Goal Setting

I am a big believer in the power of setting goals. The following is an aggregation of tips that I have picked up from a variety of writers on the subject and coloured by my own experience. Where possible I have tried to build these into LifeGoals so that you can apply them automatically.

Goal Setting Secret 1 - Take action on one of your goals every day. Goals without action are just dreams.

Goal Setting Secret 2 - Every time you complete a task that moves you toward achieving a goal you should reward yourself. A bit Pavlovian I know but it works.

Goal Setting Secret 3 - Failure is the sign post to success. The biggest achievers have failed many more times than those that don’t succeed. There has been a lot written about this and numerous examples of people that had to overcome huge obstacles before becoming an “overnight success”.  The trick is to treat failure as a lesson. If you fail Life is telling you to try something else - it’s called experience and if you give up after failing then you have wasted the lesson.

Goal Setting Secret 4 - Visualising achievement of your goals is important but action is better. This is where "The Secret" goes wrong in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big believer in visualising yourself achieving your goals, but I don’t think that this is enough. Visualisation exercises will open you up to opportunities but you still need to grab them yourself. It is like the old joke...

A man is caught in a flood so he climbs onto the roof of his house. He is not worried because he has always been a good Catholic and gone to church every Sunday. If I pray, God will provide he thinks. As the water slowly raises, a log floats past but the man ignores it. God will look after me. The water is now lapping at his feet and a man in a boat motors over. “Would you like a lift?” he asks. “No, no, God will provide.” The man shrugs and heads off. The water is now up to his neck and a helicopter comes past and drops a rope to him. “Climb up!” Shouts the pilot. The man waves back, “No need, God will look after me.” A short time later the man drowns. When he meets God he is not happy, “What happened?” He complains, “Haven’t I always been a good Catholic? Why didn’t you help me??” “Who do you think sent the log, boat and helicopter?” God replies.

So visualise by all means, but don’t forget to act as well.

Goal Setting Secret 5 - Don't wait until the 1st January to design your life. Start today. Studies have shown that people who are action oriented tend to be more successful. This is a habit that you can purposely develop.

Goal Setting Secret 6 - Our life is the accumulation of individual decisions. To change your life you need to make different decisions. A lot of people allow themselves to be swept along by the current of life. If you do this there is no telling where you may end up. Usually it isn’t where you wanted to be. If you want a better life, set better goals and act on them!

Goal Setting Secret 7 - If you want financial freedom spend your time and money on value generating assets. Recurring passive income is the key to becoming financially independent. A lot of stuff that we buy becomes increasingly worthless over time. Similarly, we spend a lot of time on things that create no value (TV anybody). Time is precious, it is the one thing that you can’t make more of, so use it wisely. Your biggest asset is probably yourself so look after it, exercise it, insure it and educate it. An interesting exercise is to work out what you would need in shares or other income generating assets to replace your primary income. This is one measure of your fiscal value - just like any other asset you need to maintain it. Remember that your current knowledge has a half life of 2 years, if you don’t keep learning then your value is decreasing.

Goal Setting Secret 8 - Although most goals will take longer than you expect, you can achieve more in 5 years than you realise. Progress in a new goal can initially be slow. This has to do with momentum and unfortunately most people give up on their goals too easily. You need to push through the initial steep learning curve until your first small wins give you impetus to continue. Perseverance is the key. Unfortunately there are no short cuts, if there was a way to get what you want easily and quickly then you would know about it - believe me, there are plenty of people looking for shortcuts. My wife and I set a goal to produce our own wine. We bought the land in 2000, completed a viticulture and wine science degree respectively and now 10 years later we are releasing our first vintage. Looking back, it was bloody hard work but achieving that goal has really meant a lot to us. If we knew in 2000 that it would take 10 years would we have still done it? Probably not, but you know what, in 10 years time you will still be 10 years older, so why not spend the time on creating something meaningful for you? Not knowing how hard something will be in advance is a blessing, but you do need to be able to continue when things get tough.

