Friday 4 January 2013

Goal attainment - Lumberjack style

Who wakes up on a Friday morning and thinks, "Maybe I could write a blog before work?"

I stayed up late last night finishing off my new years goals.  I did something interesting this year that I learned from a great book I read on personal development, called The Compound Effect. You should read it.  It's very good.

One thing I learned (and I'm not sure it was from the book, but it was from the author, Darren Hardy) was to take your goal setting a few steps further than most do.

When you set a goal, they can be pretty abstract.  Pay off debt, lose 15 pounds, buy a car. And not only that, but attaining those goals seems like a binary operation - either you do, or you don't.  That's it.  You haven't achieved your goal.  Until you drive home with the car.  Or tip the scale 15 pounds lighter.

The problem is, you don't have to change your lifestyle to hit a goal that way.  You just get your goal, and then stop sprinting.

So, this year, I did things a little differently.  I set my goals.  Then I made them bigger.  Then I took half an hour per area of my life (personal/professional/business), and I considered and wrote out WHAT ACTIONS I could take WHENEVER I WAS THINKING ABOUT IT that would get me a little step closer to my goals.

Now, when I look at my goals, I don't think, "ah, shoot, I can't buy the car today.  Guess I'd better save a little more." and then walk away and forget about it.  Instead, I think, "Who could I call? What could I do today? Right NOW? To get closer to my goal?"

It's like I went through the forest and marked all the trees I wanted to chop down, but then I also bought an axe.  And now, even if I don't have time to cut down a whole tree, I'm walking around with an axe.  And it's pretty easy to find time to take a few swings.  Especially when you know which tree you want to chop down, and you know there's a couple chunks out of it already.

Will you try it with me this year?  Let me know what you think.

1 comment:

  1. Man this is totally inspiring. Lol, I guess it's not enough to say so... time to put it into action. My first step I've decided is to limit my goals... and learn to focus.

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