In military terminology, a High-Value Target is one that an enemy commander requires to capture for the successful completion of a mission. So as a commander, if you have your High-Value Target in hand, you’ve got the mission under control.
Now let’s take a few minutes and think of that concept in relation to work, goals, and taking control of your time.
I’ve got a big challenge on hand this year. I’ve got higher financial goals for my business than last year, but I’ve cut down the amount of time I’ll be working every week.
A year ago, I made the shift to a four-day workweek, and starting January 1st, 2020, I’ve officially shifted to a three-day workweek. The remaining four days of my week are dedicated to my fitness goals, family time, personal development and self-education, vacation days, and other aspects beyond work. Three working days a week is a significant drop down from the usual five that most people have on hand. So, the key for me is to be extremely time-efficient and only put my time and energy into the things that matter.
Here’s where the concept of High-Value Targets comes in. Every night I use an app called ‘CommitTo3’ where I put down my three High-Value Targets for the next day.
These are the big three that if I know I get checked off the list, I know that I have conquered my day. This could be client meetings, a follow-up call, sending across a contract, or hiring someone new.
It might be something that takes a few minutes or something that takes me half the morning to get done, but it’s typically something that is moving me towards closing out a big goal. It gets me closer to that ‘Mission Complete’ mark.
In our annual strategy meeting in December 2019, we identified that we would be serving 11 Category A clients in 2020. One big step that I had to take towards making that happen was reaching out to a list of 40 potential clients and introducers that I wanted to start conversations with towards securing those 11 clients. Not all 40 of those are becoming clients or introducers for me, but I needed to take my first step to get the process started.
Reaching out to those people was a High-Value Target for me for January 2020, and it’s been checked off the list right in the first week of January.
The reason that I put out so much content about my goals and my goal-setting process is that I want to fire up more people to live their best lives possible.
So, here’s my question to you: What are your High-Value Targets this year, this month, or even just today?
What do you have to get done that when you do it, will mean that you’ve conquered your day, or month, or year?
