On Sundays I’m looking back on the past week. How did I perform towards my goals? How did my blog do? And how am I keeping up with my Getting Things Done system and Zen to Done habits?

Blog performance

This week I hardly wrote on the blog. This had to do with the aftermath of the home invasion from last weekend and preparations for the last weekend of NLP, which included the testing.

Despite the lack of articles, there are nice stats for this week. RSS subscribers are still rising, but to get to my goal something miraculous needs to happen.

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Yes, it’s that time of year again. New Year’s Resolutions!

Essentially new year’s resolutions are simply goals or habit changes, but they are used by more people because they are somewhat of a tradition. The problem with new year’s resolutions is that they fail so often. The intention is right, but most people fail to adopt the right strategies. All in all, you do want them to work all year long (and preferably after that too!).

Steve calls on us to start planning ahead, instead of waiting for the last minute. Over at Change Your Thoughts, you can download a guide to make your New Year’s Revolutions, and a 21 minute talk about it too. Need more inspiration?

One of the popular resolutions is to lose weight. It made it to the top 5 list of WebMD, both for men and women. Aaron over at Today is that day, points out very well that you may need to shed some (mental) baggage, before you can make it work this time.

For business you can check IttyBiz for a series of marketing tips for small companies, to get more business (Naomi did some mind reading for you there). And how to make your business resolutions stick is another great article, that happens to be very applicable for personal goals also.

Bloggers (or writers actually) can find inspiration for resolutions at the Publishing Spot. And if you happen to be in personal development, Ian stated his resolutions on his blog as well, although there are a lot of self-sabotaging words in that list.

And finally, you can check 7 highly effective resolutions at the Ririan Project. Still not enough, check out the ToDoList-blog for tips to find resolutions. List parties! Yeah

This month I learned some goal setting lessons…the hard way! I’ve been working with setting goals and blogging about it for a couple of months now. And I made some mistakes. Preventable mistakes? Maybe, but honest mistakes anyway. This is a series of posts about those mistakes.

Mistake 4: Moving Targets

After all the earlier mistakes there’s the pitfall of the moving target. This happens when you set a goal to achieve something, but the end result isn’t entirely clear.

You start working on them enthusiastically, and while you work you get new insight and ideas. And they end up in the desired end result, consciously or subconsciously. There nothing really wrong with adjusting the desired goal as you go along, as long as you don’t lose sight of your original objective.

The phenomenon can be very demotivating. It’s like running a 5k race, only to find out that with every two steps you take, the finish line moves a step away. While you’re running this is not a big issue, but as soon as that finish line comes in sight (after running 7k!) … it’s not funny anymore.

Here’s the phenomenon in a first hand example.

Example: Get that garden done
The goal:

1. By December 2007 the garden in the front and back have been redone and are safe for children

The problem:
When I initially set this goal, I wanted to redo the garden for two reasons. It wasn’t safe for children and it wasn’t any fun for children.

The deadline was set for the end of the year, because I wanted to get it done before winter. Or rather, I wanted it to be ready for use in spring, because that would be the time that Jesse would walk and starts playing outside in the garden.

To have it ready by spring, the garden needs to be done before winter. During the winter you can’t really work in the garden anyway, and I wanted the new lawn to have strong roots before it gets abused in spring.

No problem so far actually. The goal is quantified, albeit a bit digital: it’s either done or not.

But while I was working on the garden, all kinds of ideas popped up in my mind. And I ended up adding them to the desired end result subconsciously. Which isn’t a bad thing necessarily, I know I want to have those features in the garden. But they weren’t part of the goal!

Two of these items, and they happen to be the ones that have yet to be conducted are:

• Planting two trees in the back of the garden.
• Moving the door in the fence to the other side of the garden

The trees need to come purely for cosmetic reasons, they need to block the view we have on an ugly building. And the door needs to move, so I can enter and leave the garden easily with my motorcycle. Two great ideas! But what do they have to do with making the garden safe for kids?

The solution:
In retrospect I can say that this goals has been completed for quite some weeks already. I still have little projects to do, but they weren’t part of the goal and I will do them anyway. The goal has been accomplished.

I could have prevented this if I would have lined out what the checkpoints were for the accomplishment of this goal. This could have been a list like this:

• Remove toxic plants from garden
• Remove big level differences, where kids can fall from heights to a hard floor
• Remove sharp objects, like nails and bushes with thorns
• Add a lawn where kids can play
• Add a sandbox with sand that’s safe for kids (and remains so by using a lid to prevent cats from ‘using’ it)

These would have been the “must-do’s” to accomplish this goal. Painting the fence wasn’t part of that list, it got done, but wasn’t necessary for accomplishing this goal. As are planting trees for cosmetic reasons and moving doors for transportation reasons.

Goal Setting Rules

So what are the lessons here?

