challenging points along the way. You don’t have to crumble under these challenges, and proper planning will help ensure you won’t.

The most obvious, straightforward, and no-frills way to record your plan is to simply write it out, possibly on a piece of paper, in a notebook, or on a computer. These are by no means the only ways to create your plan though! If you think you want something a little bit more creative or interactive, consider these alternative ways to write out your plan:

☑Write your plan out on a calendar! If your plan includes a lot of specific dates or if you really like the idea of keeping track of time while following your plan, this could be a great way to go.

☑Create a spreadsheet! This is a great option if you have a lot of moving parts to your plan. Creating a spreadsheet of your plan will allow you to record lots of extra information for each step, such as times, places, people, and more, and keep it all super organized. Spreadsheets are useful because they are customizable (Color-coding! Different fonts! Multiple pages and tabs!) and can be easily updated. Google Drive has a spreadsheet option (called Google Sheets) that is great for this type of planning, that is free, and that you can create a link from to share your spreadsheet with your mentors and advisors so that you can get feedback as you go.

☑Use sticky notes! Using sticky notes (like Post-its) allows you a lot of flexibility and creativity in your plan. You could write each individual step in your plan on a different sticky note, and then play around with color-coding them by timing, category, or any other classification that strikes your fancy. Sticky notes are great because you can put them anywhere, allowing you to keep whatever step you’re currently working on front and center in your life. They also allow you to make changes easily. Did something change in your plan? Just remove that sticky note and pop in a new one!

☑Use any other medium you find that excites you! Be creative—this is your plan, and how you record it is your choice.

Once you’ve written out your plan, make sure that you display it somewhere prominently. Maybe print it out and paste it to the inside of your locker door, tape it up next to your mirror, or set it as your screensaver on your phone. Having your plan frequently visible will help you stay focused on your dream and its component pieces and will constantly remind you of just how achievable it is!

Katie Ledecky is an incredibly successful and highly decorated swimmer. By age nineteen, she had already been on the US Olympic team twice, won six Olympic medals, and won eighteen World Championship medals (the most of any female swimmer in the world!). She always keeps her goals prominently visible. While training for the 2016 Olympics, Katie had the numbers 565 printed on her pull buoy (a piece of training equipment swimmers use regularly). These numbers represented a set of goals she and her coach had decided on three years before the Olympics: to swim the 400-meter freestyle in 3 minutes and 56 seconds, and the 800-meter freestyle in 8 minutes and 5 seconds. Looking at these huge goals every time she trained helped Katie stay motivated and focused on achieving greatness. Just like for Katie, seeing your plan and goals frequently will help you stay focused and motivated to reach your dream.

Get a Second Opinion!

Once you’ve got your plan all figured out (or as figured out as you think you can get it) and recorded on your medium of choice, it’s a great time to show it to someone else! Having a second pair of eyes look at your plan is important for any number of reasons. First, because you might be too emotionally invested in your work to look at it objectively, and you might miss something that someone who isn’t as closely connected to your dreams would see. On top of that, someone else looking at your plan might notice individual parts that don’t quite make sense, like steps that are out of order or not necessary at all. Conversely, they might be able to add in things that you hadn’t even thought of yet!

An important thing to remember as you share your plan with other people is that it’s still your plan. It belongs to you, and leads to your dreams, so you are the one who gets to make all the decisions regarding it. Other people can give you suggestions, constructive criticism, and advice, but at the end of the day you get to choose which ideas to include and which to dismiss. Not all advice that you get will fit for you, so don’t feel pressured to change your plan based on someone else’s opinion of it.

You can share your plan with anyone you choose, but a good thing to ask yourself as you’re thinking about who the right person or people might be is: Who do I think can give me good advice on this? It might be helpful to go back to chapter 2 and think about who you first wanted to share your dream with and why you chose them. That original confidant might be a good person to give you your second opinion on your plan. Alternatively, if you have access to someone within the field that your dream is in, they might be a great person to share it with! For example, your theater teacher might be able to give you advice on what’s realistic (or not) and what you might add to your plan that’s specific to becoming an actor.

