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.

It feels kind of stupid. I blog about goal setting and related topics and investigate my subject, learning new things on a week by week basis. And although I have learned a lot about the theory, putting it to practice gives you entirely new insights or even a plain understanding of things I have blogged about already. In this series I’m discussing the mistakes I made, including live examples of my current goals. And where needed I’m correcting or adjusting them.

Mistake 1: Too many goals

I worked my way through discovering my core values. Translated them into a mission statement, and ended up defining goals based on that mission statement. I used a method of five different states in life, and set goals for all of them. But I didn’t keep it at a single goal, I set multiple goals for every different state.

In the end I ended up with 12 goals! And I was being ambitious with these goals too! Now there’s nothing wrong with ambitious (or even ridiculous) goals, as long as you don’t have too many of them at the same time! A total of 12 goals will divide your attention to the point that it’s hard to focus. And focus is important when setting goals and when working on them to achieve success.

Example: Two ridiculous goals at the same time

The goals:
Two of my goals were very ambitious when I stated them. They are:

1. By December 2007 the renovation of the 2nd floor of our house is finished and the office is ready for use
2. By December 2007 I have over 2500 RSS subscribers on my blog

The problem:
There was a lot (and I mean a LOT) of work to do on the renovation, and getting that goal done would have taken most of my spare time. Or, when outsourcing it, a lot of my money and I wasn’t prepared to pay up. The other goal was crazy as well. I set it mid September, and at the time I was at 200-something subscribers.

Are these goals doable? Yes they are, but not at the same time! Crazy goals are OK, but too many simultaneous and they WILL drive you crazy!

The solution:
Although I hate it as a solution, one of the goals is scheduled out. Realistically, the renovation will not be ready by the end of the year. I did a lot of work, but there’s simply too much work to be done. I also need to outsource some of it and that has not been arranged yet. So the deadline for this is scheduled out by two months to February 29, 2008.

I’ll keep the 2500 subscribers as a goal. Yeah it’s crazy! And I can use all the help I can get, so if you have any suggestions to achieve this, leave it in the comments or send me an email at lodewijkvdb (at) gmail (dot) com.

Goal Setting Rules

So what are the lessons here?

1. Too many goals will divert your attention, while you need focus to be successful.
2. A ridiculous goal is OK, but don’t have several simultaneously.

Rocket science? Hardly, yet I fell into these pitfalls anyway.

Tomorrow: Mistake 2: Colliding Deadlines

Don’t you just hate it when you have to set goals to get things done? They are an evil way of making sure you have to put in those extra -often unpaid- hours, to accomplish more than you’re hired for. And if you fail, that’s a reason to withhold your bonus, or even your yearly raise.

This is a list with 47 simple words you can use to sabotage goals. Use these words when formulating goals and they are bound for failure, so if you don’t want to get caught not accomplishing goals, make sure you use these words. The more the better!

1. To try
   Try and you will fail. Well, you’re not saying that you’re failing, but you are implying that failure is a very realistic option.
2. To attempt
   Attempting is a more sophisticated way of saying you are going to try. Sounds a lot better, still doesn’t guarantee success.
3. To aim for
   When you aim to achieve a goal, you never said you were going to do anything to accomplish now is it? If you aim an arrow, it wasn’t going to shoot itself at the goal, right?
4. To hope for
   Express that you hope to achieve the goal sounds good. It shows your intention, but you can always blame someone else when the goal is not accomplished. Click to continue »

Photo by Planetxau

The way you formulate goals is important. By choosing the right words you can consciously and unconsciously empower yourself to achieve them. But you can formulate them in a bad way that will have failure and doubt built in. And unfortunately people are inclined to define goals in such a way that they undermine their ability to achieve them.

This tendency comes from the desire not to fail. People try to prevent failure, and as such have a tendency to formulate goals in such a way that it’s remains possible to smooth talk yourself out of it when the actual results appear different from the intended results. This is behavior that will prevent you from achieving what you want to achieve.

There are seven rules to comply to when formulating goals. These rules are meant to empower you and maximize the probability of you actually accomplishing your goal. Click to continue »

On Tuesdays I write about Living my Legend. This section is inspired by The Alchemist and is an account of my journey of living my potential.

In this article I will be detailing my mission statement into guidelines and goals. But first a quick recap of the previous two articles.

My five personal core values are:

Love - Fun - Freedom - Authenticity - Growth

They are the basis for my mission statement:

I, Lodewijk van den Broek, love life and have a lot of love to give. I enjoy authentic growth and I help others to grow. I’m here to have lots of fun and enjoy my freedom in comfort and vitality.

Why make guidelines and goals?
My values define what I want to experience in this life, and my mission works as a compass to point me in the right direction. These are fairly static, they will not change very often and changes will most likely be minor. To be of practical use on a day to day basis, they need to be translated into workable guidelines and goals, that can be more dynamic and adapt to changing circumstances.

Guidelines are ‘rules’ I want to live by, that find their roots in my mission statement and in my personality. They can be formulated ambitiously, meaning that I may not live by those rules yet. Goals are simply what they are: goals. Things I want to achieve, formulated in a SMART way.

And with the guidelines and goals, I can define habits changes, projects and actions to start working on getting them done, to attain my goals and live by my guidelines. Click to continue »

I have a guest post today at Change Your Thoughts, Steven Aitchison’s blog. Please check it out and tell me what you think:

• Without vision you’re flying blind

Change your thoughts…to change your life is the full title of the blog. It’s about goal setting, consciousness, psychology and intentions and other related topics. Steven Aitchison is working on becoming a professional blogger, and as such writes about how he does this and about his progress.