Alice: Which way should I go? Cat: That depends on where you are going. Alice: I don’t know. Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go. from Alice in Wonderland |
Setting goals is mentioned as prime contributor to success by almost every book I have read on that topic. Nonetheless it has been something I struggled with a lot - until I found these 3 simple steps.
Step 1: List your passions in life
Before setting your goals, you need to identify what you want to achieve in life. A good start is a list of your passions: What activities did you have most fun doing? When did you lose your sense of time doing something? Write down everything that comes to your mind.
Take your list and order it by your personal priority.
Take your list and order it by your personal priority.
For me personally my top 3 passions are currently self management, games and dancing. Overall I have identified 22 passions, and focusing on the top 3 was the hardest part.
Step 2: Identify your needs
Based on the passions you have chosen, what do you need to live them and help others do the same? The second part is essential to create a livelihood from your passions.
For each passion identify which skills, which connections and how much money you need.
For skills think about what you need to actually undertake your passions, but also about ways to help others with these passions, e.g. by teaching them.
Connections are both people that can help you achieve your passion, as well as people you can help achieve the passion themselves.
Money measures how much you need to be able to spend each month for your life. It should take into consideration all your passions, your general living expenses like food and financial precautions like medical insurance and pension funds.
For each passion identify which skills, which connections and how much money you need.
For skills think about what you need to actually undertake your passions, but also about ways to help others with these passions, e.g. by teaching them.
Connections are both people that can help you achieve your passion, as well as people you can help achieve the passion themselves.
Money measures how much you need to be able to spend each month for your life. It should take into consideration all your passions, your general living expenses like food and financial precautions like medical insurance and pension funds.
Overall I identified a need for 2.500 EUR per month to live by including financial precautions like medical care and pension. To help others with self management I need to brush up my blogging skills, for games I will start programming again and for dancing I will learn how to teach dancing. Connections I will need are other bloggers to critize my writing, other game designers to challenge me on my thinking, and a good connection to the local dance community to find opportunities to teach.
Step 3: Set your goals
Now that you know your passions and needs, it is time to imagine yourself in one year. For each need: What will you have achieved one year from now? You should imagine something that is as big as possible, as long as you are still convinced you can achieve it - and then some. The target picture will help you to keep motivated to steer you when you need to decide whether some action helps or hinders you in the long run.
My target picture for programming is that end of year I will be able to write simple applications in Node.JS and JQuery without having to look up any basic commands.
Bonus step: Define next steps
The next step is the short-term version of your goal. What is the physical next step to close in on your target pictures?
Identify next steps for each need from step 2 and add them to your to-do list. The next steps need to be concrete enough so you can start of them without having to think about them first. E.g. instead of "find instrument to play" choose "ask friends on Facebook which instruments would be interesting for me ".
Identify next steps for each need from step 2 and add them to your to-do list. The next steps need to be concrete enough so you can start of them without having to think about them first. E.g. instead of "find instrument to play" choose "ask friends on Facebook which instruments would be interesting for me ".
E.g. right before writing this blog post my next step for brushing up my blogging skills was to "write a blog post about setting goals". For connecting to the local dance community my next step is "speak to organizers of next dancing event about possible contributions from my side".
Summary
Setting goals can be easy when you know what you are passionate about and what you need to achieve these passions. Goals turn into very useful tools, as soon as you derive next steps from them.
What are your goals for 2015? What helped you most to identify them?
What are your goals for 2015? What helped you most to identify them?