The Harada Method: How to Achieve Ambitious Goals
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A few days ago, I came across a fascinating tweet about Dodgers baseball star Shohei Ohtani.
Long before Ohtani was winning back-to-back World Series Championships and Most Valuable Player awards, he was just another kid with a dream.
As a high school freshman, he dreamed of being the #1 draft pick for eight teams in the Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan. It was an ambitious vision, to say the least.
But where most people stop with the loose vision, Ohtani was just getting started.
He wasn't going to hope for it. He wasn't going to vaguely work toward it. He was going to engineer it into reality.
To do so, Ohtani created an extraordinarily detailed roadmap for achieving his dream:
The roadmap, which had his primary goal at the center, surrounded by eight contributing pillars, each with eight of their own actions or behaviors, was based on something called the Harada Method.
The idea behind the Harada Method is simple:
Developed by Japanese track coach Takashi Harada, the method forces you to deconstruct an ambitious, long-term goal into its component parts.
One goal. Eight supporting pillars. Eight specific actions or behaviors for each.
Harada called this the Open Window 64 (or OW64).
It converts a massive, intimidating dream into a system. 64 concrete micro-actions. Mapped, visualized, and then executed.
I had two initial reactions upon learning about Shohei Ohtani's use of the Harada Method:
- There are levels to wanting something. For a high school freshman to put this level of energy into detailing his vision is quite extraordinary. Knowing that he showed up to execute against it is even more so.
- The generalized framework could be very useful for all of us. It takes an idea you want and converts it into a life you live. From hoping to engineering.
My bet is that the Harada Method also acts as a filter for desire. If you don't truly, deeply want the thing at the center, you probably won't be willing to show up on a daily basis to execute against the pillars and actions that surround it. Seeing it represented visually will give you an immediate gut check on the level of energy you have for the main thing.
You don't need to be a world-changing athlete, CEO, or leader to implement this idea in your life. You don't even need to follow the method perfectly.
Just take one meaningful goal in your life and deconstruct it:
- Goal
- Contributing Pillars
- Daily Actions & Behaviors
The real magic is that once you see it on paper, the path becomes clear. The actions become measurable. The process becomes methodical.
And when you show up for the process, the dream becomes achievable.
P.S. An X user spun up a free AI-enabled tool for building out your Harada Method grid. It's pretty neat. You can also create your own using this template in Google Sheets.
