The Library/Key I
How to write a definite chief aim, in Hill's six steps
Nearly every aim people write is a wish with an adjective in it. Hill's six steps exist to strip the wish out.
- Source
- Napoleon Hill · Think and Grow Rich (1937), chapter 2
- min read
- 2
Hill's six steps, unabridged in substance
One: fix the exact amount you intend to acquire. Not more, not a range, an amount. Two: decide exactly what you intend to give in return, because Hill allows no something for nothing.
Three: establish a definite date by which you intend to possess it. Four: create a definite plan and begin at once, whether or not you feel ready. Five: write all of it in one clear, concise statement.
Six: read that statement aloud twice daily, once on rising and once before sleep, and as you read, see and feel yourself already in possession.
The four errors
The unquantified aim. "Financial security" and "a better position" cannot be met or missed, which is why they are comfortable to write. If nothing about the sentence could be proved false in a year, it is not an aim.
The dateless aim. Without a date there is no this week, and everything defers to a period that never begins.
The aim that names no exchange. Step two is the one readers skip, and skipping it turns the whole statement into an expectation of receipt.
The borrowed aim. Written in the language of a book or a teacher rather than your own, it will not survive the first difficult month because you never wanted it in those words.
Why the aim must be corrected by somebody else
You cannot see the vagueness in your own sentence. It reads as clear to you because you know what you meant, and the words are standing in for a meaning that is only in your head.
Read your aim to one person who is willing to be blunt. Ask them one question: what exactly would I have to do this week if this were true? If they cannot answer from the sentence, the sentence is not finished.
That is the whole function of a correction. Not encouragement, not grading the prose, only the question of whether the writing commits you to something specific.
The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results.