If you’ve read books about goalsetting (and you probably have), you know that when you do something, having goals and committing to achieving them is a very effective way to get results. Often better results than when no goals were set to begin with. A lot of times these statements are proven with either examples from sports, or examples with a financial basis. The examples show two things:
- that goals need to be measurable (or even S.M.A.R.T.)
- that it can be done
I find these books valuable with respect to the first point. The second point is often defined in a way that is not involving you, the reader. They are examples from olympic athletes, self-made millionairs, get-out-of-debt single moms etc. People we admire, but have a hard time identifying with. So we know that it is possible, but do we know that we can do it? In the next paragraphs I’ll show you that you can, and probably have done a lot of times already (albeit without you knowing, ironically).
I live with my family in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Every now and then we visit family in Amstelveen, a town near Amsterdam, which is a 120 kilometer drive by car over one of the busiest highways in the country. One time, while I was driving, I became aware of the many choices I was making while driving, and the wide variety of resources I was using to decide what the best decisions were, and it struck me that the essence of goalsetting and goalachieving was enclosed in this simple trip.
Different decision levels
- On a strategic level, we had already made two choices. One was to go to our family in Amstelveen (the “what”), two was to drive there by car (the “how”). This made me committed to what I wanted to achieve (get to our family), and how we were going to do this (by driving a car).
- On a tactical level, I was making all kinds of choices while driving. In this 120 km drive, you’ll have around 20 exits from the highway and 5 highway crossings. Everyone of them is a decision on the way of achieving my goal, however they were easy decisions as I knew what I wanted to achieve.
- On an operational level, I was simply driving. Accelerating, braking, keeping distance, changing lanes, all kinds of operational stuff that keeps the momentum going. A lot of times, you don’t even know you’re doing it (and probably for the better).
Usage of a wide variety of resources
- Strategic
- My knowledge of transportation options in the Netherlands
- My experience with this trip
- For unknown destinations, there are plenty of resources to make a “how” decision (online route-planning, online public transportation schedules, heck even Google Earth can help you)
- Tactical
- The radio, for traffic information
- The sky, for my shortterm weather forecast
- The roadsigns with information on directions
- The dynamic roadsigns with traffic information
- Operational
- The taillights of the cars in front of me
- The instruments on my dashboard
New information can lead to different decisions. If you’d hear on the radio that a major traffic jam is ahead, you semi-automatically start evaluating tactical options. Continue ahead and accept the traffic jam? Take a detour around it? Stop for petrol and a toilet break? Some people even evaluate strategic options and consider driving to a trainstation, and change to public transportation.
It’s not hard, you’ve probably done it. This example shows that you can do it, as (for most of you) this is a real life example. Now that we established that we can commit to achieving goals, and deal with the decisions needed along the way, we can do it all the time right? Well, if only we mastered the “what” and the “why”…but those are topics for another post.
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