The blueprint
for big ambitions.

Build my chart First, teach me
↓
01

Where it came from

In the 1990s a junior-high track coach in Osaka named Takashi Harada took a roster of underperforming kids and, over years of disciplined practice and reflection, turned them into athletes who won 13 national gold medals. His insight wasn't talent. It was a system for turning self-reliance into daily habit. Lean pioneer Norman Bodek later brought it West in the 2012 book The Harada Method: The Spirit of Self-Reliance.

It went global for one reason: as a high-school freshman at Hanamaki Higashi High, Shohei Ohtani filled out the method's signature chart with a single goal in the middle ("#1 draft pick of 8 pro teams") and 64 specific actions around it. Some were about pitching. Some were about picking up trash. That original sheet now hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

02

The Open Window 64

The heart of the method is one chart, a 9×9 grid. It works in three rings:

1

Central goal

One ambitious, measurable, dated goal sits dead centre.

8

Sub-goals

Eight pillars that must be true for the goal to happen. Mix skills and character.

64

Actions

Each pillar explodes into eight concrete, do-it-this-week actions. 8 × 8 = 64.

03

Charts to learn from

Four worked examples: Ohtani's real baseball chart, plus the same method applied to academic, business, and career goals. Use the arrows to browse, and tap any pillar to light up its eight actions. Notice how Ohtani's pillar 8, Luck, is pure character: greetings, picking up trash, respecting umpires.

04

The full method is five tools

The chart is the famous one, but it lives inside a sequence. Do them in order:

  1. 01

    33 Questions for Self-Reliance

    A self-assessment that measures how self-directed you already are: the honest starting line before you set any goal.

  2. 02

    Long-Term Goal Form

    One ambitious goal with a real deadline, your purpose for chasing it, and the dated milestones in between.

  3. 03

    Open Window 64 Chart

    The 9×9 mandala. One central goal, 8 sub-goals, 64 concrete actions. The heart of the method.

  4. 04

    Routine Check Sheet

    The daily and weekly actions pulled out of your 64 cells, tracked every day so progress is measurable.

  5. 05

    Daily Diary

    A short daily reflection (what you did, what you learned) that closes the Plan, Do, Check, Act loop.

05

Build your own

Answer the prompts one at a time. Your chart fills in live on the right (below, on mobile). Everything saves in your browser, so you can close the tab and come back. At the end, download it as a PDF.

Step 1 of 10

What is your one big goal?

Make it specific, measurable and dated. Not "get fit" but "run a sub-2:00 half-marathon by Dec 2026".

06

Sources

Researched and fact-checked across these, ordered most to least authoritative. Translations of Ohtani's chart vary slightly; the eight pillars and the Luck / Humanity cells are the best-documented.