Goals are something that, to a greater and lesser extent, we all have. It could be nothing more than a vague hope of something we hope to achieve or do later down the line. It could also be something that we would love to change about ourselves or our lifestyles. The well known ‘bucket list’ is also a form of goal setting that many people do. The point I am hoping to make, my goal if you will, from today’s post is to help us bring those ideas into much clearer focus. We need to ask why bother setting goals, how to achieve you goals and then ask the question….what next? Which is where the impossible list comes in.
Why bother setting goals?
As I said, we all have some kind of ‘goal’ or another. The vague sense we have as children that ‘when I grow up I want to be….’ is a form of goal that we have. We go to University with the goal of getting a degree, we might also have goals like training to be an accountant or a doctor or a lawyer. These are all goals. Then there are the kind of idle ‘goals’ we have often expressed in New Year’s resolutions and the like. “I want to lose weight. “I want to eat more healthily”. “I want to drink less, or exercise more”. These kind of desires are still ‘goals’ but because they are just vague longings in our minds, it’s hard to identify what it actually is we are trying to achieve.
Some of us, and all of us at one point or another I suspect, have had a much more concrete and intentional approach to a goal. Let me give you an example. Several decades ago, I wanted a Nintendo 64. Having the cash to buy one, and a decent stock of games to go along with it, was no small feat. But buying said console and the games was the goal. So, I saved up all my pocket money, made a conscious decisions to buy no more games for the Sega Mega Drive I had and I worked out exactly how long it would take to save up the money I needed.
One of the key reasons that our goals, our idle longings, seem so far off in the future and continue to seem far in the future even when that future comes and goes is because we are not serious enough about achieving them. The purpose of ‘setting goals’ is to take that idle longing and make it a reality.
Those ‘goals’ which are really just idle longings rarely come to fruition for two reasons. First, we don’t really know what it is we are hoping to achieve and second, we have no idea what we need to do in order to achieve it. We kind of hope that one day everything will line up and we will just be able to sort it out and tick it off the list there and then. This does happen, but it is rare.
So, if we want to achieve those goals we need to be intentional about setting goals.
How to set goals
The first step is to work out what you actually want to achieve. That list of idle longings, if you wrote them all down, could very well be hundreds of items long. The reality of life is that we cannot achieve all of our hope and dreams. It is a lie, that I am seeing more and more as I have delved deeper into this creator/entrepreneur world, that tells us that we can achieve all our hopes and dreams that the only thing holding us back is the 9-5 work system. This is the system where we sell all our hopes, dreams and potential, as well as all of our time, for job security and a salary. Leave that world behind and you can have it all, the lie goes.
Our time on this earth is limited, we just simply will not have the time to achieve everything we might wish to. Also, think down that list of idle longings and hopes, and I bet you can find some that will immediately rule out others. They are mutually exclusive.
So the first step is working out what your priorities are. What is it that you actually want to achieve. Focus on these, and let go of the rest.
You may have heard the concept of setting SMART goals. These are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. The acronym is SMART. This is a kind of helpful framework, but it also has a big flaw that I will come back to later.
The point for today, is that in order to set goals, you need to be clear on what it is that you actually want to achieve. In a sense this is the first step in achieving them so we will move on to that now.
How to achieve your goals
Identify what you want to achieve
You need to be specific about what you want to achieve. I will give three examples of things I have thought and longed for and why that wasn’t enough to have any hope of achieving them.
I would like to be a writer.
This is ok, but what do I mean by this? Am I a writer because I have written something and published it online? Am I a writer because I have consistently blogged every week for 2 months? 3 months? A year? Am I a writer because I have self published a book? Am I a writer because a publisher has published one of my books? Am I a writer because this is what I do full time and I earn my living off of it? I cannot achieve this goal if I do not understand what it means and what it will look to achieve it.
I would like to lose weight.
This is useless. I just sneezed so technically I am now lighter than a moment ago. I have ‘lost’ weight. Is that what I mean? Well obviously not. What about when you lose 3 stone and became a healthy weight and then, now that was done, you order pizza every night for a month… does that achieve the goal?