1. Make a list of must-do’s for goals where the end-result is an idea or concept
2. It’s OK to do more than planned, as long as you at least do what you planned

This was the last article in the series. Well, for now anyway

On Sundays I’m looking back on the past week. How did I perform towards my goals? How did my blog do? And how am I keeping up with my Getting Things Done system and Zen to Done habits?

Blog performance

I changed the color scheme of my blog a little, it’s brighter now and the black and green have been replaced by icy shades of blue. I think it’s easier on the eyes and the lighter colors are more uplifting than the black. I was triggered to look into the color scheme by Justin Lilly who gave me a lot of feedback out of the blue. Thanks Justin!

The number of visitors dropped considerably, but that was as expected. StumbleUpon can give a huge rush of traffic, but it dries up again pretty fast too. Although they will continue to send traffic for many more months for popular articles.

Subscriber numbers (I renamed you all Originals!) broke the 500 barrier for the first time! The weekly average hasn’t yet, but it’s a nice increase. Not 2500 yet, but I’m very glad that there are so many of you already joining in.

Click to continue »

This month I learned some goal setting lessons…the hard way! I’ve been working with setting goals and blogging about it for a couple of months now. And I made some mistakes. Preventable mistakes? Maybe, but honest mistakes anyway. This is a series of posts about those mistakes.

Mistake 3: Not Quantifying Enough

Goals represent things that you want to achieve. But not everything is quantitative, or expressed in numbers if you will. There are qualitative goals too, and those are usually about changing habits.

The problem with these goals is that you start enthusiastically, but never really know when it’s finished. Some habits changes have it built in, ‘quit smoking’ for instance is a habit change with a very measurable end result. But there are lots of other habit changes that don’t necessarily have a defined end result. You need to define when the habit change is a success.

Other habit changes are more of a means to a goal. Why do you want to change that habit? What is it that you want to achieve exactly? Do you just want to run twice a week? Or do you want to be able to run a marathon twice a year? If it’s the latter, state that as the goal. The habit change is only a way to get there (and an incomplete one too!).

Example: Qualitative habit changes
The goals:

1. Starting August 2007 I change my sleeping pattern to rising early, so I can spend more quality time with my family
2. Starting October 2007 I actively call, mail or see friends or family on at least four days a week.
3. Starting September 2007 I review my mission, guidelines and goals on a weekly basis
4. Starting September 2007 I workout five times a week, alternating running and weight lifting

The problem:
These goals have no end, because they lack a measurable end result, a criterion to define success. They start at a point in time, but when can I say: OK, this is a success!

Goal 1 was a major habit change, that I blogged about in the Early Bird Challenge. It was a success, and still is, but how did I define this? For this particular goal, I wanted to change to rising early (4:30 am) during August. I ended up at 5:00 am, and have sustained it pretty much ever since. But I never quantified when the sustained habit change was a real success? I also wanted to spend more quality time (oops: self-sabotage) with my family. But I did not quantify it.

As far as goal 2, 3 and 4 are concerned: when is it a success? After a week? Two weeks? Ten? A year?

Goal 2: What is the result I want to achieve with that habit change? Do I want it just to do it, or is there something else? Obviously I don’t want to stalk and harass my family and friends to meet my goal.

Something similar for the workouts. What defines a workout? Is picking up my 10 kilo son also lifting weights? Is working on home renovation a workout? And what do I want to achieve anyway? The running obviously is a means towards running half a marathon next year. But lifting weights?

The solution:
These goals need rephrasing or redefining. First I ask myself the question: What do I want to achieve with this? Then redefine the goal to a measurable goal.

Goal 1: I wanted to achieve that I’m awake and energetic when my family is awake. To do this, I needed to change my sleeping pattern. Change is successful after a sustained period of at least 5 out of 7 days for 10 weeks.

Goal 2: I want to achieve that I have an active social life. Being a father, working, blogging and pursuing goals can consume loads of time, and I don’t want to forget my friends and family. Goal was already rephrased in a weekly review to “Be in contact with…”. Successful if sustained for 10 weeks.

Goal 3: I want to pro-actively create my own reality. I don’t know how to measure that, so there’s no change to formulation. Successful if sustained for 10 weeks.

Goal 4: I want to achieve an athletic body with plenty of stamina. Stamina is measured by my ability to run half a marathon (and survive). Athletic body is measured by the amount of muscle mass (needs to increase) and fat percentage (needs to be reduced). For the latter two I need to do more research on exact figures.

Still not very easy to do, I must admit. But they have improved, and I can measure progress.

Goal Setting Rules

So what are the lessons here?

1. If there’s nothing to measure, you’re not done formulating yet
2. Habit changes are a means to an end, not goals by themselves

This still is a difficult part of goal setting. I’m not sure whether I’ve seen this one through all the way.

I’ll learn as I go along, I guess. I would love to hear your thoughts on this one.

Tomorrow: Mistake 4: Moving Targets