Have you ever set yourself a goal but struggled to see how you will get there? Taking small steps is a great way to start, but why not try working backwards to find out what steps you need to take?
The Zander Letter is a great way to place yourself in the future and identify the behaviours and habits you need to adopt to reach your chosen destination. This is something I came across in the book High Performance.
This article will look at what The Zander Letter is and its benefits.
What Is It?
In his position as a faculty member at the New England Conservatory of Music, Benjamin Zander stumbled upon a common problem amongst his students. They were becoming increasingly anxious over the grade they would achieve at the end of the year.
To combat this, Zander decided to award all of his students an A at the start of the year on one condition, they must write him a letter in return.
This letter must be written 12 months in the future, dated after they would have received their grade. It must be written as though they had already achieved an A and the past year had already happened. The students also needed to detail precisely what they did to achieve the A and should be written in past tense.
Identifying every step you need to take to get there and break it down presents you with a roadmap of what you need to do over the next 12 months, reducing the overwhelming anxiety that comes with pursuing a big goal.
The Benefits
Projecting yourself into the future is a great way to discover what you need to do.
It makes you responsible for your actions. It removes the excuse of not knowing what to do.
You can also identify with the behaviours that you must adopt. If you don’t feel like you are hard-working or a skilled writer, but realise these are the skills you need to develop to reach your goal, then you can start to practice them.
Scheduling 10 minutes into your day where you build your writing skills does two things. It sets you on the path to becoming a better writer and builds consistency. Hard work does not pay off without consistency.
You can then increase the amount of time you spend on this per day as you build the habit.
Work backwards to identify what you need to do and then start small to make it happen.
The Final Word
The Zander Letter is a great way to identify what you need to do to achieve your goal and place you in the future. Give it a go by writing one for yourself 12 months from now and see if it works for you.