Right To Left Thinking — by Dan Lynn

By Dan Lynn

When people tell me about their goals, my first question is always the same: "Great — what exactly do you want to do, and when do you want to do it by?"

Here's what I've found: if you have a reasonable goal and you pick a real date, you can usually make it happen. From there it's just work — figuring out everything that has to get done, by when, and who's going to do it. You start at the end and move backward to today. I call it right-to-left thinking.

I'm not the only one. Stephen Covey made it Habit 2 of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — "Begin with the End in Mind." Amazon built a whole methodology around it called "working backwards": before they build a product, they write the press release for the finished thing first, then reverse-engineer everything needed to make it real. Same instinct, different words.

What surprises me is how many smart people skip it. I meet business owners who can't tell me where they want to be in 12 to 24 months, and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to "start a business" but can't say what kind — or by when. Unless you know where you're going, you can't figure out how to get there.

So start with the end. Get specific about the destination and the date — then work right to left.