Achieve Your Goals like the Godfather of Goal Setting

The Brian Tracy Goals Method

Brian Tracy's 'Goals!: How to Get Everything You Want Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible' is the bestselling book on setting and achieving goals. Goalscape's Marcus Baur joined Brian on Greg Voisen's 'Inside Personal Growth' podcast to discuss the power of goals. Watch it here:

We strongly recommend that you read the Brian Tracy Goals book from cover to cover: the lessons in it are priceless. You can buy it on Amazon or at your local bookstore.

This article serves as an introduction to the book and an overview of the template.

About this template

Brian Tracy is the world's most successful authority on goal setting. His book 'Goals!', now in its third edition, contains vital learnings about the power of goals and provides an essential guide to harnessing that power with effective goal setting techniques. This Goalscape template contains Tracy's own chapter summaries with simple instructions for completing each step. Use it to set your own goals and create the path to achieve them.

How the 'Brian Tracy Goals' template will help you to reach your goals

1. Use Goals to Unlock Your Potential

Imagine setting goals that not only inspire you, but guide you on your way, always showing your progress and keeping you motivated when the going gets tough. Brian Tracy's proven methods and practices, captured in this Goalscape template, let you do exactly that.

Go through the individual subgoals to acquire the basic skills that let you tackle any additional goal or project with clarity. You can map any such goal or project (or your whole life) in separate Goalscapes or as new subgoals in the template (note that you can always focus on any such goal by double-clicking on it). Brian's thinking together with the Goalscape solution, are the perfect combination to turn goals into action and dreams into reality.

At Goalscape, we have experienced for ourselves the power of goals and have always focused on delivering innovative solutions based on our powerful visual software. The visual clarity that Goalscape brings to your goals is transformative.

2. Harness the Power of Brian Tracy's Goal Setting Secrets

At the core of Tracy's approach is the idea that setting clear, specific goals is the foundation for achieving success in any area of life. Tracy sets out four key principles:

a. Write down your goals

Writing down your goals helps you clarify what you really want to achieve. Putting pen to paper helps to turn often hazy and abstract hopes into clear identifiable goals. As Tracy says, "a goal that is not in writing is not a goal at all, it is merely a wish."

The physical act of writing your goals with pen and paper triggers a strong neuro-psychological commitment. The process itself makes your goal more concrete, 'powering up' your brain to find ways to turn what you want into reality. It also aids recall, keeping the end in mind and providing a daily reminder of where you want to be, and how you're going to get there.

Most of us recognize the benefits of writing something down – we've been note-takers since school, and there is a body of research that supports its effectiveness.

b. Clarify what matters most

Tracy stresses the importance of making sure your goals reflect your values. He references Stephen Covey, author of the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People: "it's hard to climb the ladder of success, only to find it leaning against the wrong wall…"

What he means is that your outer goals must align with your inner beliefs and values. To be truly happy and successful in life you have to follow what's in your heart, and not fall into the trap of trying to become what parents, significant others, or society in general may expect of you.

This understanding helps you align your goals with your values, ensuring that the objectives you pursue resonate deeply with your sense of purpose. When your goals reflect your values, you will stay truly motivated and committed to achieving them.

c. Create a compelling future vision

Here, Tracy stresses the importance of imagining your ideal life and the goals you want to achieve.

By creating a vivid picture of your future, complete with details about your personal, professional, and financial ambitions and goals, you make your 'goal state' more real, creating a powerful motivator that really drives action. This vision serves as your 'North Star', helping you navigate challenges and stay focused on what truly matters as you work towards your goals.

d. Take consistent, focused action

Taking consistent, focused action bridges the gap between setting goals and achieving them. It is one thing to set goals, quite another to do what's needed to reach them. Although good goal setting takes careful consideration, it's really the easy bit. The hard part is actually doing all the work required to deliver on them.

A persistent, disciplined approach is essential, with clear processes to break down big goals into manageable chunks, prioritize wisely and record progress. Stick to a daily work pattern, with regular weekly, monthly and annual reviews to take stock of where you are and decide what to do next.

This not only means you can adapt your plans when required, it also gives you the opportunity to recognize and celebrate your 'little wins' along the way. Your goals themselves provide powerful internal motivation, and this is reinforced every time you check off a completed task – you get an endorphin boost that is like a pat on the back for your brain.

Tracy has always been completely consistent in his approach to helping others achieve their life's ambitions, and his teachings have stood the test of time.

So how does Goalscape complement the 'Brian Tracy Goals' goal setting method?

3. Bring Your Goals to Life with Goalscape

While Tracy's principles are powerful on their own, Goalscape provides a framework to bring them to life with two major additional benefits: visualization and team collaboration.

1. Visualization

There is no question that writing down your goals triggers a neurological response mechanism that helps to hardwire the goal in your mind.

Similarly, just as a picture paints a thousand words, visualizing your goals significantly enhances your psychological commitment to achieving them.

When you can visualize all your goals in one place, it brings an entirely new level of clarity, making the journey to each goal more real and tangible.

Using Goalscape's visual canvas maximizes the effectiveness of Tracy's pen and paper technique. Used together, they bring your goals to life, creating a powerful synergy that delivers some significant advantages:

• Goal Orientation: the visual representation keeps your goals front and center as you work, helping you to stay on track.
• Enhanced Clarity: the goal map provides a unique big picture overview of your goal structure, showing the relationships and dependencies between goals.
• Easy Prioritization: Tracy emphasizes the need to focus on your most important objectives. Goalscape shows directly what matters most: the size of each goal's slice represents its importance. And crucially it lets you make smart trade-offs between goals – time is finite!
• Improved Focus: filter your goals to highlight what you really need to do at any time; and generate GTD-type Goal Lists so you can concentrate fully on those tasks, avoiding distractions.
• Greater Flexibility: with Goalscape you can easily move, adapt and refine your goals on the fly, to stay agile yet remain productive as circumstances change.
• Higher Motivation: visualizing your goals solidifies them in your mind; and seeing your progress advancing across the goal map as you work gives you an endorphin boost and reinforces your drive.

