What are your goals as an entrepreneur in the next year? Are you pursuing big or small goals?

Hunter Atkins from Houston is a sportswriter and entrepreneur who says the key to achieving big dreams is to think small. Or better yet–accomplish your big dream through small incremental processes.

Incremental processes will bring you will one step closer to your BIG dream.

Step 1 – Maximize Use of Existing Resources

Your current resources play a major role in achieving your big dreams. Knowing what your existing resources are is a major factor in your decision-making process.

Step 2–Think Big While Doing Small

These processes must be created in such a manner that they include your big dreams and the small steps you’ll need to take each morning to realize them.

You need to prioritize your incremental steps to achieve your big dreams. Learn from your steps and missteps. Which ones were more important and which ones were wasted effort? Prioritize those most effective steps and start each day with them.

Keep in mind that vision and execution are not the same things. You can dream big but execute incrementally through controlled experiments. Adopt faster learning, whether you’re improving your processes or personal habits.

Be calm and only take one step at a time.

Step 3 – Continually Improve your Incremental Processes

Hunter Atkins expresses that you will never have perfect processes. You can always improve them and increase your speed to reaching your big dreams. Sometimes that means increasing the length of successful steps and or decreasing the number of not-so-successful steps.

It’s easy for people to dismiss incremental improvements as unimaginative or boring. But moonshot visions don’t materialize overnight. Innovation almost always happens in small steps, over a series of controlled trials.

One common objection is that a series of small changes take more time than one big one. However, big changes often lead to deep valleys rather than mountaintops. Incremental change offers a chance to rebound from those occasional low spots as you progress toward your final summit.

Step 4 – Keep a Record of your Progress after Two Weeks.

All your achieved challenges will provide you with a to-do list of the most important things to focus on. The most important thing in the following weeks is to practice them every day and watch them grow.

“Every time you try something new and allow yourself to be open to whatever experience arises, you are learning and expanding your repertoire of life skills and self-knowledge. As you do this, you also expand the size of your comfort zone.” — Abigail Brenner M.D.

Step 5 – Be Consistent

To realize your big dreams, you need to be consistent. You have already taken a major step towards your big dreams, and now it is time to make incremental progress. Be consistent with your implementation.

Although your process is a step-by-step system that brings you closer to your big accomplishments, sometimes big decisions still need to be made. They are your responsibility, so don’t ignore them. It is your responsibility, to create and implement them.