How often, however, do you compose a to-be list containing a roster of the characteristics and traits that you’d like to attain, develop, or improve upon?

Your To-Be List

Considering who and what you’d like to be, at first, can be mind-boggling. After all, few people fixate on what they want to become as opposed to what they need to do.

Most people proceed directly to listing the projects and tasks that will help them to accomplish specific goals. Usually the goals are work-related, but often they are personal in nature as well.

Yet, without identifying and acknowledging who you want to be, you can miss the forest for the trees: Periodically it’s vital to make the cerebral link between the tasks that we accomplish and the roles and positions to which we aspire.

When you produce a to-be list, you help put in motion an array of behaviors and activities that will increase your probability of becoming the person you wish to be. For each to-be item that makes your list, a variety of to-do type tasks quickly become associated.

If Leadership Is Your Calling

If you aspire towards more effective leadership, for example, and your to-be list includes “to become a more effective leader,” then you are inexorably drawn to those tasks and activities that will help you to accomplish your goal. Such tasks might not necessarily be those that normally make your to-do list.

In pursuit of being a more effective leader, beyond faithfully executing your recurring tasks as well as the assignments you are given, you might also chose to read one book on leadership each month; to regularly observe the leaders in your own agency; to volunteer for situations that enable you to exhibit enhanced leadership skills; and to start compiling articles, interviews, and features on leaders in your field, geographic area, or those whom you simply admire.

As a personal to-be example, if you aspire to be a better partner to your spouse or significant other, you might find yourself gravitating towards a variety of activities that traditionally would not have made your to-do list.

In becoming a better partner, perhaps you enroll in a course—with or without your partner—on relationships. Perhaps you speak at length with friends who have been in long and successful relationships, or perhaps you watch a YouTube video on becoming a more effective listener, and so on.

New Explorations for New Results

The items that make your to-be list might require new types of exploration. You might find yourself attracted to events and activities that are new to you, or find yourself associated with others with whom you previously felt you had little in common.

At some point, you find yourself trying new behaviors, putting yourself into novel situations, and asking others for advice on new topics.

A key aspect about a to-be list is that the mere act of composing the list increases the probability of your movement in the desired direction. The positive, self-fulfilling progress that you make, compared with previously doing nothing of the sort, significantly puts the odds in your favor.

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” He was right on the mark. Deciding to move in a particular direction and intending to take action to support your decision is the precursor to actual movement and achievement. Magically, inexorably, we gravitate towards what we dwell upon most often.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” Alexander Hamilton, our first secretary of the treasury, said, “When I have a subject in mind. I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it . . . the effort which I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.”

Give yourself the wonderful opportunity to become the person you truly want to be. Starting with a blank piece of paper or a blank screen, list four to six characteristics, traits, or attributes you desire to have, and dwell upon. You have it within you to become that kind of person.

Jeff Davidson, MBA, CMC, is principal, Breathing Space® Institute, Raleigh, North Carolina (www.BreathingSpace.com or Jeff@Breathingspace.com). An author and presenter on work-life balance, he holds the world’s only registered trademark from the United States Patent and Trademark Office as “The Work-Life Balance Expert.”®