Be Deliberate
Knowing is half the battle. The other half is doing it.
Today was the last day of my participation in a business simulation for one of my courses. The professor provided a little bit of a wrap-up review to go over how things went through the simulation. He never directly said it, but through everything he talked about one message was clear.
In everything you do, establish up front what your goals and plans are and then make sure that all your decisions from there on out are in accordance with those goals. Everything, even the trivial aspects, should always be brought back to your overall goals.
Tying it back to this simulation one trick I found to making yourself stick to the plan was the format in which we had to submit our decisions to the professor. With each set of decisions we were required to submit a page explaining why we did what we did. The professor graded us on how well we rationalized our decisions with our strategy.
I’ve liked what this has demonstrated so well that I have started to apply the practice to all of my projects and ventures. And another good thing to point out is that this doesn’t have to be strictly for business scenarios. You can lead your life along the same guidelines to help make your life make sense and be deliberate.