Revise Your Plan over Time!

As you move ahead with your plan, you’ll likely find that following it word for word isn’t realistic. There are plenty of reasons why it might need to change. Your priorities could evolve, you could learn more about your dream and realize you need to add or subtract something from your plan, what (and who) you have access to might change, or the timeline for your stepping-stone goals might just shift. Whatever the reason, the important thing to remember is that nothing is set in stone. Just because you’ve written something down doesn’t mean that that’s the only way to do it. This is your plan and you get to follow it, or change it, as you’d like. A plan is meant to guide and support you, to help you engage in self-reflection. It’s not meant to box you in!

My own plan that I laid out for myself when I was eleven included things like going into the air force and becoming an astrophysicist. It turns out that neither of these things was necessary to achieve my dream, and neither of them was really right for me. As I got older and continued to consider and refine my plan, I realized that I didn’t want to go into the military. The next iteration of my plan included going to a large tech university like MIT to major in astrophysics instead. But after two years as an early college student (I was enrolled in college and high school at the same time) at a large university, I realized that what I actually wanted was to go to a smaller liberal arts college. And after having taken a couple of physics classes already, I was able to understand that my heart really wasn’t in astrophysics. My plan then shifted once again, to me going to Wellesley College and studying astrobiology.

But I didn’t only subtract or substitute things from my plan. I added components as well, based on learning new things about what would help me become an astronaut and discovering new resources that I had available to me. And so I added things like becoming a pilot and learning to scuba dive. Some things didn’t change at all—I’ve always stuck with my initial ideas of becoming a scientist and learning multiple languages. Overall, the thing that changed the most about my plan was altering its timeline—sometimes moving certain steps up, other times moving steps further into the future. It just goes to show that none of us can predict the future, so as we plan for it we have to be willing to sometimes go with the flow and make changes to where we thought we were going and what we needed to be doing.

TAKE ACTION!

Making a plan is really only the first step (albeit an incredibly important first step!) in transforming your dream from a fantasy into a reality. After you’ve created your plan, after you’ve determined the path that you’ll take and the individual smaller goals and actions that will help lead you to your dream, and after you’ve written it all down and shared it with others, you then have to start actually acting on those smaller goals. A plan on its own doesn’t accomplish anything—it’s just a list of ideas and timelines. It’s the dreamer, not the plan, that achieves dreams.

As we’ve discussed above, making a plan to achieve your dream makes it much easier to just get started on working toward your dream. But even once you have a plan, once you’ve decided what you need to do to achieve your dream and broken it down into approachable steps, it can still sometimes be difficult to take the first step. Here are some skills and strategies that will help you get over the “getting started” hurdle and reach consistently toward your dream (even during the hard parts!).

Take That First Step

Are you familiar with the Nike tagline Just do it? Seems like good advice, right? Well, it’s not always so easy to “just do it.” Anyone who’s ever started something new will tell you that the hardest part is the beginning—just getting started can be a huge task! It’s completely okay and normal to not get started right away; allowing your ideas to ferment and mature before you act on them is great. But eventually there comes a point when you do have to act on your dreams if you ever want to achieve them. If you’ve done your research, made your plan, and are still not totally confident in getting started, then it’s time to turn inward and ask yourself why you’re struggling.

We tell ourselves all sorts of stories about why we’re not acting on our dreams: “It’s not the right time,” “I’m not ready,” “I don’t have the right resources to start,” “I’m too busy,” “It’s too hard,” and more. But the truth is that the main reason we avoid starting down the road toward our dreams is often because we’re afraid. Getting over fear and self-doubt can totally be difficult (there’s actually a whole chapter later on with more advice about overcoming fears!), but it’s a necessary thing to do if you want to act on your dreams.

