Nothing gets you more progress on your aspirations in life than setting and following a goal.
However, there is a right and a wrong way to do this.
Setting goals is greatly misunderstood nowadays.
The only time people set goals is on January 1st. New Year’s resolutions. If implemented correctly have the potential to set up your whole year for success.
If you set goals like most people do you’ll end up giving up in two weeks.
80% of New Year’s resolutions are forgotten by February!
That’s a terrifying fact.
Here’s how to avoid it.
The Goal Setting System
Effective goals get you moving towards somewhere that your soul believes in.
Chasing such a goal is incredibly fulfilling.
However, people don’t know what they want.
Very few people chisel their goal down to the very core of what achieving that goal means for them.
For example, people set goals to lose certain amounts of weight. Often people choose this goal because they are uncomfortable about their own weight. They are ashamed of who they are currently.
You can see that often the goal is the most shallow representation of your dreams. This will inevitably result in setting goals that mean nothing to you.
The person who ‘wants’ to lose weight may ACTUALLY want to feel confident in who they are.
Knowing your true intentions allows for clarity and understanding of what your goals really mean to you deep down.
So our first step for setting motivating goals is clarity.
1) Goal Clarity
The first question you need to ask yourself about your goal is why you really want to achieve that goal.
For this post, your goal will be to publish a best-selling novel.
Why?
Out of everything you could have chosen you chose this goal, why?
What does a best-selling novel mean to you?
Here I want you to write down a list of reasons why you want to achieve this dream. It doesn’t matter how silly they are just don’t stop writing!
Publish a best-selling novel
- Make Money
- Become famous
- Get recognised
- Feel capable of my ability
- Recognition of my hard work
- People think what I do is worth reading
- If it’s best-selling then I’ve spent my time in a meaningful way
This now gives you a list of reasons you think you want this dream.
A thing you may notice is your initial reasons are shallow like making money or becoming famous but the longer you force yourself to write the deeper the reasons get.
Compare your first reasons to your last reasons.
There is definitely going to be a contrast between them.
What this step gives you is knowledge about your intentions, and what you REALLY want.
That’s powerful.
This allows you to adapt the wording of your goals to be more specific to your reasons for completing it.
For example,
Initial: Publish a best-selling novel
Motivation: The book is indicative of time well spent
Modified: Publish a book that I am proud of
Our next step is becoming time-bound.
2) Goal Timeframe
There’s a ‘law’ of human experience called Parkinson’s Law.
Parkinson’s Law states that “Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion”.
What does this mean?
It means that the time you set to complete your goal is how long it will take.
This doesn’t matter how expansive or shortsighted your goal is.
If you have a simple goal that can be reached in a day and you set 6 months to complete it you are going to procrastinate and put it off because you can.
The opposite happens with a goal that can be reached in 2 years that’s restricted to 1 year. You WILL work tirelessly every day to reach that goal in half the time.
This rule is a powerful one to understand.
Applying Parkinson’s Law
What we want to be doing with our goals is make them time-bound.
If there’s no timeline for your goals, then you’ll NEVER reach your goal.
It’s just how these things work.
In our second step, we want to map out how long our goal SHOULD take and then restrict it to how long it WILL take.
In this step write approximately how long your goal will take to achieve on average. Then restrict it to at least a quarter less of the time.
For example;
Initial: Publish a best-selling novel
Reason: The book is indicative of time well spent.
Modified: Publish a book that I’m proud of
Time frame: 2 years
Restricted time frame: 1 year
Now you have a specifically worded goal and a timeframe in which it will be completed.
For me, this looks like,
I will publish a book in one year that I am proud of
Specifics are what we’re looking for.
If you’re not specific about your goals you may as well not even set them.
3) Goal Systems
A goal is meaningless without actionable steps.
If you don’t understand how your dreams will be achieved how the hell are you supposed to hit it?
In this step, we want to focus on the daily activities that let us progress to our goals in the timeframe set.
For this step, you need to write EXACTLY what you’ll do every single day to achieve your goals in the time frame. Write the phrase “I will achieve this goal by . . .” and fill in the rest. For example,
I will publish a book in one year that I am proud of
System: I will achieve this goal by writing 1000 words a day in my novel
In the End . . .
Congratulations! Now you have a goal aligned with your true intentions that is time-bound and accompanied by a daily system to complete it.
If you follow these three steps;
- Clarity
- Timeframe
- Systems
You WILL be left with a deeply motivational goal.
Feel free to complete the process for all of your goals for the coming year.
I hope your goals give you fulfillment and happiness.
Goodbye and Goodluck
Happy Goal Setting 🙂
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