Revisiting Goal Setting

When I started out this year, I created a Google doc to draft my goals for the year. Before we even get into the setting of goals, let's talk about cloud-based document management for a moment. I've used Google Drive for years now, and there's just no other way to do it than to have your documents cloud-based so you can access them from any computer or mobile device. If you're not doing this, please join the 21st century. We're now in 2020, and if you're saving things locally or carrying around a flash drive, please stop. Back to goals. I started a Google doc and jotted down some thoughts. I left the document open, and it is still open as a tab on my browser. I revisited it a few days later and categorized the goals. Looked for themes and trends. I looked at it again, and began to add bullet points under each goal in each category. The original exercise of brainstorming has no evolved into an organic planning document. Here's a suggestion. If you want to have goals for a period of time, write them down. You can print them out and put the list somewhere so you can see it every day, interact with your original thoughts and keep reminding yourself of where you want to be. But wouldn't it be more helpful to take that list and begin to plan and strategize with it? To unpack those things more, and realize as you're moving forward that maybe some of the goals need to be clarified? Adjusted? Perhaps even removed? Goal setting is a fickle thing. I worked with someone years ago who had the same tired question she asked to everyone she interviewed. "Where do you see yourself in five years?" A terrible question if ever there was one. There's no better way to discourage yourself than to set a finite goal for such a significant period of time and then assess your success by whether you've reached that magical five year goal. So much life happens between. What's more, it creates a flawed system where you're tracking goals on multiple five-year time intervals. You have to. Because if you have something you want to add to your long-term goal list, you're establishing a new five year interval for reaching that goal on top of other long-term goals you've already created. Maybe you've had something on that list for two years. Maybe three. So now you're complicating your system with these intervals you're going to have to track because you're gauging your success by a finite period of time. I think a much better system is to create a master document and have that document be organic. To have measurable outcomes associated with each of your goals, but not to have a system where things are locked down and you're simply shooting for a given result by a given time. This is a year for me of experimenting to see whether a more organic system provides an opportunity for more success. Take health and wellness for example. The only specific goal I have this year, thus far, is around running a half marathon in May. I'm training right now for that race and I'm monitoring my weight loss. But I don't have any specific intermediate goals. I don't have a specific training plan. I'm letting things develop, based on where my needs are. My needs, in this case, are dictated by the data I'm collecting on the impact of running on my body. My heart rate specifically. So isn't it somewhat self-defeating if I have a plan of running a particular number of miles at a particular speed and my heart rates becomes so elevated during that run that I'm risking damaging my body or setting myself back in my level of endurance because my body is not burning fat effectively? That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. As far as our intermediate goals go, we need to be able to adjust them. And we need to feel like that is something that is ok to do. We don't want to feel like failures because we didn't hit a mark at a particular time. What makes us stronger is being able to look at those times when we DON'T succeed and figure out what we could have done differently to have created a different outcome. I'm going to try to establish a regular interval for reviewing my goal setting document (now called my goal 'tracking' document) and adjust it to my needs. At this point I would consider my system to be successful. I'm hitting the mark on a number of goals I've set for myself. Is this universal across all the goals I'm looking at? No, and that's ok. It shows me where I need to make adjustments for the sake of keeping myself on track. But I will say that the system has proven overall to be successful, more so that simply writing out a list and tacking it up on the fridge.