Goals are important
How do goals work together to create positive change?
What are good goals?
How big should they be?
How many should you have?
What parts of your life should you set goals for?
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As you may know by now, if you are keeping score, I wrote 3 goals down this past spring to accomplish before (or on) my birthday, which is November 7th 2024.
I wrote them on a yellow 3X5 index card. I have it here on my desk.
It says on the top “Goals – Nov. 2024”
Then it has 3 numbered bullets.
- Publish first book
- 100K 62 B-Day
- 165 pounds
Unfortunately for you, the way my brain works, I now feel a need to define how goals work and why.
The why is the easy part.
Especially for someone like me who has a fractal brain that is going in 100 different directions at once. Goals enable me to focus on a finite number of things. Goals give me a quantifiable challenge and an end date that I can then construct a process or project around. That process then will distill down to an executable plan. That plan then will translate into daily, weekly action and measurement.
Yikes. That last bit sounded very ‘overpaid consultant’.
Well, ‘know thyself’ and all…
It may be different for you, but for me goals allow me to actually get stuff done instead of running around in circles like a moose with a brain worm.
How do you decide what the goals should be? There are a thousand different things that you could create a goal for. How do you pick one? Or two? Or three?
My advice is to pick three. Or more specifically, no more than three. More than three and you dilute your efforts. Less than three and you aren’t engaged.
If you pick those three correctly, they will be complimentary, supporting each other. Or if you want to use a favorite 1980’s buzz words – they will have synergy.
This is another interesting thing about goals. If you pick the right ones they work together and you get a one plus one equals three impact.
But, how do you choose which part of your life would be positively impacted by a goal?
I find it useful to think about life as a portfolio. Most people, whether they know it or not, have a portfolio life. You may have lots of interests and activities, but if you look close enough they all tie back to a small number of core categories or themes.
Think of it like this. Your life, the things that are important to you, the things that you want to achieve, even your responsibilities and your aspirations – each one of these things has tasks and information and time associated with it – but until you rationalize them they are like one, big, messy pile of papers on your desk.
Picture yourself sitting at that messy desk with all these things on it in a big, convoluted pile. Pick each thing up and put it into a pile by category. I bet your piles could look;
– Your physical wellbeing and health
– Your family, friends, loves and relationships
– Your spiritual life
– Your work, profession or career
And for you, maybe others.
Most people will have 5 or so main categories that are important to them. That mean something to them.
So, look through your big messy pile and decide what the big, unifying categories are. Then ponder which of these categories do you want or need to make the most progress in?
Pick the top three and create a big goal in each category.
Anyhow, long story short, my 3 big goals, by my birthday, are:
- Train for and run a 100K trail race (62 miles for you metric challenged)
- Publish the first After the Apocalypse season as a novel
- Lose specified amount of weight
Let’s look at each of these.
First, train and run a 100k on my birthday. What category is that? It is health and fitness for sure. And it also has an impact on my aspirations. I am going to be 62 on my birthday. 100K is 62 miles. It has a lovely synergy to it.
At the point where I made this goal in early June I was recovering from an injury. I hadn’t run in a month. I was overweight and not happy with myself.
Training for this would force me to figure out how to do it without hurting myself. It gives me a big goal, but not one that is out of reach. A goal that will force me to execute a quality training cycle. Unlike a road marathon, I can’t fake a 100K.
What are the attributes of a good goal? Is this a good goal? It is quantifiable. 100K. It is timebound. By my birthday. It is within reach but challenging. I will be forced to modify my behavior to achieve it.
Second goal is to publish that first manuscript from my apocalypse podcast as a book. On the surface this looks like a gimme. I have published before. I know the mechanics of it. But this is different. It is fiction. It requires a level of editing that I have never had to do before. The process is filled with unknown.
What category does this fall into? This is partially in the ‘work and career’ category, and I’ll explain why. I am moving into retirement age. I would like to have an occupation in retirement. My plan was/is to do this apocalypse story as an audio podcast and in the process write 5 seasons of content that I could turn into 5 novels. This plan is amazingly on track. The only part of it that is dogging me is the conversion of the manuscripts to published novels.
I set this goal to light a fire under my ass and bring the first one through the process. In this case a goal can be a way to quantify something that you have been trying to get around to. It’s a way to create a deadline. Remove excuses.
Is this a good goal? Well, again it is quantifiable. Publish the book. Yes or no. It is time bound. And, mot importantly it is forcing me to learn how to do things. It is making me figure out and remove blocks, both external and between my own ears.
Final goal was, lose some damn weight. What category is this? Health and fitness. Is it quantifiable and time bound? Yup.
What is the why? In this case, I picked a weight, 165 pounds, which I have not seen on the scale since I was 18 years old. This is the goal I had the most doubt around. Sure, I’d need to lose the weight to get through the training cycle, but, yah know, 170 is probably the real goal…
Finally, how do these goals compliment each other? In order to successfully get through the training for the ultra I would need to lose the weight. In order to lose the weight I would need to stop drinking so much beer. Not drinking beer would miraculously give me more energy and clarity in the mornings and on weekends to work out and to write and edit.
They all play together.
As I write this I am 7 weeks out from my birthday.
What has happened since I wrote three goals on that yellow index card in a fit of frustration?
First, quite to my surprise I have seen the number 165 on my bathroom scale. How did this happen? When my weight plateaued in July and I was getting super frustrated I contracted a nutrition coach. With her help I broke that plateau and am essentially, at goal weight. I had to figure it out. The goal forced me to keep finding new approaches until one worked.
That’s the power of a goal.
My training is going well. I have avoided injury. I’m now in the high-volume part of the training. If everything stays on track I am going to crush this race.
How’s the book coming. That one is still up in the air, but I’ve managed to get a lot of editing done. I have also joined a writing group. I have found an outfit that will take care of the tactical publishing part. I still have 7 weeks.
So, my friends, some people would argue that it is more important to focus on the process than to set goals. But I am walking proof that setting the appropriate goals drives the creation of an effective process.
And that’s the meat of it. Whether you achieve the goal or not is no ultimately the point. It’s what you learn and how you change through the campaign of getting to that goal that matters.
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