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#024: 

How to Effectively Plan and Execute 

Audacious Goals for the New Year  

December 9, 2013 

________________________________________________ 

 

Introduction 

 

● The 5 am Miracle - Episode #24: How to Effectively 

Plan and Execute Audacious Goals for the New Year  

[Intro Song] 

 

● Good morning and welcome to the 24th episode of 

The 5 AM Miracle. 

● I am Jeff Sanders and this is THE podcast dedicated 

to dominating your day before breakfast. 

● My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with 

enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and 

tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary 

energy. 

 

● In today's episode I discuss how you can plan your 

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new year with incredibly audacious goals that will 

both scare you to death and help you make more 

progress than ever before.  

 

● But first, let’s begin with the Tip of the Week! 

 

[Musical Interlude] 

 

● Today’s Tip is how to optimize the holiday season 

with your family while maintaining your health 

and sanity. 

 

● I originally got the idea for this topic after I received 

an email from Cat.  

● Cat says, “I'm loving the podcast so far - particularly 

your tips for productive daily habits for personal 

development and productivity. 

● With the holidays fast approaching, I'm wondering 

how your schedule varies from that of a regular 

week day? 

● I'm getting set to have 2-3 weeks off, which is 

wonderful, but travel, parties, and staying with 

family who are not as productive, healthy or 

self-motivated all contribute to this being a time 

when it can be challenging to maintain a powerful 

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regiment. 

● Do you have any suggestions that can help us 

listeners to avoid gradually falling back into bad 

habits while at the same time minimizing the risk of 

alienating or offending holiday-loving family and 

friends?” 

 

● Great question Cat! 

● The holidays are a tough time for many people, 

simply because their normal routines don’t exist and 

they have to modify their behavior on the fly. 

● I just recently returned from a trip back home and I 

personally experienced a few of the challenges you 

outlined in your question. 

● So, let me provide a few suggestions that should 

help minimize any travel pains you may be going 

through or are about to experience. 

 

● Also, no matter what the current date of the year is 

when you are listening to this episode, these lessons 

will apply whenever you visit family or friends, or 

travel to new destinations, or when your normal 

routine is just thrown out of whack. 

 

1. Have a plan. 

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● You don't want to walk into any vacation or holiday 

without a written plan for what you want to 

accomplish, even if that just means working out a 

few times and having daily smoothie. 

● When I travel I always clear my schedule completely 

and then only add in the few things I know that 

absolutely have to be accomplished. 

● For me that includes a daily smoothie, exercising at 

least once, and socializing with others as much as 

possible. 

 

2. Share your plan with others and 

recruit them to join in. 

● I always try to convince people in my family to 

workout with me and eat healthy over the holidays, 

and they do join in when I tell them upfront what my 

plans are. 

● This holiday season I am still working through an 

injury, so our traditional 5k on Thanksgiving Day did 

not happen, but I still managed to exercise anyway. 

● Also, before the holidays started, I told my family I 

was traveling with my Vitamix blender and that I was 

prepared to bring all of my own food, if necessary. 

 

SIDE NOTE: You may have noticed that most of my 

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preparation for the holidays revolves around my diet and 

workout schedule, and there’s a good reason for that: my 

health matters to me and the temptation to destroy my 

body over the holidays is greater than any other time of 

the year. If you experience a similar temptation, plan 

accordingly. 

 

3. Keep your schedule flexible, but 

always have some structure in place. 

● You don't want to have a "free day." What you want 

are ideas about how to optimize your time, even if 

that just means going to a party. 

● The easiest thing to do is plan nothing and just wing 

it, but that’s not how I roll. 

● I prefer to have a loose structure in place so that I 

know where I’m needed most and when I can 

squeeze in some personal goal achievement time, 

which can definitely be hard to find.  

 

● To sum this up, my best advice for the holidays is to 

approach everything with a flexible mind, but always 

have a backup plan as to how you can utilize your 

time effectively.  

 

● I hope you found that helpful. Now it’s time for 

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the Feature Segment! 

 

[Musical Interlude] 

● At the time of this recording, the new year is 

about 3 weeks away. 

● So, now is a great time to plan out not only what you 

would like to accomplish in the upcoming 12 months, 

but also exactly how you are going to live differently 

AND better, every single day. 

 

● I also want to mention right up front that this 

episode is a crash course in productivity, life 

planning, and personal goal achievement. 

● You may want to listen to this episode two or three 

times to make sure you digest all of the concepts. 

● Alright, back to the content. 

 

● As with most New Year’s resolutions, the goal is not 

to fail in the first 2 weeks. 

● If you are already planning on joining a gym on 

January 1st . . . Don’t do it. 

● You will only be feeding the statistics that tell other 

people that resolutions (and gym memberships) fail. 

● Instead, I am going to outline how I approach the 

New Year, and hopefully you will have a few new 

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ideas on how to structure your goals and make some 

magic in the coming weeks. 

● So, let’s get started! 

 

Why You Desperately Need 

Audacious Goals in the New 

Year 

● It’s probably no surprise to you that I was not alive 

when astronauts first landed on the moon, but 

honestly, I really wish I was for one reason: landing 

on the moon was the one of the greatest goals every 

set by anyone.  

● In my opinion, the act of accomplishing the moon 

landing in 1969 was not as impressive as the boldness 

and desire to attempt the goal in the first place.  

● The reason might be obvious, but let me just outline 

exactly why the goal of a moon landing was so 

incredible. 

 

● #1: The goal was incredibly hard and everyone knew 

it. 

● #2: Landing on the moon would require huge 

resources of money, time, energy, creativity, and a 

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lot of hard work. 

● #3: Accomplishing this goal could not be 

accomplished any one person. It would require many 

people working together over a long period of time. 

● #4: Everyone on earth was constantly reminded of 

the goal every single night after sunset. People could 

see it, visualize it, and believe it was possible -- 

even if only in theory. 

● #5: If the landing was successful, it would have vast 

implications for many industries, technologies, and 

enterprises long into the future. In other words, the 

impact would be out of this world! (sorry for the 

lame joke!) 

  

Simon Sinek’s WHY 

● There is a famous TED video and now book from 

Simon Sinek talking all about the power of WHY. 

● If you haven’t watched the video, it’s very short and 

powerful. I will link to it in the show notes. Also, the 

book, Start with WHY, is awesome and I highly 

recommend it. 

● Simon’s argument is that when everyone is 

committed to the WHY behind a project, the how is 

less important. 

 

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Frankl’s Search for Meaning 

● This same concept is discussed thoroughly in Viktor 

Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning.” 

● Frankl refers to a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche 

that says “He who has a why to live for can bear 

almost any how.” 

 

What This All Means 

● All of these concepts are pointing to the same 

underlying lesson, which is that when you have 

something enormous to live for, it guides your every 

action and motivates you when nothing else will. 

● The moon landing is simply a powerful WHY or an 

ingrained sense of purpose. 

● For many people, doing great work requires them to 

think outside themselves, to dig deep and push 

harder because someone else’s well-being is on the 

line, or there is something new, exciting, and 

powerful motivating to be achieved. 

● Parents are driven to help their children because 

they love them unconditionally. 

● CEOs are motivated to grow their company because 

their job is almost always at risk. 

● Artists are inspired to create better work out of a 

need to share their talents with the world. 

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● Pastors serve their communities out of desire to live 

out their higher calling. 

● Astronauts land on the moon because they are 

literally changing the history of all mankind. 

● These motivating factors are a part of a strategy I 

call the North Star Approach.  

The North Star Approach 

● The North Star Approach is a strategy where you set 

a goal that may sound too big to ever accomplish in 

two year, let alone one. 

● You want it to be so big that you smile and cry just a 

little at the same time. 

● I always choose one insane goal per year to be my 

North Star. 

● I let this crazy dream guide my decision making and 

goal setting throughout the upcoming months. 

● I then continually ask myself throughout the year, 

“are my daily choices leading me closer to my North 

Star goal or farther away?” 

  

● With one specific and daunting goal in mind, all my 

decisions throughout the year have context -- they 

have meaning and a sense of purpose. 

● Even if I never truly accomplish the North Star Goal, 

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odds are that I have made significant progress 

throughout the year and accomplished many big 

goals along the way. 

  

● You might be thinking about a famous quotation 

from Les Brown that fits the scenario I am describing 

here: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll 

land among the stars.” 

  

● As corny as that may sound, I have found it to have a 

lot of truth. We all need to shoot for the moon. 

● We need a dominating goal to drive our everyday 

choices. 

● We need a powerful force to guide us and direct us 

towards a bigger destination than we believe we 

have the capabilities for. 

  

Don’t Sell Yourself Short 

● Losing 10 pounds this year is a terrible goal. It’s 

weak. It lacks purpose and it won’t motivate anyone 

to do very much. 

● Joining a gym the day after you have recovered from 

your New Year’s party hangover is a terrible time to 

change your life.  

● If you want to join a gym, do it today. Believe me, 

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they’ll take your money and happily give you a tour 

of their empty facilities. 

  

● On the other hand, losing 75 pounds in order to run a 

100-mile ultramarathon over the Rocky Mountains 

by Christmas – that’s a goal worth striving for. ● It’s completely crazy and worth every ounce of time, 

energy, and money it would take to see it through. 

  

● Don’t sell yourself short by setting goals anyone 

could achieve. 

● Set your sights higher and watch yourself rise to the 

challenge. It WILL happen. It always does. 

 

How to Plan Your New Year 

● Now that we have covered the big WHY behind the 

big goals you’re about to achieve, how should you go 

about living your life on a daily basis in order to 

guarantee this North Star Goal actually has a chance 

of success? 

● Great question. 

 

#1: Identify Your WHY 

● Use the next few weeks to clearly establish your 

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North Star goal and the powerful reason behind it. 

● This doesn’t have to be complicated, and honestly, 

you probably already know what it is. 

 

#2: Find Your Big Rocks 

● Another great way to visualize your year is with 

Steven Covey’s rocks illustration.  

● It’s a great way to understand what matters and 

what doesn’t so you can figure out what you will 

spend the most time on and what you let slip away. 

● In this illustration, Covey talks about how you can fit 

in the big rocks first (which are your highest 

priorities or what I’m calling your North Star), and 

then schedule the less important stuff later (which 

are the smaller rocks, pebbles, or sand). 

● The goal of this illustration is NOT to show you how 

the puzzle pieces fit together, leading some people 

to believe they will have time to get everything 

done. 

● The goal is to guarantee that the projects that 

matter the most to you are accomplished, while the 

other stuff may or may not get done, and that’s 

okay. 

 

#3: Clear Your Schedule 

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● Take some time to dig into your calendar and cancel 

everything.  

● This will also not take very long. Whatever you had 

previously planned -- get rid of it. 

● The only tasks and events that should stay on your 

calendar are the ones that directly or indirectly 

move you towards your North Star Goal. 

● This doesn’t mean you have to quit your job and skip 

a family vacation because you want to run a 

marathon, but it does mean that you will have to 

think about your calendar through the filter of your 

North Star Goal. 

● Does this task, event, or new idea work with your 

dream or will it hold you back? 

● Is this task you’re considering good or great? 

● Is it worth your time right now, or is your conscience 

telling you to work on that goal you committed to? 

 

#4: Maintain the Right Balance 

● In the pursuit of your new goal, you won’t be giving 

up everything. 

● So, decide ahead of time what you will eliminate 

completely, what you will minimize, and what you 

will work on full-throttle. 

● For example, if you wanted to run that 100-mile 

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ultramarathon I talked about earlier, you could 

eliminate certain unhealthy foods from your diet, 

minimize your time watching TV, and spend the bulk 

of your time exercising and preparing healthy meals. 

 

#5: Anticipate Distractions 

● Focusing on what matters really only means one 

thing: not doing everything else. ● You will be distracted. It’s a guarantee. 

● In fact, I can guarantee that at multiple points 

throughout this podcast episode you got distracted 

and missed something I said. 

● It’s not a big deal. 

● Heck, I’ve already been distracted and I’m the one 

recording this thing! 

● We all know that distractions are a part of the 

process, but the best high-achievers plan for 

distractions and anticipate eliminating the most 

devious ones. 

● As a personal example of this, my wife likes to bring 

home sweets. 

● It doesn’t happen every day, but it happens often 

enough that I have to have a plan as to how I will 

avoid the temptation to eat an entire pan of muffins 

(and yes, that has happened before). 

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#6: Find the Right Support People 

● All big goals, like a moon landing, while require 

other people to help out. 

● If you plan on accomplishing something huge, plan 

now to involve the best, most supportive people. 

● I have written in my blog about How to Deal with 

Friends (and Family!) Who Demean Your Dreams, and I will link to that post in the show notes.  

● You always want to surround yourself with people 

who believe in you and your goal. 

● These are people who will encourage you when 

times are tough, and celebrate with you when you 

succeed. 

● Sometimes those best people are hard to find, 

especially if you are really stretching for a 

something incredible. 

 

#7: Plan to Cross a Finish Line 

● Before you begin work on your North Star goal, make 

sure you know exactly what crossing the finish line 

will look like. 

● If you have a health & fitness goal, for example, 

sometimes it can be hard to know when you are 

done. 

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● So, always focus on a quantitative goal whenever 

you can.  

● In other words, find a way to measure your progress 

and know how far you are in the process. 

● It’s amazing to me how effective this strategy is with 

ongoing motivation. 

● I recently finished a project to replace all of the 

images on my website with new ones that had the 

proper copyright licenses. 

● Throughout the project I kept track of every image I 

corrected and every one I had left.  

● However, I didn’t start that way. 

● I thought I could just jump in and finish the project 

without monitoring anything. 

● And, technically, I could have done that. BUT, by 

measuring my progress I was significantly more 

motivated to finish because I “see the light at the 

end of the tunnel.” 

● I knew exactly how much further I had to go. 

 

How to Execute Your Plan 

● Execution is the name of the game because it makes 

the difference between a goal and an 

accomplishment. 

● We want to eventually move all important goals into 

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the past as completed projects. 

● A great example of how to balance planning with 

execution, that will ultimately lead to those big 

accomplishments, comes from the book Switch by 

Chip and Dan Heath. 

● In the book they talk about the elephant and the 

rider. 

● The elephant is the action guy. He’s the one making 

things happen but without any forethought as to why 

the action is happening at all. 

● The rider is the planner. He’s the guy with to-do 

lists, calendars, and schedules, but he never follows 

through. 

● The rider is incapable of ever taking action. 

● However, when the elephant and the rider find a 

healthy balance and work together, they can 

effectively plan their route and get moving quickly. 

● That’s the goal with execution. 

● Plan enough to get moving with confidence, and 

then go! 

 

● Now, let’s talk more specifically about how to 

effectively execute your audacious goals for the new 

year. 

 

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#1: Work with a Short-Term Vision 

● In the book, Rework, the authors Jason Fried and 

David Heinemeier Hansson talk about how much they 

hate long-term planning. 

● They discuss how bad human beings are at 

estimating time.  

● We might think a project will take 2 months when it 

really will take 8.  

● We think setting a deadline will help keep us focused 

but it really just stresses us out. 

● Instead, they recommend a different approach, and 

this is one I absolutely love and have used for years. 

● Here’s how it works: forget deadlines. Don’t set 

them unless you absolutely hate to. 

● I know I just talked about having a goal with a 

12-month deadline, but frame that in your mind in 

the big picture sense. 

● You want to think about goals chronologically 

instead of arbitrarily.  

● What I mean is that almost every deadline that has 

ever existed was arbitrary. Someone just made it up! 

● And WHY? Was there a good reason for the deadline 

or did it just seem reasonable in the moment? 

● The reality is that you only want to establish 

deadlines when they absolutely matter. 

