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Set Goals

The following article was excerpted from The Student Success Manifesto.

The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else. These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow

Goals are outcomes you would like to achieve. Goal setting is the process of finding and pursuing what is of value to you.

If you do not know clearly what you want and how you are going to get there, you will be more susceptible to what others consciously or unconsciously want you to do or be. The clearer you make your own goals and vision, the less likely you will be deterred from your path. As the saying goes, “If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will take you there.”

Assuming the majority is right and just following along can be a major risk. While the majority might be correct, there are many times when it is not. Following the majority at these times could cost you some of the best opportunities of your life. A few months ago, I was in a long line with a throng of people waiting to go up one staircase. There was an empty staircase right next to the one full of people. My first assumption was that it must have been off limits, but immediately following that I thought to myself, “Oh what the hell, why don’t I just try it? What is the worst that can happen?” When I ventured up the empty staircase unimpeded, I realized that the only reason people had not been taking it was that nobody else was. Then upon looking back, I realized that there were actually people following me up, thus confirming my conclusion. My question is, do you want to take the unused staircase and make a path for others to follow, or do you want to push and shove with the majority just to get up the staircase everybody else is already on?

In many ways, you can see the evolution of a person’s growth by looking at what that person wants to achieve. Goals usually reflect people’s beliefs and values and, more generally, their personal growth.

You must not only consider what you want to do, but also how you are going to do it. Some examples of goals are:

Money: To have $5,000 (living expenses for six months saved by “x” date).

Branding: To win next year’s “Entrepreneur of the Year Award.”

Networking: To shadow the CEO of ABC.com for one week next summer.

Health: To drink eight glasses of water every day.

Learning: To improve my writing so that I can publish an article in the school newspaper.

Growth: To generate a list of 20 values that I would like to bring into my life, create posters featuring them, and post them around my house by next week. 

Characteristics of Goals

1. Goals Transform Your Present-Moment and Give It Direction and Inspiration. By taking the time to think about what you want in the future, you will learn more about yourself and what is important to you. As a result, you will begin to realize the new path you must take and the new ways you must be and act to achieve your goals. So, even though your goals will change, you will still have spent time going down a path that excites and inspires you.
2. Goal Setting Is a Process, Not an End. In the same way goals for a business change, as new information arises, so it should be in your personal life. By setting and pursuing goals, you are reflecting on what is important to you. There is a high probability that as you pursue a goal, you will realize it is wrong for you. This will be a profound realization that is part of the process. In fact, without pursuing the goal, you may not have realized that having “x” number of dollars and “y” number of friends isn’t important to you. By realizing what is not important, you can concentrate on the goals that are worthy of your pursuit. You cannot fool anybody. If you choose a goal just because you think you should, then you will not be inspired.
3. Goals Should Be Ends as Well as Processes. In other words, you should plan where you want to go and how you want to get there. For example, an end goal could be earning a million dollars before the age of 30. A process goal could be maximizing your love for yourself and others so you don’t consistently get angry at the people closest to you.
4. Goals Should Be Specific and Clear. It is easy to simply say: “I want a lot of money.” This may be a good starting point. However, as you think more about what is important to you, the goal should become more specific. What is “a lot of money”? Is it $100,000 or $1 billion? Why do you want it? When do you want to achieve it by? When you are 30? Or 60? Each end will require different means. Furthermore, each end will require different actions in the present-moment and, therefore, different paths.
5. Goals Should Be Magic in the Long Run. There is something powerful in creating long-term goals that seem as if magic would be the only way to achieve them.  Christopher Columbus had the magical goal of sailing around a world that others believed was flat. The Wright brothers believed they could create a machine that could fly in the air, around the time the first car was being invented. The whole way your mind thinks is transformed by magical goals and you become inspired. Although you may not believe you can achieve the goal at first, the process of achieving it might get you somewhere in between. Falling short of $1 million by $100,000 is not too shabby.

   Choosing a goal that you greatly desire and that you are willing to work hard enough to achieve is crucial. You do not want a goal that is so unchallenging that you become bored. Some people make the mistake of classifying themselves as “unmotivated.” However, everybody has the potential to be motivated. Have you ever been really hungry for a specific food and were determined to get it? Have you ever been really afraid of something and were motivated to avoid it? Everyone at some point or other has been extremely motivated either toward or away from something. Both positive and negative motivation can be effective, depending on the individual. A key to Extreme Entrepreneurship is consciously choosing what you want to go after in life and avoiding what you do not want to go after.

   A goal should not be something that would just be nice to achieve. If a goal is only “logical” or “nice,” than you will not have the firepower to pursue it when times are tough and you need inspiration the most. For your goals to be effective, you will have to realize their importance at your core and be emotionally stirred. The more emotion you involve, the better. What are your worst habits, the ones you cannot seem to shake? Take a second to imagine how much opportunity you would lose if you kept this habit for the next year, ten years, twenty years, or the rest of your life. How would these habits negatively affect your money, brand, network, health, development, and growth over time? Is this acceptable to you? If it is not acceptable to you, what are you going to do about it? What compelling goals are you going to create?

6. Goals Should Be Measurable.  If you cannot measure your goals, you cannot measure how effective your current plan is. And if you cannot measure how effective your current plan is, you cannot make corrective measures. As a result, you will both stagnate and fit the following definition of insane: “An individual who keeps on doing the same thing expecting different results.”
7. Goals Should Blend with Each Other. Another important part of goal setting is establishing relations between your goals. By blending your goals, you will make it possible to work on more than one at a time. For example, in a marketing research class I took, I was able to do the major market research project on my business. Thus, I was essentially able to work on my business and school goals at the same time.

   How can you connect your goals so that achieving one helps achieve another? The answer is a “goal hierarchy” (see example below). This will give you the big picture of all your short-term and long-term goals in areas such as money, brand, network, health, development, and growth. With this long-term view, you can get a better picture of how your goals are working together to create your life plan.

   To create a goal hierarchy, you first have to take time to create a vision for your life, which will go in the center of the chart. Your life vision will very likely change over time. However, by going through the process of deciding what your vision is, creating a plan to achieve it, and then taking action on your plan, you can see if the vision is right for you.

   After you realize what your life vision is, you can create supporting goals to help accomplish them. From these supporting goals, you will develop others, until finally you will come down to specific tasks that you can do right now. The chart below is an example of a hierarchy in the form of a “mind map” and is an easy way to create your goals and link them together. The chart shows only two levels of the mind map. If you were to continue, then each goal would be broken down into the specific steps needed to achieve it.

 

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 7:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Edit this entry.