Good goal management requires the balancing of the short and long term. We must think and sync: think and plan long term, and then sync our hour-to-hour, day-to-day actions with those longer term plans.

When my dad was teaching me how to drive, I would stare at the road directly in front of the car. This made me drive erratically because there are always little course corrections to make. He told me to look farther down the road — not too far, because then I’d miss dangers that appear.

Our driving is more consistent if you look at that sweet spot in between the short and long. So, too, is our doing.

To continue with the analogy:

Driving obviously requires use of the rear view mirror from time-to-time. But the idea is to look at the rear view mirror far less often than our front view window.

In other words:

Our daily and weekly actions should be partly defined by yesterday, but mostly defined by tomorrow.