Oftentimes our trepidation and anxiety about starting down the path toward our dreams comes from uncertainty. Maybe we’re not quite sure what exactly will happen if we start to act on our dreams—both the negative and positive results. The ability to overcome our fears or worries about taking action toward our dreams is based in becoming self-aware. Once you know why you’re worried, it’s much easier to look at that fear truthfully and not let it control you!

Take the First Step Toward Your Dream!

One great way to take your first step is to start with the easiest or quickest step in your plan. Some plans have to be followed in a certain order, but most have at least a little bit of flexibility. Starting with something that you can accomplish quickly is smart for two reasons. First: a really quick and easy task is probably less scary to think about doing, and therefore easier to, well, just do! Second: actions, even small actions, build momentum and confidence; once you’ve accomplished one small task, it’s easier to look at the rest of your steps and feel like you can achieve them too.

You’re probably familiar with the name Sir Isaac Newton. Newton is one of the most well-known and famous scientists in all of history—and for good reason! Over three hundred years ago he discovered gravity, invented the mathematics of calculus, and identified the three laws of motion (known as Newton’s Laws of Motion). These three laws are fundamental to our understanding of modern physics—and especially important if you want to understand high-speed activities such as racing cars, launching rockets, and flying airplanes! Newton’s first law, also known as the Law of Inertia, states:

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force; an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.

This law is intended to describe the actions of physical objects—but you can also apply it to the actions that you take to reach your dream! Let’s go ahead and change the statement of Newton’s first law to describe your plans instead:

  1. The object at rest = your plan to achieve your dream, before you start on it

  2. The outside force = taking actions toward or away from your dream (i.e., following the steps of your plan or disregarding them)

  3. The object in motion = your plan, once you start working on it

So now Newton’s first law [for your dream] states:

Your plan (at rest) will remain at rest unless you take actions toward your dream; your plan (in motion) will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.

Taking the first action toward your dream (no matter how small that action may be!) acts as the outside force to push your plan into motion. And once your plan is in motion it remains in motion—it has inertia! With this inertia already started it should be easier to continue acting toward your dreams, allowing you to undertake some of the bigger, more difficult steps in your plan.

As you get started acting on your plan, please be kind and patient with yourself! Just getting started is a huge accomplishment and something to be proud of, regardless of how long it takes you or how successful you are with your first action. Acting on your plan is a skill and something that you shouldn’t expect to be perfect at right away—but over time you can (and will!) get better at it.

Overcoming Procrastination

Procrastination is something that everyone faces at some point or another. Maybe you’ll procrastinate to avoid getting started on figuring out a plan for your dream (if so, see the section on page 93 called “Take That First Step”), or perhaps you’ll procrastinate after you’ve started down the path toward your dream. Dreams are exciting, and chasing them should be something you enjoy, but that being said, you probably won’t enjoy every moment of every step on your way! Some of the actions that you take to accomplish your dream might be boring, difficult, or otherwise unpalatable in some way, and that can lead to procrastination. While procrastination is a normal experience, it doesn’t have to be something that stops you from chasing after your dream—overcoming procrastination is not as hard as it seems, and you can absolutely learn how to do it.

One important thing to remember: procrastination is not the same thing as laziness! Procrastination is when you focus on doing things other than the task at hand—oftentimes the alternative activities that you partake in when you procrastinate are easier to do, quicker, more fun, or somehow more appealing than the one you are procrastinating doing. Another important thing to keep in mind is that procrastination is a habit. Every time you procrastinate, you reinforce the likelihood that you’ll procrastinate again in the future—so it’s important to nip it in the bud! Dealing with procrastination starts with the obvious: recognizing and identifying when you’re procrastinating. If you realize that you’re not getting something from your plan done that you should have finished by now (or even should have just started), then you might be procrastinating. If you think that might be the case, go ahead and ask yourself these questions:

Am I purposely avoiding doing [whatever it is that I should be doing]?

