This is the first post in a four post series that will show how I implement The 4 Disciplines of Execution [affiliate] (4DX) for my aspirational goals.

The first discipline is to identify your Wildly Important Goal (WIG). In the book, the authors make a distinction between the “whirlwind” of activity that you must do to keep the lights on and a WIG that will in some way transform your business (or life, or whatever). I use their method to set a WIG in three segregated parts of my life: business, personal, and fitness. To find this goal, I use the suggestion of The ONE Thing [affiliate], which has you identify the ONE goal that makes all other goals easy or unnecessary.

A WIG is similar to a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) or an OKR (Objective and Key Result). It should be easy to assess if you have achieved them. For a sports team, a WIG is winning the championship, which is a binary outcome on a specific date, but not a plan. For a battalion, it might be blowing up a bridge. We might change plans all year to achieve these goals, but hopefully, the goal is stable.

For the past month, and until the end of the year, I am doing experiments that will help me finalize them. Here are my ideas so far.

For my business, I want my book, Swimming in Tech Debt, to have reached its next stage of growth. Right now, I am not concerned with maximizing profit, because the book is in the seed marketing stage, where my goal is to get readers that will be future recommenders (following the techniques in Write Useful Books [affiliate]). My 2026 WIG is to have left the seed marketing stage and to move into a stage where ads are break-even.

For fitness, my WIG will be based around strength. I started a training program in November and it seems to be working, but that’s normal for untrained people—early gains are easy. I will finalize the exact goal at the end of the year, but it’s something like X pounds of gain on five lifts (Bench, Press, Row, Pull Down, Squat) while maintaining my body weight.

For personal growth, I have a lifelong plan to learn Spanish. I haven’t settled on a WIG. The easiest thing would be to pick a CEFR level and then find an assessment. DuoLingo uses this, but I’d like to find a different source to assess myself.

Tomorrow, I’ll go through the 2nd discipline which has you find a leading indicator that you can work on each day and will build up to your WIG.