I would like to travel the world.
So I hopped on a plane and sat on it for 51 hours whilst it circumnavigated the globe including the minimum stopping time required for refueling. I have travelled the whole world. That is not what we mean – so what do we mean. Do we mean visiting the major tourist locations on every continent, or in every country? Or, are there specific places you want to visit.
Unless we can be specific about what we want to achieve and what it is going to look like when we have achieved it, then we can never do so. That really covers the idea that goals need to be specific and measurable.
Identify what actions are needed to achieve it
The next part is deciding what action needs to be taken and taking that action. As with areas of focus in my previous post, this is mostly going to be done by defining and completing projects and/or with changes to your habits and routines. This is because you cannot really ‘work on’ a goal. At least not most of them. You cannot sit down and say to yourself that you will spend the next 3 hours really focussing on losing weight and hope to achieve results in that time. Most of your goals take time to achieve.
Suppose you want to lose weight. The formula for that, at its core, is simple – eat less and move more. Either or both of those need to be done to the degree that it creates an energy deficit in your body causing your body to turn to its fat reserves for energy. And then you lose weight, slowly, over time. So, get thinking, how do you want to do this. Do you want to take up running and do the NHS couch to 5k? Do you want to cut out sugar? Do you want to ban yourself from eating snacks through the day? Do you want to ban yourself from eating after dinner or go on a specific diet plan. Whatever it is, deciding the actionable steps to doing this, creating the habits and routines necessary and then being consistent in maintaining them is the way to achieve the goal.
Suppose you want to switch careers – that’s your goal. You might set up a project to research the qualifications, experience and skills necessary to get a job in the new career. Once you have educated yourself like this, then you might explore different night courses or other options for gaining those skills, qualifications and experience. Until you define what actionable steps there are to move you forwards, that goal will continue to be a distant prospect in the far flung future.
Suppose you want to travel the world and you have worked out that this means visiting Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. You’ve set up a project to research the different places that you might want go and you’ve got a rough idea of how much time and money will be required to do this. Now you need to come up with a plan to save money, a little at a time, to build the funds needed for the trip. If this is important to you, then this is the kind of thing required to do it.
The problem with SMART goals
When it comes to smart goals, I love the first bit as outlined above. I think that is really helpful. Attainable is where I start to take issue. Obviously some things are impossible. Either because they are logically inconsistent or deviate from reality and the natural limitations of being human. Beyond that, given sufficient time and resources and focus, it is hard to be certain what is and what isn’t attainable. The problem is the cost. Not just the cost in terms of money and resources, but in all the things that you would need to sacrifice in order to achieve it. That is where defining what is important to you comes in to play. The idea of relevance is also a bit of a weird one to me. I get that within a company setting, having goals that are relevant to the aims and ethos of the company are important. In life however, again, I would say that the limiting factor is what you decide is important. What lines up with you values. If you are Christian then this importance and values consideration is defined first and foremost by God.
The big issues I have is with the last letter – T – for time bound.
I agree that having an expectation of when you will achieve this by, is a helpful thing. For many individual goals it is essential. But, a lot of us actually fail because of this consideration.
Let’s take “I would like to to lose weight”. This becomes I would like to lose 2 stone (or 28 lbs). Which becomes I would like to lose 28 lbs by my next birthday. And then you lay out the steps to achieve that. Then what? You can’t maintain the habits and routines that have enabled you to lose weight as you would then keep losing weight. You cannot take your hands off the tiller completely as then you would put it all back on. Here, a time bound goal is not enough. Incidentally, this is why I really dislike the diet companies that send you all of your meals pre-packaged and prepared. One of the main reasons this is an area I have struggled with in the past is because of an inability to cook healthily for myself and an inability to judge healthy portion sizes. This kind of diet doesn’t actually address those problems and so whilst I may lose weight and ‘succeed’ it would likely be short lived as the root problems were not addressed.
How about setting the goal of something like, “I would like to achieve the target weight of xxlbs by my next birthday whilst I learn how to maintain that weight for the long term through healthier eating and exercise habits.” This transforms the goal from succeeding in a specific time frame, to actually changing your lifestyle over the long term.
