As tomorrow starts the final week of 2009, I thought it advantageous to briefly discuss the objectives of setting goals, both for yourself and your business. Most of you are familiar with New Year’s resolutions, but few of us regard these as more than a passing fancy. Really, we set resolutions as if they’re cold-turkey life changes that will take place magically on January 1st. They’re anything but that.
I was in high school in 1999, and I refused to do homework until after the feared Y2K rollover. I figured that, if the world was going to end in the year 2000, I might as well not finish homework that would never be turned in. Happily, both myself and the doomsday fanatics were wrong and the world kept spinning after midnight. I worked long and hard to finish all of the assignments I’d put off, but I only finished half of them. Consequently one of my New Years resolutions that year was to do all of my school work immediately after it was assigned.
A full decade later I can tell you that didn’t happen.
Even through college there were assignments I put off to the last minute (or decided not to do at all). There were even entire classes I never attended (yet oddly pulled off an A-). The point is, though, that no matter how well-meaning your goal, you can never think of it as a sure thing.
Any objective you set will take time to reach. There will likely be many steps in its completion, and you should take care to document them and give yourself a timeline. Changes in your lifestyle or business habits will not occur over night, so don’t expect them to. Give yourself an ultimate goal for the year, and then break it up into more attainable mini-goals throughout the year.
Rather than pledging to do all of my homework immediately, I should have started with one of my 7 classes – do all of it’s assigned work immediately for a month. Once in that habit, add another class. Then another. Keep repeating until I’m completing all 7 courses’ work well ahead of the deadlines.
In a smartly broken-up manner, the most unachievable goals become realistic. So this year, set some out-of-this world targets for year’s end. Then take the time to pare them down into manageable chunks and start working on it.
