The GROW model

When you don't know where to start with a decision or a goal, it's easy to just go in circles in your head. British coach John Whitmore popularised, in his 1992 book Coaching for Performance, a four-question model called GROW (Goal, Reality, Options, Will), designed precisely to break that loop and land the reflection on concrete steps.

First, Goal: what exactly do you want to achieve, and how will you know you've achieved it? Second, Reality: where are you really right now, without dressing it up or downplaying it? Third, Options: what paths are available to you, including the ones you'd dismiss at first glance? And fourth, Will (sometimes translated as "way forward"): of all those options, which one will you actually do, exactly when, and what might get in the way of following through?

What makes this model useful isn't that it's complicated — it's the opposite — but that it forces you through all four questions in order. It's easy to jump straight from "what I want" to "what I'll do" without passing through "where I really am" or "what other options I have", and that's where many plans fail: not from lack of willpower, but because they were built on an incomplete diagnosis.

Next time you feel stuck on something, instead of spinning without structure, try it with the four questions, in order.

Pick something you've been stuck on and answer, in writing and in order: Goal, Reality, Options, Will. The order alone changes what you see.