Am I really too busy to do [this particular thing] or am I filling my time with less important things to avoid it?

How long has [this thing I should be doing] been on my to-do list?

Am I making excuses for why I haven’t done [this thing I’ve been meaning to do]?

If you answered yes to any of these questions (or maybe even to several of them) then you are probably procrastinating . . .

Once you’ve identified that yes, indeed, you are procrastinating, the next thing to do is to figure out why you’re procrastinating. It’s important to figure out the why before you start trying to fix it, because different reasons for procrastinating have different solutions! Picking the right solution for your procrastination will make it much easier to stop. Try to identify whether you’re procrastinating on your task because you find it boring, unappealing, or difficult; because you’re worried about failing at the task; because you’re struggling with organization; or for some entirely different reason.

Once you’ve figure that out, it’s time to start working on stopping the procrastination. Here are some anti-procrastination strategies that I’ve found effective. Feel free to try out different strategies until you find one that works for you (or go ahead and combine multiple strategies if you think that’ll work best!):

☑Commit yourself to your task. You might be procrastinating because you’re not really, truly committed to the task that you’re trying to accomplish! Ask yourself why you’re trying to accomplish this particular task—what will achieving it do for you? Do you really want to achieve it? If the answer is yes, make a mental commitment to yourself to do so. Then make a physical commitment as well. Write out your task on a piece of paper in big letters and put it in front of you. Make it look important and eye-catching—even go as far as to decorate it if you want! If it’s something that will take you a while to do, put this paper in a place where you’ll see it frequently.

☑Give yourself a timeline to get started or finished with your task. Choose a date or time that you want to have either started or finished your task by and then set an alarm to remind you to do it. My favorite way to do this is to use a countdown clock from TimeAndDate.com/Countdown/Create. I love using this site because it lets you create a customized background design, title, and date/time for your goal. You can then either keep this open on your phone or computer, or check back in on it and watch as it counts down to your deadline!

☑Create short bursts of time for yourself. Choose a small amount of time, set a timer, and then work on your task for that much time. You’ll probably find that it’s easier to get started on your task when you’ve promised yourself that you only have to do it for a short amount of time—and you might even find that, once you’ve started, you’ll be able to go longer than you expected. For example, when I’m training for a long-distance race, sometimes I know I should go jogging but just really don’t feel like doing it. I deal with this by starting to run, and setting a timer for just five minutes to start with. (My logic here is that I can do anything, even if I don’t want to, for five minutes. Feel free to choose your own amount of time to use!) When the timer goes off, I’ll have gotten into the groove and often decide to keep running for another five minutes, and then another . . . and eventually I’ll stop setting the timer and just run!

☑Become organized about this particular task. Choose a period of time in the near future that you will block out to work on your task. Plan to minimize the distractions around you during this block of time. (For example, make sure you have study snacks easily accessible, a quiet space, and no access to social media.)

☑Reward yourself (or plan to!) for accomplishing your task. What you consider to be a reward depends on you and what you like, but some examples are: playing a video game, eating a piece of chocolate, crossing your task off your to-do list or plan, or telling someone (or posting on social media) once you’ve accomplished your task.

☑Find an “accountabilibuddy.” In case it’s not clear, that word is a mash-up of “accountability” and “buddy,” and it’s someone who will help you make sure you stick to your task! You can ask a friend, family member, team member, teacher, or anyone else that you’re close to to be your accountabilibuddy. Ask them to check in with you at a predetermined time—maybe a couple hours, maybe a couple days—to ask you whether you’ve started, finished, or reached a certain point in your task. Sometimes accountabilibuddies can be people with the same task who work on it together and motivate each other.

☑Change your mindset and the words that you use when you think of or talk about your task. Challenge yourself with this! If you constantly use words with a negative connotation when you think or talk about your task, then it will start to seem like a chore that you have to do instead of something that you’re choosing to do. Use the next activity to help make this mindset shift!

