How I set deadlines on my dreams

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A great post on Zen Habits got me thinking about goal setting and achievement. Before I start you need to be aware that creating goals is easy. Accomplishment is hard!!

If your still here, then read on!

Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.
- Aristotle

Why Set Goals?

Almost every book on personal success and achievement outlines the importance of goal setting as a fundamental of achieving success in any endeavour.

Goals help me decide which of the dozens of things I could be working on today most deserve my time. They liberate me from distractions and trivialities. I don’t find them confining. I stay aware that I wrote the goals and I can change them. A great feeling is being able to say, “I just took a concrete step toward one of my highest goals.” At the end of the day, week, year, and (I hope) life, I’ll be able to say I accomplished something.

When I think about setting and having goals, I can relate it to the feeling of being lost in a vast desert. You can choose to wander around aimlessly in the hot sun and hope to escape, or you can pick a landmark and focus on reaching the desired point. In this way, the landmark keeps you going when you might otherwise be tempted to give up. Furthermore, it ensures that you are travelling in the right direction, so that at anytime you can know where you are in your travels relative to the goals you have set. Finally, it gives you a cause for celebration and a feeling of accomplishment that adds value to our lives when the goal is reached.

So, setting goals is important. However, you need to be aware that there are essentially two levels of goals that you should think about.

Macro & Micro Goals

Micro-level goals: In the short-term, they keep us on track from one day to the next.

Macro-level goals: In the long-term, they help us be mindful of the roadmap of our lives. By writing down our intentions in the form of goals, we are sounding a clear bell that others will respond to.

Napoleon Hill outlined the importance of having a “definite purposes” as one of the key factors to achieving success. He said that it is the starting point of all achievement and that it’s lack, is the stumbling block for 98% of people simply because they never really defined their goals and start towards them.

I believe most of us do set goals on a macro-level. The macro-level goals guide a person on his/her career path, and keep him/her plodding along towards the goal. In all probability he/she will get there, in time.

But, it is more important to have short-term and micro-level goals. When a person focuses on short-term goals and ensures they are achieved within deadlines set, he/she is more disciplined, focussed and alert to the direction. If there are any hurdles, they will automatically be encountered before they become issues, and the loss of time and effort will be minimized.

Another advantage is that a short-term micro-level goal can be achieved in a short time and bring a sense of achievement. Put together, all the short-term goals result in the long-term goal, which is achieved without any effort, as all its components have been achieved. This is where a system like Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen helps me enormously.

So how do you set these goals? There are two approaches you may want to consider, I’ll call these the Standard approach and the Zen approach:

The Standard Approach to Setting Goals

At the simplest level, do four things:

1.  Think 5 – 10 years from now, what do you want your life to look like? Write down the goals you must accomplish to reach each one of your objectives. Make these goals specific, detailed, and deadline-driven and commit them to writing. This will transform your desires into specific, detailed plans of action. When you write down your goals, you make them important. When you write down important goals, you make your life more purposeful.

2.  Find your motivation: In the motivation film The Opus released in 2008, achievement expert, Douglas Vermeeren, explains this important principle clearly, “When people talk of clarity it often gets described as just writing down your goals. The most important element is often left out. That is finding your motivation. If you want to get to your goals quickly you have got to clarity on why you want it. What does it mean to you? Why do you need it in your life? And the stronger and more important the why – the more power you will have to pursue that goal.”

3.  From this list make a dated task list to start working on Getting Things Done (GTD)

4.  Each day read and modify your goals if necessary.

The Zen Approach to Setting Goals

1. Remember that happiness leads to success, not the other way around.

2.  The corporate environment encourages employees to set goals and work within a tight timeframe: but life is larger than a simple career or a business.

3.  Grow naturally. Flowers or trees do not need to make any “effort” to grow, and neither do they strive to accomplish any “goal.” They joyfully bask in the present moment without regrets about the past, or fears and anxiety about the future.

4.  Strive more toward “alignment” with your true self and no longer strive toward “accomplishment.”

5.  In the end, Leonardo Da Vinci may have provided the greatest clue as to how to lead a wonderful and amazing life. Someone asked him what his greatest achievement was, and he replied: “Leonardo Da Vinci.” Keep in mind that Da Vinci was notoriously late in most of his projects. He did not seem to care much about time. His main concern was to enjoy the expression of his creativity and genius.

6. Read more about this approach in this post: Zen to Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System eBook Review

How do you set and achieve your goals? Leave your comments below.

Related articles

• Make it Up and Make it Happen; an article excerpt by David Allen
• Amazon.co.uk: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity: Books: David Allen
• Back to Basics: Your Weekly Review
• The GTD RoadMap, August 2008
• Get Things Started: Simpler Than GTD?
• Projects instead of Goals for Making Things Happen
• Back to Basics: Waiting For Someday/Maybe
• Organisational procrastination
• Back to Basics: Projects
• Mr. David Allen: Order of The Golden Slacker Inductee for August 2008
• David Allen on Getting It All Done (ducttapemarketing.com)
• Unclutter your life! (stephankinsella.com)
• You: Focus Your To-Do List with a “Skydiving List” [Productivity] (lifehacker.com)
• Putting Time-Management Systems Through the Test of Time (blogs.wsj.com)
• Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 6th September 2009 (didigetthingsdone.com)
• GTD And The Work/Life Blur Dilemma (organizeit.co.uk)
• 24 Productivity Tips From the Best Productivity Blogs (abundance-blog.marelisa-online.com)
• The 10 Habits of Zen to Done (abundance-blog.marelisa-online.com)

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