4 Key Steps to Design Strategies For Your Life’s Goals
Use Apple As Your Life Strategies Example
You probably have at least one Apple product in your home. Or if you don’t have one, you know someone who does. Apple has become shorthand for ubiquitous, sustainable success and instant recognizability.
Apple has a small stable of products that they do exceptionally well. They are focused and strategic in their product development and marketing. And their big not-so-secret weapon? They invent something and then keep refining it. This approach to innovation and incremental change is something you can easily adapt to your own life.
If your goal is to write books to one day have a steady income from your writing, then start. Yes, that is the first step. Start writing and your strategy would be to continue learning and building on your writing skills. Don’t wait until you “know how to write the perfect book”. Start writing and make one of your strategies to learn all you can to hone your skills.
Here’s how.
- Keep it Simple
Steve Jobs made a strategic decision to keep Apple’s focus tight. He simplified their product lines down to four computers.
You can easily simplify your life right now by eliminating the elements that waste your time and resources. Start by cutting down or cutting out TV and video games, which are both low-return uses of your time.
Then think of how you can downsize your resources from switching to a smaller car, a smaller house, de-cluttering, to not buying more stuff you don’t need. Free up time by shopping in bulk and batch cooking.
For your writing, don’t be afraid to start. Don’t worry that your efforts and time will be wasted if your writing doesn’t sell. Don’t get emotionally attached to the outcome and agonize over a possible negative outcome in the future.
Keep it simple. Start writing.
- Learn to “Do Something Many Times” – (Iterate)
Any psychologist will tell you that small, incremental lifestyle changes are much more successful than the big sort that tries to change everything at once. Think of how successful most New Year’s resolutions are.
Make a commitment to a significant life change, like writing in your journal, writing a book, freelance writing, becoming a blogger, early retirement or budgeting for more vacations.
You can make a series of small changes, like writing in your journal 15 minutes each day, writing and posting a blog post twice a week, switching from an-on-the-way-to-work coffee to having one at home. Then add in complementary changes since you are saving time in other areas of your life like cutting down on takeout, downgrading your subscriptions and buying a smaller car. Small changes repeatedly compounded over time can make a massive impact on your life.
- Be curious
One of Apple’s big successes is its research and development capacity. They are committed to not missing an opportunity to learn and grow and improve over time.
Stay ahead of the pack by being curious, by always being open to learning and change, looking for new opportunities, tweaking your goals, and always staying committed to improvement.
Don’t catch yourself researching endlessly looking for a way to pacify yourself by researching instead of facing your fears and do what you know you need to do.
- Being Okay with Imperfection.
One of Apple’s mottos is ‘just ship’ meaning that they don’t wait to get a product absolutely perfect before they launch it into the world.
Being okay with imperfection doesn’t mean you just leave it there and turn out low-quality work. It means you keep hustling. You give it your best shot, get it out, and then make improvements. You keep moving, keep thinking, keep improving.
One of the most important decisions you can make for yourself is to decide where your loyalty lies. You need to make the choice that your loyalty is always to your success – Not a book you’ve written, a journal, a blog post. You have to keep going because your success depends on it and you’re loyal to your success.
In other words – Don’t Give Up!
Here Are 2 Tools That Can Help You With Your Strategies:
