Proper Preparation Leads to a Solid Plan
A big part of both my work in the real world as well as my poker coaching is helping co-workers and poker students alike learn how to be successful at setting and achieving goals as well as solving problems (in the real world we call "probems" “issues” for some odd reason - probably to try and seem like we are less pessimistic. In reality the term “issues” is less realistic and can ironically result in a lowered sense of urgency in relationship to the problems therefore making them more difficult to conquer…but that is all another story ).

There are a whole slew of things that one needs to do in order to formulate the plans that will be used to achieve goals and successfully solve issues (I threw that one out their for any of my co-workers that are reading this instead of making the current project that we are working on successful), but the biggest thing that I tell my co-workers and students alike is that in order to formulate proper plans you always have to ”begin with the end in mind.”

(Unfortunately for my Bank Account) I’m Just the Messenger
Now before I go on I need to state that to “begin with the end in mind” (we’ll abbreviate it as “BWTEIM” and pronounce it “bwee-teem” from here on out) is nothing that I came up with myself. Stephen Covey in his highly touted book The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People has this listed as one of his 7 Habits (if memory serves me correctly it is Habit 2 and may even be trademarked/copyrighted for all I know, so oops for me if it is).

How Big?...Huge, I am Talking Family Size
While I have my opinions about certain parts of Mr. Covey’s landslide bestseller, I think that this habit is thoroughly important. How important do I consider BWTEIM’ing to be? I believe that it is so important that when I have a new project starting up at work and I meet individually with the people that will staff that project, there is a set list of items that we discuss and the first and last thing that we cover is the art of BWTEIM’ing. It is the only project start issue that I cover twice and I do so to help solidify its importance into the minds of others (to quote fine cinema – “The Jedi Mind Trick, [just like] Yoda and [stuff]).” In addition to being drilled on at the start, BWTEIM also becomes a daily mantra that I utter to the project team until someone else takes the torch (they invariably do) and begins sharing it with the whole team on a daily basis (I then move on to some other, less annoying mantra).

Why do I consider “beginning with the end in mind” to be so important? Not because it is the biggest, the most difficult, or even the most important task that we are faced with when achieving goals or solving problems. I believe BWTEIM’ing is so important because, of the basic foundation items that we need to be successful in achieving goals and solving problems this is the piece at which most people perform the worst.

One reason for this poor performance is that most people do not really think in detail about what they really want their end result to be. A poker example would be a new player thinking “I want to be a great player” rather than inserting a much more specific goal such as “Someday I want to be a regular player in the 500/1000 NL Rail Heaven game on FTP”. While the second goal is very lofty and may take more work and ability than our Hero has, it has at least given us a defined goal as to what we want to do with our poker career and can therefore formulate a plan that we can follow to get there. With the second goal we know that we need to be working on how well we play in cash games, determining what hourly rate we will need to win at to hit our goal in a realistic timeframe, etc.. With the first goal, we have set forth a moving target that lends itself to developing a vague and therefore unachievable plan.

Another reason for poor BWTEIM'ing is that we may come up with what the goal is that we want to achieve or what problem needs to be solved, yet be dead wrong. A poker example would be the player who tilts if he drops a BI early in his sessions and begins to think “I really need to stop pressing slightly +EV spots as this is the best thing for my game”. While this line of thinking helps in the short term, it should actually be a step on the way to correcting the ultimate problem (which is failing to accept that poker is a high variance game) rather than the ultimate solution itself.

You Wrote All of this, Why?
So what does this all mean exactly to those of us reading? It means that if you are consistently having problems with achieving goals or solving problems then you are probably not BWTEIM’ing. Note, you may not be doing other things correctly as well, but if I had to put money on it (which I do everytime I run a project and spend a lot of time on this subject) then I would bet “poor BWTEIM’ing” over anything else. So if you are in fact stumbling in the goal achievement and /or problem solving arena(s) I would recommend that you hit your local library or spend 45 minutes are your local bookstore, find a copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People and read the specific chapter, see what you can change to set better, more specific goals/solutions, and reassess the turn (er, something like that).

Also, if you are really adventurous you could even buy the book (rest assured I do not get any royalties so I promote it solely on the fact that it has redeeming qualities) and read the whole thing.