Goal Setting Secret 9: To make time for a new goal you need to sacrifice something else. What are you willing to give up to change? You only have a limited amount of time every day (24 hours, or 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds). Everyone gets the same and barring advances in quantum theory we aren’t making anymore. So no matter wether you are Einstein or (*insert your role model here*), we all have the same amount of time every day. It is how you choose to spend that time which will determine the quality of your life. Stephen Covey said, “The key is not to prioritise what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

What does this mean? Well if you want to change your life, change what you spend your time doing. It is that simple. Want to get fit?  Then spend time exercising. There is no other way.

5 Reasons That New Year Resolutions Fail and what to do about it!

As New Year's Eve rolls around we all tend to look back over the last year and score ourself on how well we did. If we met most of our goals then that reaffirms our self worth and encourages us to set new challenges for the next year.

Alternatively, if we didn't do so well in meeting our objectives, we tell ourselves that they weren't that important or we were too busy. Though you have to wonder why we would set ourself goals that were not important to us.

The good news is that there is a fool proof method to achieving your goals. Why goals are not achieved has been studied by many people and this problem has been solved. So why do so many people get to Valentines Day and they have already broken their New Years Resolution?

In my experience the following 5 things are why we don't meet our goals:

1. 1.You didn't write them down. This has got to be the number 1 reason. There is so much going on in our life that you can't possibly hope to remember everything. Writing down our goals starts the commitment process. It is hard to fool yourself if the evidence is right in front of you. The process of writing also forces you to think about what is really important to you, which may come as a surprise. Some of you may have read "The Secret", while I don't agree with the whole premise (see next point), I do believe that clarifying what you want will open you up to opportunities to progress a goal.
   

2. 2.You didn't do anything. I know "The Secret" suggests that simply focussing on a goal will cause it to be realised, however in my experience things go a lot faster if you take action. For example, one of my goals this year was to release an iPhone App and sell it on iTunes. To do that I broke the goal down and planned what steps I needed to take to get there. I needed to buy a Mac, learn objective C, XCode, Cocoa Touch, sign up for the Apple Developer Program, write code, debug, unravel the mysteries of code deployment and then negotiate the labyrinth which is iTunes Connect. I'm pretty sure if I just wrote the goal down but did nothing I wouldn't now be getting monthly deposits from Apple. So I suggest you break your goal down into tasks and start doing the tasks. It's like the old joke about how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
   

3. 3.You didn't give up something else. Each day, we all only have so much time (24 hours on Earth). So unless you are near a black hole or travelling at close to the speed of light then we all have the same amount of time each day. Your days are already full so in order to meet your new goals you need to allocate some time to take action (see point 2). Not only do you need to decide what you are going to do, you need to decide what you are going to stop doing. If you aren't willing to give up something (e.g. watching 8 hours of TV a day) then you will fail. A common mistake here is to try and go cold turkey. You don't have to give up all TV, whatever you are willing to do without is time you can spend on your goals. Remember these are your goals, no-one else should determine what is important to you and if the most important thing for you is to watch 8 hours of TV a day then write it down and take action. But if it isn't then allocate some time to what is. As Stephen Covey said, "The key is not to prioritise what's on your schedule but to schedule your priorities."
   

4. 4.You weren't sufficiently motivated. Related to point 3, you have to be motivated enough to give up something you are already doing. The best motivators are Pain and Pleasure, in that order. So when you write down your goals you need to link them to these motivators and if possible to both of them. To exercise you might need to get up an hour earlier in the morning. Your motivation to get up needs to be stronger than your motivation to stay in a warm bed. This might be the endorphin rush you get after exercising (Pleasure), feeling better about yourself (Pleasure) or not dying early from being overweight (Pain). Habit is your friend - get yourself motivated enough to do this 21 days in a row and it will get easier.
   

5. 5.You think it will take too long. I hear people say, "I would love to do blah but it will take 5 years." Guess how much older you are going to be in five years time? That's right 5 years. The time will pass anyway so why not spend it doing something that is important to you?
   

The best news is that all of the above is in our hands, so by all means set your New Year's Resolutions tonight, but make sure you also take the above into account.