To be able to see far ahead, orderly and clear thinking is required. One simply has to ask a question: “How…

To be able to see far ahead, orderly and clear thinking is required. One simply has to ask a question: “How will this deed of mine end?” To know the answer to this question, one needs to measure seven times. The main thing is that a person must clarify his goal. Goals are divided into two: the goal of goals, and the goals that lead to it. The goal of goals means the idea of ideas. To understand this more clearly, we can give this example: I want to build a house. To build a house I need land (1); I need a design (plan) of the house (2); I have to dig the ground according to the drawing of the house (3); I am obliged to settle and compact the soil at the bottom of the dug area (4); I buy cement, gravel and sand (5); I mix them, pour them in order into the dug places, and raise the foundation (6); depending on how tall my house will be, I need several thousand bricks (7); I call my relatives and neighbors to a hashar, a work bee (8); together we all lay the bricks (9) — and so in one day we raise the walls of the house; to cover the roof I bring beams, reeds, slate and so on (10)... Here the house is an example of the goal of goals; the tasks done to build it — we have listed ten of them — are the small goals that lead to it. The goal of the small goals is the house. That is, the house expresses the idea of ideas. The tasks I do in order to finish building the house completely are also goals, and without doing them I cannot reach my main goal. I imagine that I will build the house in thirty days. I wrote out a plan of the tasks I would do each day. But in the morning I woke up in a bad mood. I did not feel like getting up. And so it became noon. I did not do the first day's work; I said I would do it tomorrow. The next morning I woke up in a good mood, but inspiration did not come; so I spent the time waiting for inspiration to arrive. The day after that, both my inspiration and my mood were in place, but because of the two lost days I lost heart. The following day I said that with some kind of uplift I would get it all done splendidly, but I did a little work and then dropped it — an excuse turned up: my friends called me out... Thirty days passed; my plan was not carried out, the house was not built. But my neighbor had made a plan just like mine, and his house is finished. It turns out that for a big goal one must carry out the small goals. Work not done in its time becomes a heavy burden tomorrow — snow falls on unfinished work. Who is a sage and a wise person? One who always strives toward long-term goals and, on this path, carries out his planned tasks every day without haste. His labor may not bear fruit today, but tomorrow he will obtain a greater result than anyone. His only achievement: he set the goal; he defined the small goals for reaching it; every day he did the tasks in his plan and did not stop. In this case neither despondency nor laziness could turn him back.

Akrom MALIK