Personal goals are generally expected to happen later. If you’ve always wanted to make short documentary films, for example, or zero all your inboxes, or write a detective novel, it probably doesn’t seem like that could happen now.

You will do it later, when life is different than it is now. Maybe when you’re on holidays, or when things slow down, or once you’ve dealt with a particular looming thing, life will begin to present the large spaces of unused time needed to finally get to your worthwhile but non-essential dreams.

The reason it’s hard to get going on personal goals is that you’re already using all of your time. No matter who you are, you’re already using all 24 hours, every day, for something. Because this will always be true, goals that happen at all must happen now, while you still don’t yet have time.

Belief in the mythical state of “when I have time” is a common pitfall. I’ve fallen for it routinely for most of my life. It’s based on a reasonable perceptual error: big goals need big chunks of time.

Recently I wrote about a different way to think about time and doing, a way which does not relegate personal goals to a mythical future condition that doesn’t exist.

Basically, you learn to work in small, uniform parcels of time. They’re short, timer-bound, and unwaveringly focused on a particular outcome. Most importantly, they can fit into real life, as it already is.

Readers of How to Do Things know these parcels of work as “Blocks.” Because they’re of a standardized size (officially, 25 minutes) you can stack them up and build things out of them without ever having a big swath of time.

One Block is enough to knock off a handful of small tasks or one big task, or put a serious dent in a major task. Making stacks of Blocks, applied to larger outcomes, can start to change the conditions of your life.

As I explained in my earlier post, Blocks can be thought of as a kind of “effort currency” you can use to purchase (or build, really) lasting improvements to your life. With some number of Blocks, can give yourself a new skill, build a new income source, fix a broken thing, turn a mess into something organized, become knowledgeable on a particular topic, make creative works, start a movement, invent something, or otherwise permanently level-up some aspect of your life (and maybe the world too).

In that post I had said I was making a course based on How to Do Things, where we do exactly that. You pick something that would be a major personal win for you, and make it real, Block by Block, over an eight-week period.

You could:

• Get your book started, outlined, and a few chapters finished
• Educate yourself on [Topic X] so that you’re able to discuss [Topic X] confidently
• Fix or deal with every broken thing in the house
• Read a great work of literature, or several
• Deal with your storage locker — clean it out, quit paying the fee, and sell what you don’t want
• Get all your inboxes to zero
• Launch a YouTube channel and post your first few videos
• Learn to use a sewing machine and do a few projects
• Learn to code
• Write the screenplay you’ve had in your head for years
• Start your side hustle and make some money
• Finish your thesis, or a big section of it

The rewards of any of these goals, or those of a thousand others, can be yours in exchange for a finite number of Blocks. That number might be 31, or 99, but it’s a real number, and you can rack up those Blocks in a relatively short period, if you have a simple Block-making regimen. 

This is a very different approach from “I hope I have time to do all that stuff one day.” Blocks are small and you can fit them in anywhere. You could knock off a 32-Block goal in just four Blocks a week. That’s half a Sunday morning.

The course is called One Big Win. It’s designed to help you do two things:

1. Achieve a major personal goal over an eight-week period, using the Block Method
2. Achieve any future goal using this same approach

Why I Made This

My ultimate goal with One Big Win is to create a ready-made tool –- a universal template — for getting major things done in a short time.

I particularly wanted to provide this for people who have struggled with productivity and achieving goals.

As you might know, I’m the opposite of a “natural” when it comes to general productivity, especially on larger projects — an ADHD diagnosis at middle age explained a lot about why. Without quite realizing it, I’ve spent most of my adult life developing strategies and workarounds for overcoming this challenge, and writing about them on Raptitude.

Mainly, I’ve discovered that building simple, repeatable procedures around the doing itself can make a massive difference.

The Block Method, with its simple, repeatable steps, does this for small things.

One Big Win is my attempt to create a second, outer layer of repeatable steps: a method for conceiving and achieving life-changing short-term goals.

If How to Do Things gives you a magic hammer you can bring to bear on any task, One Big Win is a workshop and construction process you can bring to bear on any goal.

A Modest Plan to Change the World

I’m determined to create a goal-achieving template that works for most people. I honestly think it could change the world to a meaningful degree if I get it dialed in. There must be immense reserves of creative potential locked up inside millions of people — perhaps you’re one of them — who have the desire but don’t have a process.

So this first run of One Big Win is a prototype. I’m limiting it to 100 people, and will refine it based on their feedback.

What You Need to Know

One Big Win is an eight-week online course, in which you choose a personal goal and use the Block Method get it properly done in a short time, alongside your normal day-to-day obligations.

You can repeat the process for any future goal.

You don’t need any preparation.

You don’t have to have a specific goal in mind before signing up. Part of the course is selecting an exciting and doable goal. Nothing has to be arranged or decided beforehand.

One Big Win is intended for people who have read How to Do Things, but if you haven’t yet, that’s okay. You can read it and learn the Block Method in an hour or two.

You don’t need to wait till you “have time.”

You don’t need to take time off, or clear your schedule, to do One Big Win. You don’t need to wait until after Christmas or when work slows down.

That’s the whole point — Blocks are small enough that you can fit them into a “full” schedule. If you can make even three Blocks a week on your project, you can pull off an impressive win in eight weeks.

Other people will be doing their own goals alongside you.

You can help each other and share your progress in the discussion forum. Or you can keep your project private.

The next group start date will be in mid-August 2024.

You can delay your start date if you prefer. (But you shouldn’t need to.)

Your goal should matter to you, and have lasting rewards.

Whatever you choose, it should be a personal win that upgrades your life in some way. Get your blog online. Record your own album. Find your first freelance clients. Knock off a whole list of small, long-avoided tasks. Sell all those sports cards in the attic and pocket the proceeds.

Create this first personal win, then use the same process again and again.

You don’t need to know how to do your goal already.

The course includes a system for quickly sourcing methods and procedures for virtually any task a layperson can do. You can assemble your family tree even if you know nothing about genealogy right now. You can write a screenplay even if you don’t know what one looks like.

If you want to sign up

***Registration has CLOSED for the second cohort of One Big Win.***

Make sure you are subscribed to Raptitude to be notified of future OBW sessions.

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Images by Freepik, David Cain, Artiom Vallat, and DALL-E2