Goals and Goal Setting

I’m one of those people who have stubbornly made new years resolutions for many years. Sometimes they stick and sometimes they don’t.

What I’ve learned about what works and what doesn’t comes down to these core lessons:

1. focus on action rather than results
2. Write it somewhere you will look at regularly – and rewrite the goals often as you break them into monthly, weekly and daily actions
3. measurable is best

Lets dig in.

Action over Results

I might have in my mind that I want to lose 10lbs this year, but the effective resolution that will help me get there has been to record my weight every day. When recording my weight it keeps things in mind often enough that progress happens by default – because I can take action everytime that my weight unexpectedly goes up.

Here’s a couple more examples:

Instead of 500 Youtube followers – goal is to publish at least 1 video a week

Instead of the goal to build some AI software – it’s to commit code to git everyday.

The lower the level of action that can be measured the more likely it has been for me to make progress on it.

Write it Somewhere Obvious

Goals that disappear behind and app, on a sticky note burried in a pile of paper, or in the middle of a journal will tend to be forgotten within days. You cannot hit a goal that you’ve forgotten about.

Sometimes even if it’s just on a big billboard right in front of your face all day you can still be blinded by it.

That’s why I like to re-write the goals often, revisit your goal list at the beginning of every month. Pick the goals that can be broken down into something that can be accomplished for the month and rewrite into a monthly goal, then every day of the month rewrite the goal into the day’s action to take.

Write it by hand – makes it more real and the tediousness of re-writing adds motivation to get it done.

Measurable Output

Something like the goal of 500 YouTube subs isn’t entirely in your control. There’s algorithms, and luck involved in catching the right moment in time with the right video.

Publishing a weekly video is in your control, it’s a cadence that you set, and hopfully can meet. The quality of that video can be as good as you can make in the time allocated to it, and hopefully with repetition, the quality improves.

I prefer to have measurable items that are dependant on me and remove uncertainty about the finished result. Writing code vs features delivered, videos published vs subscribers gained, emails sent vs converted sales.