Set Your 2009 Goals With Me Right Now!
Thursday, January 1, 2009 13:25So, as of today it’s 2009, a new year. I know, it’s a time of hope and reflection, planning and contemplating…and time to makes some goals…
If you are anything like me though, New Years Day always comes with a certain amount of dread. See, I am someone who is perpetually locked in a battle with myself over what my goals actually are. I usually decide what my goals for the year are somewhere around the very end of that year. It’s a somewhat flawed system, I’ll admit. You know how you can never think of what you want for Christmas when asked, but by 12:01am Christmas morning you know exactly what you wanted, and you know you didn’t ask for any of it? Yeah, that’s me with my goals.
I tell you this because I know most of you are indeed just like me. That’s kinda the reason you’re reading this now, isn’t it? If we were all good at goal planning we’d all be fabulously rich, and there would be about 1000 less authors writing books about life planning as we sit here.
I also tell you this because I am going to make a change this year, and I hope you will join me. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be too demanding, or kum ba yah-ish, and it’s not even guaranteed to work (how’s that for a sales pitch?). It will take half an hour at best, and it comes with a commitment from me that over the next year, I will tirelessly seek tools that let schmucks like us take some control of our lives. That is what it’s all about, right?
So, just write down some goals and loose plans on how you think you may achieve them. If you can make an airtight strategy with military precision all the better! As long as it is something, you’re getting further than you did last year. I know how dreams can be a floating target, and I also understand just how scary it can be to put them down on paper (or liquid crystal display, but that lacks the imagery for my point) because all of the sudden you feel answerable to them. Now there is something you can fail at. BUT, now there is also something you can succeed at, and that is powerful.
I remember during a lunch interview one time, the gentleman looked at me and said, “You have had some real success so far in your career, but it’s been a collection of incidences, not of planned direction.” He didn’t mean it as a dig, he was stating what he saw, and he was right. Up until that point, I had never sought direction. I just assumed it would come from the companies I worked for. It has taken me some years to come to grips that it is up to me, but taking the initiative to begin to steer my own course is so energizing and enlightening. Do this with me, and we can share our experiences, both good and bad.
Here are a few resources I’m using in this process. I’m not going to go into detail about them right now. Play with them, and see what you like.
- Omni Focus Personal Task Management http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/
This is a detailed project oriented program that I am just getting started with. They also have an iPhone application which is nice, because I find I get most of my ideas when I am doing other things. - There are lots of great Mind Map tools available. I personally use Mind Maker for the iPhone. It’s such a great, intuitive way to lay out your brainstorming for a project quickly and clearly. Another resource is: http://www.mindmeister.com/. I have never used it, but it does come highly recommended.
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
by David Allen is an important book to read in the road to actually accomplishing things! Here is a great checklist you can use: http://gtdmastery100.com/
If you have ideas, or suggestions for other tools, please share them via a comment. Shaun and I will talk a little about this on the next podcast coming up soon.
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Sterling says:
January 1st, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I have found a mindmapping site that resembles a high end software I use myself, the site is called http://www.mindomo.com and is much better then Mindmister for single users. If you need to collaborate with another user in real time then Mindmister it definitely the way to go!
Rob Longley says:
January 8th, 2009 at 12:32 am
We were talking about setting goals the other day and the discussion turned to what do you do if you get stuck? It’s probably a pretty common thing for people because goals are looked at differently in different situations in our society. You tend to be good at it when you are 5 and decide that you want to become an astronaut. But chances are you really don’t have a roadmap of how to get there. Fast forward 20 years and now goals are about things you get ranked on a performance appraisal. Set a big goal, and you get slapped back because people are only supposed to move through the corporate world at a certain pace. Over commit, and things might not go so well at review time. So what do people get in the habit of doing? Reasonable, achievable goals that fill squares and indicate that you aren’t sleeping at your desk. In the span of a generation, our ideas of goals go from doing something that only a handful of people have done in history to doing things that earn you the right to sit in the same cubical for another year and maybe get a cost of living raise. It’s this sort of cultural conditioning that makes switching back into astronaut mode a little challenging.
So now that you have found your space suit again, you may not be able to picture where you are going. Spend a little quite time with the following premise (closing your eyes is optional): it’s 5 years in the future, you have the life you want, and money is no longer a concern. What do you do? Where do you live? What does your house look like? Where do you go on vacation? Just try to go with the experience and try not to question whether it makes any sense. Assuming you have a few ideas, write them down. Assuming it works for you, let’s assume that it may become reality. Your brain already has. It doesn’t know the difference between past events, and things you have visualized. To figure out how you might get there, work your way backwards. What did you have to do to afford the lake house? What did you have to do to lose 50 lbs? Write out the steps in reverse. It may take a while because you are using a part of your brain that stopped being really active when you were about 7. There was a time when your brain had to figure out how to walk, ride a bike, etc. Now it does it automatically. By forcing yourself to work through scenarios backwards, it forces you to work through those simple task linkages that you now take for granted. If you can make it back to the present, you should have a reasonably detailed map to work from. And that’s really what goals are about in the first place – direction. You’ve already programmed your brain to go through the steps, so now it’s time to do it for real. So strap your self in and prepare for liftoff!
Andy says:
June 4th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Hi, I have been writing goals out for a couple years. I write goals for 7 areas of my life… Spiritual, Family, Health, Social, Personal Development, Career, & Financial. Roughly in that order. That being said, I agree that we should not separate our personal and business to the extent that we should love what we do… But at the same time, I think it helps to separate them on paper so you can think about each one, and prioritize, etc.
I liked what you guys said about learning to love what you do. I am trying to figure out what I really love to do so I can pursue that…. that is hard for analytic types like me to really know in my heart what I “love” …