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A 7th century Arabian genius once said, "Success is the result of
foresight and resolution, foresight depends upon deep thinking and
planning, and the most important factor of planning is to keep your
secrets to yourself". The name of this genius was Ali Ibn Abi Thalib,
one of the most illustrious, noblest and brilliant leaders of the
continent-sweeping Islamic civilisation that was left behind by the
Prophet Muhammad.
However, it is not the object of this article to discuss a religious
figure or the history of a civilisation. The quote provided above is to
set the impetus for the rest of this article.
"Success is the result of foresight and resolution, foresight depends
upon deep thinking and planning, and the most important factor of
planning is to keep your secrets to yourself".
It is impossible and illogical by definition and reality to achieve any
measure of success without any thought, planning or goal setting put
into it. Any attainment that is borne out of randomness and chance is
not to be regarded a success at all, just as a momentous lottery
winning should not be called an achievement.
The achievement of a goal, by definition, requires that there be an
element of conscious planning and subsequent effort put into it,
because a goal is a purpose that any person, entity or enterprise is
working consciously towards. No matter how vague or clear the goal is,
some degree of planning, implementation, tracking and refinement is
definitely involved.
If you are to observe the life stories of achievers either in your
lifetime or in history, you would realise that the truth about their
success can be attributed to a number of very common, universal,
timeless and unchanging factors - or principles.
These undying principles are universally applicable to almost every
area or field of endeavour, from industry to academia, from the ivory
towers of the corporate world to the warmth, comfort and safety of a
nursery. Changes and challenges that are developing in the world
neither add to nor subtract from the validity of these principles, they
only serve to create permutations and evolutions in the application of
them and not the essence.
Now, what are these principles exactly? Here I shall be listing a few of my findings -
1. The greatest achievers are driven by a huge, humongous,
all-consuming Vision either for their lives or for the world. They view
the world as a perfect playing field to manifest and make concrete
their visionary ideas and are often driven by this vision, whether or
not they are consciously aware of it from moment to moment.
2. They set targets and objectives that are in alignment with this
grand vision of theirs. They also have the discipline to reject and
ignore so-called opportunities, developments, innovations and
temptations that are not in alignment with their great vision, often
creating enemies because of this. Nevertheless, those who stayed
faithful to these achievers and their vision prove themselves worthy as
true friends and partners in bringing about their visions to reality.
3. They seek out the best possible methods to accomplish what they
seek, never settling for mediocrity or lackadaisical efforts. To these
achievers, the terms 'laziness' or 'hard work' are concepts foreign to
them. What they are driven by is their vision and the goals they must
achieve in order to meet that vision. Whatever it takes to accomplish
those targets of theirs, they will accept, and although they are humans
too and can feel exhaustion, they do not view the necessary work as
something to dread, but something to live with, even enjoy.
4. The great achievers are constantly learning. They learn from their
mistakes, from other people's mistakes, from their observations of the
necessary goal-attaining processes in which they are engrossed.
5. They do not stop at simply learning, they also put their learnings
into action, dynamically and consistently refining their methods in
real-time. Sometimes the growth and improvements they obtain from their
gradual evolutions borne out of their learnings can be very minimal,
sometimes they may achieve tremendous improvement, even breakthrough.
But in their minds, they do not discriminate between small improvements
and big improvements, neither obsessing over making huge improvements
nor being content with only small improvements. All sizes and manners
of growth are welcomed by them.
If all the goal setting secrets of the greatest achievers could be
condensed into a handful of principles, the 5 listed above would
suffice. Every other discussion of planning, thinking, programming,
intending, organising, managing or controlling are simply corollaries
of the above 5 principles.
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