The aspect becomes much more important when it comes to doing actual hard work. There are several explanations for this, but (1) the need to break down the hard work into actionable measures and (2) the need to enroll all stakeholders in your venture are chief among them.
You like to think about them in terms of a lifetime when you think of your major goals. But when you're doing hard work, day after day, you go. Setting up a strategy helps you to accomplish the great goal of "What do I want to do with my life?" "and break it down into "For the next five years, what do I need to do? "And then "This year, what do I need to do? "And then "This week, what do I need to do? "and then "Today, what do I need to do? "And then finally, "Right now, what do I need to do? ”
This lowest granularity level is the essential one, because both internally and externally, it's the one where you're going to face the most resistance. Internally, once you get into The Grind, you are going to meet resistance. Instead of relaxing or lounging on the sofa or drinking with friends, you can ask yourself, "Why am I doing this?" if you find yourself working through the night or the weekend. The Strategy helps you to conquer these emotions. Even when it makes the present moment extremely uncomfortable, it lets you take the action you are doing right now and link it to the big purpose.
During your everyday toil, the outside opposition you can face is trickier. We prefer, as a society, to glorify the idea of hard work. But once the hard job has already paid off, we appear to do so in retrospect. Plus, we prefer to glorify hard work from a distance; it is the award presenter or obituary writer who praises the winner or subject's hard-working attitude.
Our feelings about hard work become more ambivalent as you get down to the personal level and the present moment. With The Payoff still somewhere in the distant and unpredictable future, resentment towards hard work and people who want to do it becomes easy to feel (you). But the outcome is that you will need to make the case that all this struggle and sacrifice is worth something when the going gets rough (which it will). This is where it comes to The Strategy.
The strategy is an important tool for "marketing" to justify why you make the decisions you make on a day-to-day basis. For all the thousands of times you'll have to choose between doing A or B, it gives you a structure. Not only that, it offers everyone in your life a chance to either object to The Strategy or buy-in. It offers you a chance to run for the hills before being pulled into your taxing, sleep-deprived, stressful lifestyle of hard work before your girlfriend or business partner or someone else depends on you.
Aimee Elizabeth, from the previous segment, the rags-to-rich entrepreneur, has definitely had trouble finding a significant other who is pleased with her dream. But it prevents her from being involved with someone who would bail her down the road, or worse, sabotage her for the sake of their relationship, because she is upfront about her goals.
Aimee told Primer, "My dearest wish would be to find a man who could accept me as I am, and still love me to death." For better or worse, for the sake of a friendship, Aimee has not compromised her ambition. But if she finds that person who supports her ambition and all, then she will have a partner in her ongoing projects, not a naysayer or competitor.
This segment is not about making a strategy, in conclusion. It's about getting one and making sure that it is agreed to by all stakeholders, or at least they are informed of it. The Strategy is the founding text in the narrative of your progress. Although not everything is going to go exactly according to The Plan, all acts, achievements, failures and choices are going to go back to The Plan. This is how the sacrifices and sacrifice you would put into achieving your goals will be contextualized. And this is how, along the way to the big payoff, you can calculate the hundreds of little victories and failures.