So here comes the killer question with all goal setting exercises. You’ve answered he question why bother setting goals and how to achieve your goals? What next? Once the goal has been achieved, there is often a short window, maybe 15-20 minutes where we feel amazing, but after that we don’t really know what to do next.
The Impossible List
Recently I discovered the concept of ‘the impossible list’. I quite like it. The idea is that the list is impossible because every goal on it, once achieved is super-ceded by the next goal that builds on it. The list is impossible because there is no end point. Each individual step on the list is very possible. I am a little wary of it for the reason that the ever expanding drive to be better and better and achieve more and more can be very unhealthy. But, with this caveat in mind and sitting really loosely to the things on the list, I think it will be a helpful tool for maintaining my motivation and focus for the years to come. The idea comes from Thomas Frank and you can see his list here. I’m not going to list mine in full here, but here is a sample. The sub bullets are the next level of the goal in question and some of these are borrowed from Thomas’s list.
My Impossible List
Current Focuses:
- Run a 5K
- Do 100 press ups in one go
- Do 100 sit ups in one go
- Self-publish a book (>25,000 words)
- Launch a regular YouTube show and release 10 videos
- Release 50 videos
- Gain 250 YouTube subscribers
- Grow to 100 Twitter Followers
- Read the Bible in one year
- Do a morning workout 100 days in a row
- Read 25 pages a day for three months in a row
- Write 500 words 100 days in a row
Fitness/Health Goals
- Run a 5K
- Do it in less than 25 minutes
- Do it in less than 20 minutes
- Run a 10K
- Do it in less than an hour
- Do it in less than 50 minutes
- Run a 10k every week for a year
- Run a mile in less than 6 minutes
- Run a half Marathon
- Do it in less than 2 hours
- Do 100 press ups in one go
- Do 100 sit ups in one go
- Do 15 pull-ups in a single set
- Do 20 pull-ups in a single set
- Do 15 chin-ups in a single set
- Do 20 chin-ups in a single set
Professional Goals
- Get 100,000 blog visits, all time
- Grow the E|F newsletter to 5,000 subscribers
- Grow to 10,000 subscribers
- Write 25,000 words in a month
- Start a podcast
- Get 500 listens in a month
- Get 50 reviews on iTunes
- Self-publish a book (>25,000 words)
- Create print and audiobook editions of the book
- Write a traditionally published book
- Launch a regular YouTube show and release 10 videos
- Release 50 videos
- Gain 250 YouTube subscribers
- Gain 500 subscribers
- Gain 1,000 subscribers
- Gain 2,500 subscribers
- Walk into a bookstore and take a picture of a book I wrote that’s for sale there
- Create an online course
- Grow to 100 Twitter Followers
- Grow to 500
- Grow to 1,000
- Grow to 5,000
- Grow to 10,000
- Grow to 25,000
- Grow to 50,000
- Grow to 100,000
- Launch a product that creates over $15,000 in revenue within one month
- Launch a product that creates over $100,000 in revenue within one month
- Make $10,000 (gross) in a month
- Make $25,000 (gross) in a month
Habit Goals
- Read the Bible in one year
- Do a morning workout 100 days in a row – Skill: Fitness
- Read 25 pages a day for three months in a row – Skill: Intelligence
- Write 500 words 100 days in a row – Skill: Writing/Body of Work
Creative Goals
- Publish a sci-fi/fantasy novella (at least 20,000 words)
- Publish a standalone fantasy epic
- Publish an Epic Fantasy Series
- Write a devotional on Colossians
- Write a devotional on 1 Corinthians
- Write a Bible overview of power and weakness
- Write a book on Church History
- Write a study on the promises of God answered in Christ
Skill Goals
- Complete a Masters degree in Theology
- Complete a PhD in theology
- Have an article published in a recognised theology journal
- Become fluent in a foreign language – TBC
- Become fluent in backend coding languages
- Become proficient in mathematics
Reading Goals
- Read the Bible every year
- Read 1 book every month
- Read Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion
- Complete the Challies Reading challenge
