How To Achieve Your Goals With A Single Page: Sarah Glova (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of podcast host Sarah Glova’s talk titled “How To Achieve Your Goals With A Single Page” at TEDxShawUniversity 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

A Single Page Plan for Big Goals

I was talking to a friend of mine and I was really frustrated. I told my friend, “Even if your goal was to be President of the United States, your plan for that goal would still just need to be a single page.”

Now, I’m not a political scientist and I was not trying to convince my friend to run for President, but I was arguing to my friend that more people would be able to achieve their really big goals if they knew how to design a plan for that goal that was just a single page. Even if their goals were really big, like write a book or climb a mountain or start a YouTube channel, be President of the United States, even if their goals are really big, they would still just need to be a single page.

And my friend looked at me kind of like you’re looking at me now, like “What do you mean just a single page?” So let me explain. My name is Dr. Sarah Glova and for years I was a business reporter and podcast host, meaning I spent my days interviewing people about how they achieved their really big goals. I interviewed people who started companies, started movements, invented new technology.

I interviewed a lot of firsts, so like the first woman or the first person of color to break a record or hit a certain level of leadership in their industry. And in all these interviews, even though all the people were really different, I started to notice a pattern.

Even though all the people were really different, there were certain things that everybody seemed to be doing as they worked on their goal.

There was a pattern to how they set, worked on, and achieved their really big goal. I nerded out on this for a couple years. I looked to see if the research could verify what I was seeing in this pattern. And then I tested it with a number of folks and I found that there was a way to execute this pattern for any goal and it worked best if you kept it to just a single page.

The Plan for Young Sarah

Now what I would really like to do at this point is go back in time and give this to young Sarah. Because young Sarah really could have used help getting clear on her goals, figuring out how to work on those goals. But I don’t have a time machine, so instead of going back and sharing it with young Sarah, I would love if you want to check it out to share it with you. Sound good?

All right, so let’s look at this plan for a goal. I mentioned it has to be a single page. And normally I would say go grab a sheet of paper, but if you’re listening to this and you can’t go grab a sheet of paper, that’s fine. The plan is actually so simple.

You can even just imagine a sheet of paper. So imagine a space about the size of a single sheet of paper. Now the first thing we’re going to do since we’re working on our goal is on our single sheet of paper, we’re going to write down our specific goal. Did y’all hear me say that word “specific”?

It’s going to get so specific that you couldn’t trade paper with anybody else. This is your page. So if your goal is to write a book, guess what? There’s a lot of other people out there who want to write a book.

Making Your Goal Specific

But how can you get so specific as you describe this goal? So that it’s just yours. Nobody else could take your sheet of paper. Some of the things when I interview folks about big goals that they’ve achieved, some of the things that they get clear about really early on are things like, what is my goal and why do I want to achieve it?

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What does this goal mean to me? What are the strengths that I have that I can put into play for this goal? The unique strengths that are unique to me that’ll work for this goal. When do I want to do this thing by?

And what does working on it look like? Is this like a nights and weekends thing? Are we doing it every day? So you want to get really specific until this goal is just yours.

And it doesn’t take up much space. Just the first third of your single sheet of paper, you’re going to interview yourself around this goal. After this, we’re going to work on our goal. That’s the easy part, right?

Working On vs. Around Your Goal

I noticed a lot of people getting stuck in this phase as I tested out this plan. And so something we do together is we talk about how to work on our goal and not around our goal. I have a story for this one that I think many of you are going to recognize. I want you to think about that friend of yours, that person you know who hates their job and they swear they’re going to get a new one, right?

But every time you talk to them, you’re like, “Hey, how’s the job hunt going?” They’re like, “Oh, I’m tweaking my resume right now. Got to get that resume right.” And then you see them a couple weeks later and you’re like, “Hey, did you apply anywhere?”

And they’re like, “Actually, I’m getting new headshots this week. So I’m going to be updating that LinkedIn profile this weekend.” Every time you talk to them, it’s like they’re spending their time setting those dominoes up just right. They’re in that planning phase.

Because that planning phase is safe. We’re getting things done. We’re being productive. But are we putting ourselves out there for those really big actions?

Setting Deadlines and Milestones

So in the middle of your page, something you can do is write down a couple dates, a couple deadlines. And then underneath those dates and deadlines, you’re going to put a couple milestones, a couple key tasks that you’re going to work on. And these are going to be big things, things that move the needle. Because let me tell you all, those people that I interviewed who accomplished really big things, they actually had just as many things on their to-do lists as we do.

But they were really good at identifying the priority actions. So with all the noise, all the things that they could do in front of them, they were able to pick out the most important things and to move those things forward. So in the middle of your paper, you’re just going to have date, a couple milestones, date, a couple milestones, like three or four times down on your sheet of paper. And what you’re going to focus on when you’re writing those things are those key priority actions.

The stuff that even feels a little risky, putting yourself out there, doing those job applications, writing that book draft, focusing on those key things that’ll move the needle forward. And I know it’s scary. I wish I could tell you that you won’t fall down. But I got to tell you, based on the interviews I did, a lot of us fall down.

