Do three things

Whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re working on—whether it’s a job or career goal, a personal goal, or just something you need to get done to keep peace in the household—the way to make progress on it is to move forward.

Well, duh.

But let’s back up from even that remarkably obvious point. You either get things done or you don’t. That is, you move along the path towards accomplishing your goal or completing your task, or you spin your wheels. Put it off. Sit and think about it. Or just sit and think about how you should be thinking about it. If you’re reading this, it’s possible you’re on the Thinking About It side of the line.

Unless this is the first time you’ve faced this particular conundrum, you already know that you should

1. Define your goal
2. Develop an action plan for achieving it
3. Measure your progress

If you didn’t know that, write that down somewhere, or maybe print out this page and keep it somewhere handy.

Though the above steps are not always as cut-and-dried they sound (goals and objectives can be slippery things sometimes), that’s a subject for another day. Right now we’ll assume you have a pretty good idea of what you want to achieve, know a few steps you have to take to get there, and have some way of knowing when you’ve done it.

So now all you have to do is make. some. progress. Well, here you go. Here’s the magic bullet you’ve been looking for:

Do something.

In fact, do three things. They don’t have to be big things; as a matter of fact, you’re better off making them simple, discrete actions that have a definite beginning, middle and end. But all three should support your big goal and move you perceptibly down the path towards achieving it. You want to have more business? Make three phone calls to perspective clients. You want to learn French? Memorize three phrases. You want to write a book? Write three paragraphs, read three articles about the subject, find the names of three experts you could interview (and tomorrow find their contact info, the day after call and schedule appointments…). You get the idea.

Write down the three things. Cross them off when you’re done. Again, they shouldn’t be big, daunting tasks. They should be fairly quick to accomplish, and finishing them should be a high priority. If there’s some reason you can’t get them all done, add the unfinished task(s) onto your next day’s list.

The idea is to take action. Or, even more to the point, be ready for action. Be prepared, cultivate the mindset of doing something to achieve what you want to achieve.

Getting where you want to go involves taking a step. Or three.