What Is Required To Ready, Fire, Aim
Hopefully, you had the chance to read my post on Monday about the ready, fire, aim technique. If you haven't, go ahead and check it out. If you want the TLDR version, here it is: We ready ourselves by collecting as much information as possible, but once we have reached about 75% prepared, we fire off our plan and correct our aim later. The point of this technique is to start taking action and avoid getting caught up in a cycle of trying to create the perfect plan. Here's the thing about the ready, fire, aim technique, though, it requires two things from us to actually work.
First, we have to have the nerve to fire. The whole point of this technique is so that we don't drown in the planning phase. It helps to prevent us from getting overwhelmed by every possible path we could take and every obstacle we could encounter. It is very easy to get stuck in the cycle of planning and predicting. It is easy to become paranoid thinking about every possible choice we could encounter. It is easy to think that the act of planning is chasing our dreams. The planning phase is essential, but it can also be a way for us to pretend we are working. Part of the problem is that we are actually working, so it's an easy lie to believe. But planning alone will never help us achieve our dreams. We must take action.
This is why we fire our plan when we are 75% prepared. We have to actually fire it, though. We have to be willing to go all out working on this plan we've created. This does not mean that we try our plan for two days and then go back to the drawing board to improve. I don't know how long you need to implement your plan before it can be analyzed, but it is longer than a few days; we need a significant sample size to accurately gauge our plans' problems and successes. Too small of a sample size will yield poor results and could encourage us to make bad decisions. It may look like our plan isn't working simply because we haven't given it enough time to take effect or if our skills haven't developed enough. The bigger the dream, the more long-term the plan will be. And the longer term our plan is, the longer our evaluation period needs to be.
I cannot judge the success of my writing based on one month. My skill level will increase as I stay consistent, and hopefully, my reach will as well. But I can't know if my method of marketing my website is truly successful until I give it more time to grow. I couldn't even set growth goals for my readership until I knew the baseline of where I was at. One month is just too short of a timeframe to judge the success or failure of my website.
On the other hand, let's say my dream was to save up money to go to a concert in a few months. I could set my goal budget and break it down into a weekly savings plan. After just a few weeks, I could examine the plan to see if it was working because either my strategy for savings would be building up money in the account, or it wouldn't be. Then I could look at my expenses and reevaluate how to save the money.
I can't tell you exactly how long you should wait to reevaluate your plan. But I can tell you that if we never fire the plan into action, there will be nothing to evaluate. Firing the plan will be the easiest and hardest thing to do. It's like jumping into a pool that we know will be cold. It's very easy to count "1, 2, 3, jump" before leaping. And it is equally as easy to stay frozen on the edge only to begin the count again. I don't know what it takes for you to jump in. I don't know how high you need to set the count. But, we must find it within ourselves to jump. Take the leap of faith and get in the trenches to work out our plan.
The second thing that the ready, fire, aim method requires of us is complete accountability. We must be fully accountable and willing to accept and correct the mistakes that come from firing too early. I know this is hard, and no one likes messing up, but mistakes are the only way we will get anywhere. My guess is, for many of us, we dated some of the wrong people before we dated the right one. For most people, they do things differently with the second kid than they did with the first. We are always messing up and fixing things. We might as well put that energy towards achieving our dreams.
It is hard to fire knowing that we will mess things up, but no matter how much effort we put into planning, we will always mess something up. Even if we manage to come up with the perfect plan, we are not perfect people. Non-perfect people will always make mistakes, even when attempting to execute the perfect plan. This may mean making a poor investment, buying tickets to an event that also happens to be the same night as your sister's bachelorette party or forgetting that you signed up for school drop-off so your kids and the neighbor's kids are late.
I don't know what mistakes we'll make along the way, but we will make them and must be willing to fix what we break. This requires us to take extreme ownership of our dreams. Our dreams are our responsibility to accomplish. Our dreams are our responsibility to plan and accommodate. Our dreams are our responsibility to try and fail and try again. There is no one else to blame when it comes to our dreams, even if it is easy to make ourselves feel like the victim. The victory and defeat lie with us.
In his book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win (for some reason, I have no issue reading military books, it's only watching the movies that I struggle with), Jocko Willink writes, "Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team."
Even if we aren't managing a team related to chasing our dreams, the principles of extreme ownership still stand for us as individuals. We have to check our egos at the door and understand that we may not know everything when it comes to chasing our dreams. We have to operate with humility, knowing that the success of our dream often happens because of the various forms of support we receive. We have to recognize and acknowledge when we fall short and do everything in our power to correct our shortcomings. The people in our lives and our dreams deserve us to take complete ownership of the decisions we make when it comes to pursuing what we desire.
If we are unwilling or unable to take a chance and fire our plan into action, then we will never achieve our dreams. If we are unwilling or unable to take responsibility for our mistakes, then we don't deserve the chance to pursue our dreams. Even though these things can be hard, I am hoping we are capable of doing hard things so that we can hold our dreams and truly deserve to when we do.