 

 

 

Regardless of why or how often you procrastinate, please be kind to yourself as you work to recognize and change this habit. Remember that everyone procrastinates at some point. Struggling with procrastination does not mean that you’re not capable of achieving your dream or following your plan—it’s simply a challenge for you to overcome along the way. Be proud of yourself for being self-aware enough to notice your bad habits and dedicated enough to work on changing them!

Act with Consistency

If you want to see the smaller, more actionable steps in your plan build upon one another to help you reach your dream, you have to act consistently on your plan. This means that you can’t tackle the entire list of steps in your plan all at once—and neither can you leave huge gaps between tackling each step. You have to find a happy medium (like Goldilocks!). The following section will guide you in how to find your own Goldilocks zone for your dream.

Consider this: Is your dream a marathon or a sprint? Sprints and marathons are both running races but are fundamentally different activities, and as such, need different strategies. A sprint is a short-distance race, and in it you want to run as fast as you can for the entire race. If you were to treat a marathon like a sprint, though, you would probably collapse after the first couple of miles! In a marathon, which is 26.2 miles long, a runner usually starts out with a slower warm-up period and then runs at a consistent pace that they know they can maintain for the entire race.

In the same way that there are different strategies for runners to employ to be successful in various types of races, you’ll also need to modulate your strategy for your dream based on how long-term and effort-intensive it is. If your dream is something that you can accomplish quickly (such as learning how to do a cartwheel), then you don’t have to worry about pacing yourself very much. Feel free to tackle it at full speed! However, if your dream is something that you expect will take a longer time period to accomplish, then you’ll need to treat it more like a marathon and pace yourself with consistent actions over time. For example, when I first dreamed up my dream to walk on Mars, I was planning for something that was thirty-plus years in my future! If I had dedicated 110 percent of my time and energy to achieving this dream, I would have burned out long before the thirty years were up.

To avoid burning out before you reach your dream, act with consistency as you reach for it. One simple way to do this is to review the plan you wrote out previously and ensure that you include in it a realistic timeline for when you plan to achieve each step. What exactly does “realistic” mean in this case? Well, for each dream (and each list of steps) this will be different! Here are some tips to help you figure out what the most feasible timeline for your dream might be:

☑If other people have achieved the same or a similar dream in the past, look at how long it took them to do so and how they paced themselves.

☑Review your plan step by step and think about how long it will take to accomplish each one. Keep in mind that it’s very likely each step won’t need the same amount of time.

☑While acting on your dream quickly is important, don’t feel like you have to make your first action a massive one! Don’t plan to go too far or too fast right off the bat. Choose an action that seems achievable. Review your plan to make sure that all of your steps are broken down into smaller steps that are truly actionable. (It’s important and good to have stretch goals in your plan, but make sure that you have a plan of smaller actions to reach those stretch goals.)

☑Plan to work on just one step at a time. Do the best job that you can on this one action and then move on to the next one once you’ve completed it. If you focus your attention on multiple steps simultaneously, you run the risk of not being able to commit enough attention to each of them individually and end up not achieving any of them in the long run!

☑Once you’ve put a timeline into your plan, ask someone to review it and to specifically look at how reasonable your timeline is.

Tips for Acting with Consistency

Once you have a well-thought-out, realistic timeline as a part of your plan, do your best to actually stick to it! To do so, here are a few helpful points to consider: maintaining proper time management, building good habits, and overcoming inflection points.

There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and approximately 4 weeks in a month—so that means you have about 672 hours every month to work on your plan, right? No, of course not! You still need to sleep, eat, get dressed every day, go to school, participate in extracurricular activities, do homework, do your chores, read this book, hang out with friends, and many other things. Those 672 hours disappear really quickly once you start to think about all of the things you do. So how are you going to find time in your busy life to consistently act toward your dream? Well, that’s where having good time-management skills comes in handy! Mastering those will help you organize your life, do all of your other tasks and activities more efficiently, and make time to work toward your dream.

