Scripting · “You Assign the Meaning”
The Goal-Setting Method
Turn a vague wish into a written, dated, planned goal you act on every single day.
(1) Decide exactly what you want.
(2) Write it down — clear, specific, measurable.
(3) Set a deadline.
(4) List everything you’ll have to do.
(5) Organize the list into a prioritized, sequenced plan.
(6) Take action immediately.
(7) Do something every day toward it.
What it is
Tracy’s central achievement procedure: the disciplined translation of a desire into a specific, written, deadlined goal with a step-by-step plan that you begin immediately and work on every single day.
His repeated claim is that only a small minority of people have clear written goals, and that the act of writing converts a wish into something the mind can organize behavior around. This is Hill’s “definiteness of purpose” rebuilt as a concrete, repeatable workflow.
The Method
Tracy’s goal-setting process, in its essential steps:
- Decide exactly what you want. Be clear and specific in each key area of your life. “You can’t hit a target you can’t see.”
- Write it down. A goal not in writing is merely a wish. Make it “clear, specific, detailed and measurable.”
- Set a deadline. Give the goal a date. Tracy: your subconscious mind uses the deadline as a “forcing system” to drive you toward it. For a large goal, set sub-deadlines.
- Make a list of everything you’ll have to do to achieve it — every step, obstacle to overcome, skill to learn, and person whose help you’ll need. Add to the list as new items occur to you.
- Organize the list into a plan. Arrange the items by priority (what matters most) and sequence (what must happen before what). A list organized this way becomes a roadmap.
- Take action on your plan immediately. Do something — anything — toward the goal at once. “An average plan vigorously executed is far better than a brilliant plan on which nothing is done.”
- Do something every single day that moves you toward your most important goal. Tracy treats daily forward motion as the habit that makes goals inevitable. A common practice he teaches alongside this: rewrite your major goals each morning from memory, in the present tense, to keep them programmed and current. (Sourcing note: short quoted phrases are from Tracy’s goal-setting teaching in Goals! and his published goal-setting guide; the seven points reproduce his procedure faithfully.)
Source & Lineage
Brian Tracy, Goals! How to Get Everything You Want — Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible (2003), and his widely circulated goal-setting guide/seminars.
The method descends directly from Napoleon Hill’s Definite Chief Aim and Earl Nightingale’s “we become what we think about,” with Maxwell Maltz’s self-image psychology underneath.
Common refinements
Keeping it in your head. Unwritten goals stay wishes. Write them.
- Vagueness. “Be successful” is not a goal. Make it measurable with a number and a date.
- No deadline (or an impossible one). No date = no urgency; a fantasy date = chronic discouragement. Make it a stretch you can believe.
- Planning forever, acting never. Step 6 is the point: begin at once, “ready or not.”
- Setting it and forgetting it. Without daily action and review, the plan goes stale. Rewrite the key goals each morning.