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Have you ever worked on a project that didn't end up the way you intended? Maybe it was something as simple as sprucing up the garden. It could have been as ambitious as starting out on a new business venture. Whether a project succeeds or fails can be simplified by how well the following three basic factors were done.

Clear end result
Taking corrective action
Continuing until the project is successful
In Part I of this series of articles I will discuss the concept of having a clear end result in mind.

While a clear end result is often thought of as a goal, it is actually a much more precisely defined goal. Some people think of goals as making lots of money by the time they reach a certain age, or some want to be good at golf. The difference between a "clear end result" and what others define as "goals" is specificity.

'It has to be around here somewhere''

If you don't know what the end result is, how can you ever take effective action to get there? For example, if I wanted to make 'a lot of money' by the time I was 30, then how do I even begin? Does a lot of money mean $100,000 dollars or $10,000,000? While I have never made $10,000,000, the plans and actions that a person would need to take is much different than a person who wants to make 100,000 a year or 50,000 a year. It's a clich' -- but true, 'If you don't know where you are going, then any road you take will get you there'.

If you never take the time to define your end results, then you will find that you will end up nowhere near where you wanted to end up. From a purely motivational perspective, vagueness has no excitement to it. If I just want to be good at golf, there is not a whole lot there that is going to get me to the driving range or to the golf course. If I want to be better at golf then somebody who irritates me, then I have a very clear bar to measure myself against, and a lot more motivation to reach my goals. Vague, pie in the sky goals have no power to motivate and make any planning towards achieving success impossible.

Most people run the projects in their lives with a vague idea of how they want things to turn out. Doing what everyone else does will get you average results. Decide on how you want things to turn out. You may change that decision as you move along, but it is much better to keep things clear from the outset rather than vague. The word "decide" means 'To settle conclusively all contention or uncertainty about'. Cut yourself off from all other vague notions of thought and give yourself permission to have a crystal clear focus of your outcome. A clear outcome has a clear indicator of success. If you're currently working on a project, then do the following steps.

Action Steps:

On a clean piece of paper answer the following questions:
What do I want out of this?
What is the project supposed to accomplish?
What is the bare minimum that I could be happy with?
What is the best possible outcome for this project?
These questions are to help clarify your thinking. A lot of books will tell you to dream big, which is a great thing, but if its too huge your mind can shut down on it. Build a stairs to the top of your mountain, you don't need to jump to the top tomorrow.

If you are coming up blank or with some uncertainty about defining your goal, then ask yourself the following questions:
What is keeping me from defining my end result?
Is what is keeping me from defining my end result more important to me then the kind of results I could have?
Remember: Your end result can change over time, so get started!