One thing I’ve been pretty good about doing for the past few years – and that I’m surprised that very few other people do – is setting concrete goals for myself. I recently printed out my 100th Week of Goals and thought I should write this article.
The benefit of setting goals doesn’t come from finally reaching them – it comes from the gratification and happiness you experience along the way as you slowly work toward them.
I’m going to outline how I set my goals, to give you some ideas for yourself. It may seem simple, and I’m sure there are plenty of other people who have the same method – but hey, it works!
Before we get started, I should mention Parkinson’s Law:
Parkinson’s “law” basically states that the amount of time you give yourself to do something is how long you will take to do it.
For example, if you say to yourself, “My goal is to run 3 miles sometime in the next 12 months”, you will take the full 12 months to do it. You will dick around and maybe get it done by month 6 or 7, or even wait until month 12.
However, if you shorten that time and say “My goal is to run 3 miles sometime in the next 2 weeks”, you will find a way to get it done within 2 weeks.
Hell, if you give yourself 1 hour to do anything, you will somehow find a way to do it within an hour.
Now, onto my method:
First, I break the goals down into timeframes. The timeframes that I set for my goals are Yearly, Monthly, Weekly, and Daily.
At the beginning of each timeframe, look “up” to see what goals you should accomplish. So for example, at the beginning of the month, when you write your Monthly goals, consult your Yearly goals to see which of those yearly goals you want to work on.
Similarly, when you write your Weekly goals, consult your Monthly goals. And when you write your Daily goals (your to-do list for the day), consult your Weekly goals.
Secondly, (and this part may not be as important but it helps me), organize all your goals into one of 4 categories:
- Mental Health
- Physical Health
- Social Health
- Financial Health
EXAMPLE:
Weekly Goals September 4 – September 10
Mental Health:
- Do mental improvement exercise for 5 nights
- Make video tour of office
- Make list of MIT online courses to take
Physical Health:
- Do a stretching exercise
- Schedule Doctor’s checkup
Social Health:
- Send birthday card to Dad
- Join one new Meetup group
- Work on letter to send to Mark P.
- Go to happy hour with John on Tuesday
Financial Health:
- Call Hostgator and dispute charges on credit card
- Create updated resume
- Talk with Dave about meeting up for business mentoring
Each day during this week of September 4 – 10, I will consult this list of Weekly goals and pick a few items that I can get done during that day.
You’re not going to be able to complete all your goals, but don’t worry about that. Aim high! Because even if you only partially succeed, you’ll still be very successful because you aimed so high.
Overall, I set 49 yearly goals for myself for 2016, and accomplished 25 of them. This is right on target – I usually find myself only completing half the goals I set for myself.
If you’re curious, here are some sample yearly goals I accomplished in 2016:
- Sing and play a song by myself in public
- Go skydiving
- Run 3 miles
- Read 12 books
- Write 5 letters to friends
And here are some goals that I set for myself, but did not complete:
- Meditate every week
- Visit an intentional community
- Enroll in an improv class
- Record one episode of Austin Real and post to the public
- Write a letter to the Future of Humanity Institute
This goal-setting plays a large part of my overall self-improvement process. There are some other improvement exercises I do – I will write about those in the future.
I hope that this helps you and I encourage you to try it out!