Time management is all about determining what your priorities are, how much time you have available, and how much time you want to allocate to each task, and then actually sticking with the choices you made. So the obvious first step here is to determine what your priorities are. At this point you might ask: Isn’t everything in your life (and on your plan) important? Yes, which is why you have to think really critically about what your priorities are. Some things that you spend your time on seem important in the short term (like painting your nails or playing video games with your friends), whereas other things will be important to you in the long term (like achieving your dreams, doing well in school, or nurturing your relationships). What seems important to you today might not seem so important in a few weeks, months, or even years down the road. As you try to decide what to prioritize above all else, ask yourself, If I looked back on this task a year from now, would I consider it to be important? If you answer yes, then that task is probably an important thing and you should prioritize it!

Start by allocating as much time as you need to these important tasks, and then use the time that’s left over to complete your less important tasks. If you’re still not entirely sure which tasks are the most important, ask yourself, What would happen if I didn’t accomplish this task? If there are no consequences, or very minimal consequences, then it’s probably not a top priority for you. Consider this example: Your dream is to buy your own car when you get your driver’s license. Right now you have a three-hour period of time that you can use however you’d like—you could either spend it watching a movie or spend it doing something like babysitting or mowing lawns to earn money. If you ask yourself what the consequences of NOT doing each of these would be, you’ll pretty easily see which should take priority.

If you have multiple tasks that all seem to be really important (and will be important in the long run!) you can use the principle of urgency to decide what order to do them in. Ask yourself, Do my tasks have due dates? If only one of your tasks has a date it has to be accomplished by, start with that one! If they all have due dates, arrange them by which due dates are coming up first, and how much time each task will take to accomplish, and then plan your time based on that list.

Another way to keep a consistent pace when acting toward your dream is to incorporate habits into your plan. Habits can be incredibly powerful! Much of human behavior is based on habits—they control our everyday actions, oftentimes without us even knowing it. Decisions like what to eat for breakfast, when to brush your teeth, and even how you tie your shoelaces aren’t actually decisions, they’re habits. Habits make our lives easier by removing the need to make decisions constantly. And they’re especially helpful for things that are difficult for us to choose to do otherwise. Humans have a limited amount of willpower, so relying on your willpower to keep you acting consistently toward your dream (especially during the more grueling parts of your path) is not a great idea. Instead, rely on making it a habit to work on your goals!

The final piece of the puzzle to stick to your plan and timeline is to anticipate and overcome inflection points. Inflection points are moments when the temptation to quit is the strongest, and regardless of what your dream is, you’re bound to run into them at some point! Overcoming inflection points is all about thinking ahead about what, when, where, and why you might struggle and making plans for how you can instead succeed in those instances.

Oftentimes the inflection points that we face arise because the action we’re doing is boring, monotonous, or otherwise unpleasant. Our brains crave variety, and if we’re not giving them enough they rebel. In cases such as this, the best way to plan for success at these inflection points is to think of creative ways that you can make that difficult action or moment fun instead of it being a drag. For example, if your dream is to run a 5K but running becomes boring to you after a while, some things you could do to keep it interesting include changing up where you run so that the scenery is exciting; challenging yourself to run faster or go longer; listening to a podcast, audiobook, or movie while you run; or running with a friend! The way that you make your inflection point interesting will vary based on what the action you’re undertaking is, but the basic idea is: Can you give your brain a more exciting environment or experience while still accomplishing the same task?

One of the great things you can do with your plan once you start acting on it is to keep track of how far you’ve come. As you work on a specific goal, highlight it or bring it to the forefront. And once you accomplish each small stepping-stone goal, reward yourself by crossing it off your plan. Look back at your plan every now and then to see how much progress you’ve made toward accomplishing your dream—I promise you, you won’t be disappointed!