Goals Are For Life…Not Just For New Year!

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So yesterday I had an exchange on Twitter with Davina Brewer of  3 Hats Communications prompted by the tweet you can see here.

If you can’t read it – depending on your screen size and resolution – Davina wrote: Still haven’t finished the Resolutions post.  At this pace, I’ll know what I’m shooting for by March.”

This interested me because the whole ‘Goal Setting’ thing is something I’m working on at the moment.  So I tweeted that I’d write something that might help her.  And maybe it will help you too.

Why Most People’s ‘New Year’ Goals Can Go Straight In The Trash

How many posts have you read already with 2012 goals on them?  I want to lose weight.  I want to get more traffic.  I want to earn more money.  I want to quit smoking.  I want to get a boyfriend/girlfriend.  Yada yada yada.

Sadly most of the goals you’ve read are just noise.  And the people who’ve written them may as well print them onto a piece of paper and toss it straight into the trash.

Because they’ve not done the ‘work’ necessary to make achieving that goal a success.

What Work Is Needed To Make Goal Setting A Success?

There are three things you need to do:

1. You need to have a clear and specific goal of what you want to achieve – and a compelling reason why you want to achieve it.
2. You need to break that goal down into ‘steps’ on the path – and then break those steps into ‘baby steps.’  (In the process you need to identify where there are knowledge gaps that need to be bridged, and take stock of what forces are arrayed against you and what allies you have).
3. You need to ruthlessly track your goals so that you can monitor your progress, do more of what is working, and correct what is not working.

Let’s look at these steps in some more detail.

1. Setting Clear And Specific Goals

Most people’s goals fail the minute they write them down.  That’s because their goals are vague and non-specific:

• I want to lose some weight
• I want to generate more revenue for my business
• I want to get better at ___________(insert your chosen hobby here)

These goals are just too vague to act on.  What does success and failure look like at these goals?  If you want (or need) to lose some weight, is it 10 pounds?  20 Pounds?  30 pounds?

Defining what your goal is exactly helps with actually being able to create a plan that will deliver a concrete result.  This step is where most people fail with their ‘new year resolutions’ – the resolution they have is vague and unspecific, and maybe they’ll go the gym a couple of times in early New Year, and eat a bit healthier (more fruit, less chocolate).

But over time inertia kicks in and they resume their original behaviour.  That’s why you have to move from setting a clear and specific goal in Step 1 to creating a plan that will deliver the result you want in Step 2.

2.  Creating An Action Plan

So let’s say you decide you need to lose 20 pounds.  Now you have to make the decisions of exactly how you are going to lose that weight.

Is it by dieting?

If so what diet are you going to follow – there are a bazillion different diets out there like Weightwatchers, Atkins, Beach Diet, Warrior Diet and so on.  You need to do some research and work out which diets are scientifically sound and will actually work – and also which work with you.

If you’re going to be aiming to lose weight you probably should be thinking about more exercise as well as diet.  If so, how many times a week are you going to exercise?  What type of exercise are you going to do?  And how long for?

All these questions need to be answered so that you can create a clear plan to follow that will lead you to achieving your goal.

There are two important steps at this part of the process too – setting a date for when the goal is to be achieved.  Let’s say you want to lose 20 pounds in 10 weeks, then you know you have to hit 2 pounds a week.  If you’ve got 20 weeks to lose the weight in, then you only need to lose 1 pound a week.  This is critical information as we’ll see in Step 3.

And finally you need to work out who are your allies and who are your ‘enemies.’  Allies are people who help you towards your goal – whether by sharing exercise with you, or phoning you up and saying how did you do this week, and then congratulating and encouraging you.

Enemies are people who don’t want to see you succeed.  If you’re deadly serious about your goal…you need to ruthlessly exclude them from your life because they WILL try and sabotage your efforts.

If you don’t believe me, announce to all your friends that you’re going on a diet for 20 weeks to lose a pound a week and you need your friends help….wait a week or so and watch as people drop by for a coffee unannounced and bring cake, or invite you out for dinner at the most calorific restaurants in town.  (This section could be a series of posts on its own….for brevity I’m just going to tell you that some goals have to be kept to yourself and you have to be ruthless about protecting them).

