This procedure is difficult. You probably will not fill in this sheet. If you do, you will not review it regularly. But this is the basis of exceptional success.

I offered this challenge to a class of high school students.

Imagine your 75th birthday party. Your heirs have assembled. You plan to speak for 10 minutes on your successes in life, and how you achieved them. You want the speech to be useful to younger members of your family. You want it to be practical.

To do this today, you must think through what you would like to be able to say at age 75. This means you must have goals.

Part I: Age 75 Retrospective self-evaluation

A. My five achievements

that I regard as the

most important, in order

of their importance.

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

B. Which one cost me the most to achieve, and what I

had to give up in order to attain it:

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

C. Which one took the longest to achieve, and why:

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

Part II: Identifying a specific goal

A. What do I want to achieve?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

B. Why do I want to achieve it?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

C. When do I want to achieve it?

_________________________________________________

D. What am I willing to pay (do without)?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

Part III: Beginning a specific goal

A. My goal is:

_____________________________________

B. I will achieve it no later than:

________________

C. Steps that I will take to achieve it, and

completion dates:

_________________________________________

______

_________________________________________

______

_________________________________________

______

D. Today's date: __________

E. My preliminary goals for 90 days from today:

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

F. My intermediate goals for one year from today:

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

Part IV: 90-Day Self-Evaluation Sheet

A. Long-run goal: _________________________

B. Date begun: ________________

C. Today's date: _______________

D. This is evaluation number _____

E. How close have I come to my previous 90-day

success indicators?

_________________________________________________

F. What have been my main successes?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

G. Why was I successful?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

H. What have been my main failures?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

I. Why did I fail?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

J. What are my main success indicators for the next

90 days?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

Part V. One-Year Self-Evaluation Sheet

A. Long-run goal: _________________________

B. Date begun: ________________

C. Today's date: _______________

D. This is evaluation number _____

E. How close have I come to my previous 90-day

success indicators?

_________________________________________________

F. What have been my main successes?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

G. Why was I successful?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

H. What have been my main failures?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

I. Why did I fail?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

J. Is there any pattern to my failure? If so, what?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

K. What do I have to do to overcome this?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

L. Have my priorities changed during the last year?

If so, what are they now?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

M. What are my main success indicators for the next

12 months?

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

CONCLUSION

This exercise is very difficult. Few people ever go

through anything like it. I never did. But what I did do

was to set lifetime goal at age 18. I decided to

investigate what the Bible says about economics. I worked

intermittently on this project for over a decade, writing a

book on it at age 31, Introduction to Christian Economics

(1973). I began writing a monthly column on this topic

that year. I increased this to 10 hours a week, 50 weeks a

year, in 1977, at age 35, to continue to age 70. I have

stuck to this schedule. So far, I have written 22 volumes, plus I have written another

half a dozen volumes as appendixes. I used a weekly time

input as my self-disciplining device.

My books served as substitutes for self-evaluation

sheets. Instead of writing down my successes and failures

on individual sheets of paper, I published books: lots of

pieces of paper. They are all available free of charge on-line:

http://www.GaryNorth.com/freebooks

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