Two years ago my New Year’s resolution was to “be fabulous.” I don’t think I did a very good job of it though. It was really just a funny way to make an excuse for not having any resolutions. Last year I didn’t make any resolutions at all. This year, I’m going to try something a little different, but more about that later…
All of this got me thinking about why it’s so hard for us (me) to set goals and keep them.
For me, the hardest part of goal setting is knowing what the goal should be. It’s easy to have vague ideas of how I may want my life to be better, but it’s harder for me to commit something specific and measurable to words.
As an aside, here’s a story that helped enlighten me about my own goal-setting process:
Many years ago at a company-sponsored leadership workshop, a group of managers played a ring toss game. The gentleman leading the workshop laid out a measuring tape and put a stake at one end. Then he showed us three rope rings he was going to let each of us toss toward the stake. We all had to set a goal that stated how far away from the stake we would stand and how many rings we thought we could get onto the stake.
We did this for multiple rounds with slight variations of the rules on each round. The whole thing was designed to help us learn about how we and our colleagues set goals.
Some people set goals that were clearly unattainable–such as saying they could get two rings on from forty-five feet. Others set a goal that was obviously easy–three rings from one foot. The majority of us were somewhere in between.
There were no points scored; there were no monetary rewards for achieving your goal; you weren’t ranked on your performance in any way. But your goal and your performance were recorded on a whiteboard.
I think I chose something like two rings from seven feet. I may have gotten one ring on the stake during the first round. (Yeah…I’m THAT bad at it.) With each round, I got better and better at gauging my performance and set better and better goals.
The point of the story is that most of us try to set goals that stretch our abilities in some way, but are still potentially attainable. The trouble comes when we are trying to set a goal relating to something foreign to our experience. It’s hard to know what’s achievable when you don’t have much experience in a field.
For example, if I’m a regular runner (I’m not), I know how much time and effort I can put into my running. I know what a reasonable, attainable goal is. If I’m just starting out and have no experience, what should my goal be? Should it be to run once a week? Should it be to run at least five minutes ever day? How would I know what’s reasonable.
So many of the really difficult goals I deal with on a daily basis fall into this category. And part of the problem is that just getting one small task of this type accomplished usually involves research, some trial and error, and potentially learning a new skill. All of that extra work makes the task grow larger and larger and makes it harder for me to find both the time and the will power to figure out how to approach the task, much less how to get it done.
It’s not that I don’t like learning new things. I LOVE learning new skills. I just have a hard time understanding the effort involved at first.
So, this year, one of my goals is to make sure that I research the new things I’m going to try–through reading; through finding experts to guide me; through asking questions; through “scale model trials”.
There’s more though. This is just the first part of my New Year’s resolution post. I’m also going to explore procrastination, some ways I plan to avoid procrastination, and themes I plan to explore in my work and personal life this year.
Stay tuned.
photo credit, katerha
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