Thought you guys might like a programming example that I edited out of the article:
Back in 2004, I wanted to be a great Ruby programmer. I had dabbled, but wanted to accelerate my learning to the expert level.
So I called Tony Robbins' company, and signed up for a personal coach. We had a phone call once per week, to help me stay on track achieve my goals.
On the very first call, when I said I wanted to be a great Ruby programmer, he asked, “What does that look like? How will you know you're great?”
Whoa. Hmm. I had never actually defined it. He was waiting for an answer, so I picked something. I said, “If I have read all of these six Ruby books, completed all of the exercises in them, and memorized what I've learned.”
He said, “How many chapters in all?” So he had me go add up the total numbers of chapters across all six books.
Then he had me predict how many chapters I could do per week. I said 6.
Then he said, “OK so now you've got your plan. One chapter per day, six days per week, including doing the exercises, saving what you've learned in flash cards and quizzing yourself later, and in 12 weeks you'll be a great Ruby programmer, by this definition. If by then you don't feel great, we'll pick a new goal.”
And just like that - a year of vague procrastination was now a specific list of goals to be achieved each day. It helped me more than anything.
It's tough to talk about because it sounds so simple, but man, it's effective!