But you know what’s so great is if you do that key priority action and you do fall down, you’re going to learn from it. And when you learn from it and pick yourself up and keep moving, you’re going to get further ahead than if you had just been in that domino space. So the people that I interviewed were really good at this, figuring out how to take those priority actions and keep moving. Now, we’ve done two sections of our single page and we only have one left.

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The Importance of Community Support

But I have to ask you a question at this point. I want you to imagine that you’re working on this big goal and you get stuck. If you get to a place where you have a question or you need to get some inspiration from somebody to keep moving, I want to ask you who you would call. So do you have somebody in your life like a parent or a colleague or a family friend or somebody you used to go to school with or that guy who lives down the street who has worked on a similar thing to what you’re working on?

Do you have somebody you could call? I want you to think for a second about what we’ve written so far on your page, your specific goal, the priorities you’re setting. If you had a question about something that was there, do you have somebody who would pick up the phone? So quick show of hands, how many of you thought of somebody?

Okay, that right there that we just saw, that’s the third piece of our single page plan. It’s community. It’s the people who you would call if you got stuck. And based on the interviews that I’ve done, it’s not if you get stuck, it’s when you get stuck.

Because when you’re working on something really big, when you’re here and you’re trying to get there, when you want something that you haven’t had before, you’re going to get stuck. And so it’s really important for us to think about the people who can help and support us. Honestly, it’s my favorite part of every interview that I do. It’s when the people that I interview talk to me about the coaches or mentors who were there for them, when they stumbled, when they had a question.

Identifying Gaps in Your Network

It comes up in every interview, even if I don’t ask about it. That’s how crucial the community piece is. So I want you to think about who you would call when you pick up. I did the elder millennial phone, didn’t I?

I want you to think about who you would call when you pick up the phone. There we go. And what you’re going to do on your single page is you’re going to start writing down some names that come to mind, so that you can bring your community to the forefront for yourself. You can remember who’s supporting you.

But there’s something else crucial we want to do here. Because I want to remind you, when you’re working on something that you haven’t done before, you’re going to get to a point where you have to cross a gap that’s new territory for you. I guarantee you there’s somebody out there who’s been through that kind of territory before. But they might not be in your network yet.

And that’s what’s really key. Here in this part of the plan, we want to think about the kind of challenges that we might encounter, or the challenges we have in front of us now. We want to think about this place that we’re trying to go, and we want to ask ourselves, “Who’s been there before? Do we have people in our network who know what those rooms look like?”

The rooms that we don’t have access to yet. And if not, we want to identify this on this part of our page. We want to outline and name the kind of community, the kind of support, the kind of expertise that we need, that we’re missing. Because the time to need your network is not the time to build your network.

The Magic of a Single Page

And if you’re going to be getting across these gaps, you need to have those community members that you can call. So you’re going to use this part of your page to name not just the people who can support you now, but also to outline the kinds of folks, the kinds of expertise that you need to add to this network so that you can get building. I have to tell y’all, this is my favorite part of the single page plan. If I had to just pick one section for you to work on, it would be this one.

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But it doesn’t matter, you can have all three. All right, I told my friend that if he wanted to be president, all he needed was a single page. And I’ve told you a little bit about the content, the research that I did, the pattern that I found that makes that really important. And there were three crucial things there, getting specific, setting those priorities, and then thinking about community.

But it’s not just those three things that I heard in the interview. Again and again, as I would interview folks, we would reflect on how just insanely busy the world is today. How fast we’re all moving at a hundred thousand miles an hour, trying to keep up with it. And how when you’re working on a goal, it is so helpful to have something in front of you that reminds you, despite all that noise, of what you’re working on.

That’s part of the magic here. It’s not just the content of the single page, but it’s also the single page itself. In this really busy world, it’s so important for you to be able to have something that’s small enough to keep in front of you, to keep in your dorm room, or in your office, or in your back pocket, that reminds you what you’re working on. That keeps you focused on this really important goal.

An Accessible and Urgent Tool

It’s also a very accessible tool. At any point, you can have a new idea for something, and all you need to do is just go grab a single page to get started, to have that bias toward action. I don’t know if we ever needed more than a single page to plan our goals, but we definitely don’t these days. It’s also urgent.

I really need y’all to try this, because selfishly, I want to live in a world where your goals exist. If you think about that thing that you want, whether it’s your art, your science, your leadership, your voice, whatever it is that you want, I think the world will be a better place when you make that happen.

I genuinely believe that our world will be a better place to live in if more people are able to reach their goals, are able to do those big things that I know that you have the potential to do. I like to imagine that if you have a single page in front of you reminding you of what those priorities are for your crucial actions, the people who can help support you, that you’re going to be more likely to make it happen.

I hope as you walk away from this that you know that I believe in you and I believe in your potential. I hope you try this out, because honestly, at this point, my goal is that someday there’s going to be some writer like me who’s writing about you. Thanks.