I woke up Saturday morning facing September. That means way more than half the year is already behind me and way less than half is ahead. Being a recovering procrastinator, September One is my wake call. It’s my time to consider all those BHAGS (Big Hairy Audacious Goals – a term I lifted from Jim Collins’ and Jerry Porras’ epic book, Good to Great) that I put on my annual ‘to-do’ list back in January. BHAGS, for me, tend to be perennial: live a healthy lifestyle, read more books, spend more quality time with those I love, improve my business, grow a better garden. Those are all worthy goals, but they’re kind of unwieldy. How do you wake up on Saturday morning and say, “Today’s my day to check ‘live a healthy lifestyle’ off the list.” ‘Live a healthy lifestyle’ is more a state of being than an item to check off the ‘to-do’ list. ‘Live in a big new brick house’ can be one of your BHAGS, but how do you get your arms around it? I tend to gravitate toward the more bite-sized goals – things I can check off the list: reach this weight, read these five books, schedule this vacation, reach this monthly revenue, keep my tomato plants alive through August. Those little guys, when I do check them off the list, move me toward achieving the BHAGS. Kind of like laying fifty bricks today moves me toward living in a big new brick house. Lay enough bricks, you get a house. We’re in September now and December 31 will come soon enough. There are some things I want to get done this year, my annual bucket list – not the BHAGS, but a lot of little to-do’s that keep moving me closer to the BHAGS. Now is the time to start wrapping up, not a lot of time, but enough time to finish this year as I intended back in January. Speaking of BHAGS and bucket lists, September doesn’t just come once a year, it also comes once a lifetime. I’m fifty-four right now. That’s pretty close to September One in life months isn’t it? That means now is a good time to look at how many bricks I’ve laid and how many I have yet to go. I’ve got things on my big bucket list I’d better start attending to as well. How about you? How’s that list of big hairy audacious goals going? How’s the list of little goals going? I don’t know where you are in life-months, but it is September this year. Good time to get started.