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● Deadlines are effective if they are used properly, not 

when they are abused and overused. 

 

● So, as you go about executing your plan, focus only 

on the next task at hand. Don’t worry about when it 

will get done, just work on it until it IS done. 

● Then, move on to the next task. 

● I also recommend a great strategy during this 

process, which is to keep track of how long each task 

took in real time. 

● In fact, you could even record a guess as to how long 

you think a specific task or project will take, and 

then compare that to the reality. 

● The goal here is to improve your ability to estimate 

how long projects take. 

● This skill is helpful because it allows you to more 

intelligently schedule what you could realistically 

accomplish in any time period. 

● Though you won’t be setting too many deadlines, 

you will know intuitively that project A should be 

finished in a week while project B will take more 

than a month. 

 

● In more practical terms, I work this system by 

creating a new project in Nozbe, my task manager. 

● Then, I list out every single step I can think of that 

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will get me from beginning to end in chronological 

order. 

● At first, I only list major milestones. 

● As time progresses, I fill in the smaller tasks that will 

get me from one milestone to the next. 

● Throughout this process, there are no unnecessary or 

arbitrary deadlines. 

● I simply work on the first task listed, because I have 

previously decided that it was the most urgent AND 

most important task to work on next. 

 

#2: Schedule Reflective Time 

● As you are working through the individual tasks and 

milestones for your North Star goal, you will notice 

that you original list isn’t perfect. 

● This always happens and it’s not a problem. 

● What happens is that the list of tasks is incomplete, 

out of order, and filled with steps that may not work 

just yet. 

● The best strategy here is to intentionally schedule 

reflective time to take a bird’s eye view of the 

project and make sure the overall steps make sense 

AND that they are in the correct order. 

● I have a weekly review time scheduled every Friday 

afternoon when I reflect on what happened during 

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the week, what went well, what didn’t, and where 

I’m heading for the next week. 

● I also use this time to look at my projects and make 

sure the steps are still in the right order and that I 

am still making aggressive progress. 

● I recommend you schedule reflective time every day 

on your commute home or just before bed, every 

week like I just mentioned, every month to make 

sure you know what major events are coming up 

soon, and every quarter to monitor your annual 

progress, which will ensure you are on track to 

completing your biggest goals for the year. 

 

#3: When to Just Stop 

● At some point during the year you may find yourself 

working on a weak goal, one that is just not bold 

enough, daring enough, or strong enough to motivate 

you to fight through the hard times. 

● This could be a sign that the goal is just not a good 

one and you may need to let go of it and push for 

something much harder. 

● If you initially created a goal that was realistic and 

not scary as hell, you might find yourself giving up 

prematurely. 

● At this point, the best course of action is to let it go. 

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You don’t have to persevere for a bad goal. 

● This strategy is a great one and it hits close to home 

for me. Let me give an example: 

● A few years ago when I was reading Tim Ferriss’s 

book, The 4-Hour Workweek, I ran across an idea 

that struck me as pretty radical. 

● Tim said that if he starts reading a book and he 

doesn’t like it fairly quickly, he will stop reading it 

and move on to another book. 

● Now, this may sound trivial to you, but to me it was 

like hearing Santa Claus didn’t exist. 

● I always believed that you should finished what 

you’ve started, no matter what. Well, I was wrong. 

● Not every goal should be accomplished. 

● Not every task needs to be checked off the list. 

● Not every dream should be fulfilled. 

● In fact, many of all the goals you have set in your 

life could probably have been avoiding altogether 

and you would be better for it. 

● I know, that sounds radical, but it’s totally true. 

● Learning to discern the difference between a goal 

worth pursuing and one worth giving up is a learned 

skill that needs to be improved with time. 

● Call it wisdom, or mastery of achievement -- 

knowing when to say when is a very important 

attribute for any high-achiever. 

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#4: Think Small. Then, Think Smaller. 

● A final strategy that I think will help you as the year 

progresses is to think in terms of tiny pieces. 

● You are probably familiar with baby steps, which is 

the popular way visualize breaking down projects 

and tasks into tiny actionable pieces. 