Once you’ve done this step you’ve gone further than 95% plus of people who have New Year Resolutions.  But the chances of failure are still high unless you move onto step 3.

3. Track Your Progress

Imagine you are flying from JFK to London Heathrow – I bet you didn’t know that around 95% of the time you are technically off course.

And this makes a beautiful analogy for the whole goal setting process.

What happens is that the crew take a measurement of their flight path – find out that because of variable wind speed and direction they are marginally off course, and then make an alteration to their course that puts them back on track.

This happens throughout the flight – and despite the fact that they are technically off course for the bulk of the flight they always lands on the mile or so of concrete and tarmac that airline visualized they would land on when they scheduled the flight.

So tracking your progress is absolutely and unequivocally vital if you are actually going to make progress.  It helps you identify what’s working and more importantly, what’s NOT working.

If you find something is not working, then you can correct it and get yourself back on track.

Going back to weight loss, if you follow a plan like Weightwatchers here’s what you’ll do if you follow it properly: you’ll write down in precise detail everything that you eat.  And each piece of food will have some kind of points value – and a successful day is a day where you don’t exceed the amount of points that you’ve been allocated for the day.

String seven successful days together and you have a successful week.

String four (or five) successful weeks together and you have a successful month.

String five months together and you’ve completed your 20 week goal.

But that success all flows from this one simple task: WRITING EVERYTHING DOWN.   I’ve come to believe this: if you don’t write it down, you’ll fail.  If you write it down you’ll have more success than you could possibly imagine.

This is because at the end of the day you review how you’ve done for the day – and every day you have to look at yourself in the mirror and hold yourself accountable.  For sure we all have days where we don’t meet our goals for whatever reason – that DOES happen.

All it means is that you’ve been blown slightly off course and you need to take a course correction to get back on track.

Unless you write everything down – and review what you’re doing – you can’t make that correction and the chances of not achieving your goal increase.

Why Goals Are For Life…Not Just For New Year

A New Year marks an obvious point to make resolutions.  But there is definitely an art to setting goals that are achievable – and putting a plan into action to achieve them.

And your goals WILL change along the journey – as you get older, as new influences come into your life, as new things gain importance.

When these events happen you should set goals in the manner I’ve outlined to achieve your new plans.  And if it’s the middle of the year why wait until the following New Year to crystallize a goal and a plan to achieve it?

That’s six months of your life wasted.  You’ll never get that back.

You should have multiple goals too, in different areas of your life.  But here’s my advice – start off with one thing, just one thing, that you really want to achieve in the next six month and use this process with that one thing, whatever it is.

If you follow this process religiously you’ll stagger yourself with what you achieve in just a month.  And once you’ve taken this goal achievement process for a test drive and you see for yourself the results, then it’s time to add it to different areas of your life (health, wealth and self are the obvious three).

Goal Setting Resources

Am I a ‘goo-roo’ of goal setting?  Nope, absolutely not.  I’ve been using two resources to help me with this process.

Pick Four By Seth Godin/Zig Ziglar

This is a series of four ‘performance planners’ that each cover 12 weeks of your life.  There’s a sketch of the process I outline above – and then the main use of these diaries is to each night record your progress towards your goals.

I’ve started putting my planner under my pillow – so that I’m reminded to fill it in every single night.  Yep you could create some documents in Word or Pages and print them out and fill those in….but there’s something ‘different’ about having a planner to fill in.  Seriously, take a punt – it’s only $20.

There’s also an interesting introduction by Seth Godin in here that you should definitely check out as well.

The second item is a bit pricier – but I highly recommend it:

How To Stay Motivated Vol 3 – The Goals Program

This is a series of 6 CDs by ‘motivational speaker’ Zig Ziglar.  It will set you back $150 or so…but it is great ‘walking fodder’ to listen to on your iPod or iPhone – and the process is outlined in great detail by Zig and really helps you take those crucial first steps (committing to a goal, breaking it down into a plan, and recording your progress).

If you want to achieve something…you need to visualize achieving it and take concrete steps towards doing it.  These two resources will definitely help you.

Your Shout?

As always, post your thoughts and comments below, or ask any questions about the goal setting process.  (As I said above, I’m no goo-roo, but this is a process I’m going through at the moment.)

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