2. Team Collaboration

Tracy's principles work extremely well, especially for personal goal setting. To implement them effectively in a business environment though, you also need to ensure that everyone understands the goals, contributes to the planning, and eagerly commits to the work. Enter Goalscape, which turns Tracy's goal setting principles into a practical team solution for any organization.

• Increased Engagement Goalscape provides a digital platform that allows teams to share goals visually, ensure genuine alignment, and collaborate with purpose.

• Meaningful Display: Goalscape displays your goal structure in a unique circular format that is information-rich yet immediately understandable. It reinforces the point that resources are limited and shows at a glance where you are and what to do next. So it is much more effective for team communication and understanding than traditional written lists, spreadsheets, or Kanban boards.

• Hierarchical Structure: this is about the goal structure rather than the organizational hierarchy. Breaking down goals into smaller, manageable subgoals is a core tenet of Tracy's method, and Goalscape does this in a clear visual way. So in team projects, everyone can see how their work – and everyone else's – contributes to shared goals.
• Real-time Updates: as a web application, Goalscape supports simultaneous updates from multiple users in real time, instant messaging, which is crucial for team coordination and accountability.
• Progress Tracking: Goalscape's color-coding and progress shading provide instant visual feedback about where you are in every goal, which is a must for management oversight and boosts team motivation and coordination.
• Holistic View: Goalscape allows every team member to see all the goals at once, supporting a better shared understanding of how different goals and team members' efforts are connected, and why their individual efforts matter.
• Fast, Easy Adoption: Goalscape is so intuitive that everyone can start using it effectively immediately, no training required.

So this Goalscape template leverages the power of Brian Tracy's 'Goals!' method, capturing his basic principles and key steps in a dynamic visual model. It will work for any personal challenge, and is the ideal platform for business management and team collaboration.

4. Put the Brian Tracy Goals Strategy into Action

Now we've seen how written and visual goal setting act in perfect harmony to spark a deep, positive psychological commitment, let's break down the steps of using Goalscape to put Tracy's method into action:

Before you Begin, Clarify Your Beliefs and Values Identify what really matters most to you as an individual, or as a team in a business environment. This is the essential first step and this template will guide you through it: follow the instructions in the subgoals to this goal.

Write your values in the Notes on the central goal in Goalscape. Then draft a name for the central goal itself that truly represents those values. This will be your 'North Star', helping you to create a compelling vision and navigate your way to success.

Then repeat the following 3-step cycle:

1. Define Your Key Goals and Subgoals Use Goalscape to break down your main goal into subgoals and tasks. The template contains subgoals here to cover different life areas: you can of course add your own goals in other areas. For business projects you can create your own 'key goals' and implement OKR or a similar process.

   We recommend using the FAST technique to define effective Ambitious, Specific, Transparent goals. The 'F' is for Frequently Reviewed, which emphasizes the importance of keeping your goals in mind at all times, and recording your progress as you go. And Goalscape is ideal for this.

   Make your goals as concrete as possible. Include a definition of the desired goal state in the Notes, with the metrics you will use to track your Progress along the way. You can embed images and videos, set Dates, add contextual Tags, and use Meaningful Color-Coding.

   In shared projects, add the 'how, who, when' details to the bottom-level tasks, link to external sources or attach files, and assign Responsibility. Always check that everyone involved understands and genuinely shares the goals, and why their work matters. This is essential for full engagement and to maintain everyone's motivation when they really need to perform.

2. Prioritize and Act Once your goals are fully defined and clearly expressed, consider your priorities. Set your goals' Importances (slice size) according to their contribution to the parent: ask yourself, 'when this goal is complete, how close are we to completing the parent?' Our resources are limited: we have only so much time, money and energy to pursue our goal; and how we allocate those resources is a key decision at any stage. So it is vital to identify where to focus to make the biggest impact.

   When you make one goal bigger in Goalscape, all its neighbors become smaller. So you can immediately see the impact and make smart trade-offs. Set fewer goals to achieve more!

3. Track Progress and Frequently Review In Goalscape you update Progress in the outermost 'task level' goals, because that's where the action happens! Of course if you find a short-cut, you can always just check off the parent goal as achieved. Your Progress appears as darker shading, filling in towards the central Main Goal. So you can see at a glance where you are and what you need to pay attention to next: it's any large key goal that's not being filled in! Goalscape's task management features allow you to schedule and track your daily activities; and you can use Gantt view to see timelines and create dependencies.

Update, Adapt and Repeat

At every review, remember to celebrate your wins and recognize individual contributions to significant goals achieved.

Then repeat the process, adapting your scope and priorities if necessary to accommodate any changes in circumstances, including external events.

5. Conclusion

By combining Brian Tracy's proven goal setting strategies with Goalscape's innovative visual platform, you give yourself the best chance to succeed.

Don't take our word for it though, try it for yourself – and take control of your future today.

Start using the 'Brian Tracy Goals' template now and begin your journey to success, guided by the wisdom of Tracy and the power of Goalscape.

Remember, as Tracy says, "You have within you, right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you."

With Goalscape, you have the perfect tool to unleash that potential and turn your dreams into reality.