● However, I want to combine this strategy with the 

implementation of using it with a task manager, like 

what I do with Nozbe. 

● On any given day I have a list of tasks in Nozbe that 

dictate exactly what I am going to be working on and 

there are two important aspects that dictate which 

tasks make it on the list and which ones don’t. 

 

● First, the tasks are extremely specific and 

comprehensive. 

● The natural tendency is to write down something 

general or vague, like read a book, or go on a run. 

● If you said you wanted to read a book, but you didn’t 

know which one, or for how long, or where it would 

happen, or at what time, you are more likely to skip 

the task altogether. 

● The best method is to write down exactly what you 

intend to do. 

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● When you plan to read exactly 10 pages from David 

Allen’s “Getting Things Done” book while sitting on 

your couch, right after your morning smoothie 

around 7:00 am, you are extremely likely to follow 

through and read the book. 

● The goal here is to know specifically what you intend 

to do because it allows you better estimate the 

amount of resources you will need and what the best 

time of day would be to complete the task. 

● By the way, Nozbe has the ability for you to label 

every task with this kind of specificity, because 

Nozbe is built on David Allen’s GTD system, which 

requires tasks to be that specific and intentional. 

 

● Second, the tasks are qualified through Steven 

Covey’s Task Management Matrix that I discussed 

in episode #19. 

● I won’t rehash this whole system here, but just know 

that I schedule tasks that are in Quadrant I or II, 

which means they are likely to be urgent AND 

important, or at least important. 

● I do my best not to schedule things that don’t 

matter. 

 

● Third, my daily task list in Nozbe is never short or 

long. 

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● Instead, it is intentionally ambitious and realistic at 

the same time. 

● What this means is that I try to schedule what I 

consider to be an appropriate amount of work each 

day -- never too much or too little. 

● Scheduling too many tasks in a day always leads 

more stress and I feel like a failure at the end of the 

day. 

● Scheduling too little generally results in me taking 

more time on a task than I should have, or just 

wasting time later in the day on meaningless 

activity. 

 

Wrap Up 

● Wow, we just covered a lot of content in this 

episode! 

● To quickly summarize the main points, here is 

another fun checklist! 

 

1. Identify your North Star (or moon landing) Goal, 

whatever term connects with you more. 

2.Clearly articulate the WHY behind the goal so you 

are confident this is something worth pursuing -- 

more than anything else. 

3.Schedule time on your calendar for the Big Rocks -- 

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those projects that absolutely must get done. 

4.Get moving! The only way to finish anything is to 

start and don’t quit until you’ve landed on the 

moon, metaphorically speaking of course! :) 

 

 

[Fade In Music] 

 

Announcements 

 

● Just 2 quick announcements here at the end of 

this episode. 

 

● The first, if you have not yet joined The 5 am Club, you can easily do so today for free. 

● When you join the club you will get a free copy of 

The 5 AM Miracle eBook, which shows you exactly 

how to wake up each morning with vigor and make 

enormous progress on your biggest goals. 

● To join The 5 AM Club AND jump start your morning - 

visit 5amMiracle.com.  

● My 2nd announcement is that my next podcast 

episode will be an interview with Brett McKay, the 

founder of The Art of Manliness. 

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● We discuss, among other things, what it means to be 

a man in today’s world. 

● If you have a question you’d love me to answer here 

on my podcast, please leave me a voicemail message 

at JeffSanders.com/podcastquestion.  

Final Thoughts 

 

● Also, I would be grateful if you would rate my 

podcast in iTunes with a full 5 stars. 

● That helps tremendously with keeping my podcast 

visible so that people who have never heard of it can 

discover it. 

● Just head on over to JeffSanders.com/itunes 

 

● Also, if you would like to see all of the resources I 

mentioned in this show, please visit the show notes 

page at JeffSanders.com/024, as in Episode 24. 

 

● Well, that's it for this episode of The 5 AM Miracle. 

● Until next time remember, you have the power to 

change your life, and the fun begins bright and 

early. 

 

[Fade Out Music]