Jan
04
How to Make Unstupid Goals
OK. I realize you’re backlogged on your reading. And I realize that you’re going to be so sick of the G word that your brain is going to bleed. And I realize that all you really want to do is forget the holiday season ever happened and hurry up and get to February already.
Based on all of that, I figured I’d start a series on goals. Right around New Years’! (Isn’t that nice? I think that’s nice.) Except it’s not going to be full of normal posts on goals. It’s going to be full of IttyBiz style posts on goals. So you might not have to throw up so much. (Also nice, I think.)
Day One: How To Make Unstupid Goals
The biggest trick to goal setting is not mind mapping or list making or reading Zen Habits or Oprah Magazine or every self-help book you’ve ever bought but never got around to taking out of the bag. The biggest trick to goal setting is… wait for it… setting your goals.
That sounds dumb, but it’s really not.
Because, see, most people focus on the “setting” and the “goals”, but they neglect the most important part.
“Your”.
I think back to all those books I read where it gave all those list writing exercises. 100 things you want to accomplish before you die. 50 things you want to do this year. 75 books you want to read before your next birthday. And you know what I would write? Here’s an actual sample of the things on my actual 100 Things To Do list from an actual (very good but sadly, I think, out of print) book:
1. Get driver’s license.
2. Get glasses.
3. Crochet a whole blanket.
4. File my taxes.
5. Get divorced. Finally.
6. Buy a Waterman pen.
7. Get personalized stationery.
8. Learn how to cook.
9. Get up to date on all my bills.
10. Buy car?
Looking back at that list – and this was the actual top ten, not some stupid ones I picked because they were great examples – I’m blown away by it. Let’s go through it with some hindsight and brutal honesty and see why.
1. Get driver’s license. I never wanted to do this. I have panic attacks. When scary things happen, I close my eyes and hold my breath. God help the poor bastard who puts me behind the wheel of a car. But everybody knows how to drive, right? And I’d been really putting it off, right? And the things you’re putting off are the things you’re supposed to put on your list, right? Uh, no.
2. Get glasses. When my oldest son was 2, he accidentally put my glasses under a rocking chair and broke them. When I wrote this list, I hadn’t gotten around to replacing them. Is it any wonder we don’t get around to our goals when they’re as titillating as this one? Jesus.
3. Crochet a full blanket. OK, this one I actually wanted to do.
4. File my taxes. Mmm. Exciting. Five years of taxes is TOTALLY a reason to get up in the morning.
5. Get divorced. Finally. Pay pots and pots of money for the privilege of fighting with my ex-husband. Oooh! CanICanICanI?
6. Buy a Waterman pen. I never wanted a Waterman pen. I thought I should buy a Waterman pen because buying a Mont Blanc would be too extravagant. Nothing like setting a goal to settle for second best, huh?
7. Get personalized stationery. This one I also wanted.
8. Learn how to cook. This one’s a weird one, because it’s completely unachievable. When do you know how to cook? Like, when have you actually learned? One recipe? Ten recipes? Hot dinner every night for a week? A month? A year? The rest of your natural life? This one’s just setting myself up to fail and feel horrible about myself. Yummy.
9. Get up to date on all my bills. See number 4. Equally inspiring.
10. Buy car? Hint: If it has a question mark at the end, it’s probably not a very good goal.
How to make good goals
There were several problems with the goals above, and they’re well documented in other tomes on goal setting. (Not quantifiable. No deadlines. That sort of thing.) But as far as I’m concerned, there is one big, fat insidious problem that isn’t being adequately addressed elsewhere:
They weren’t my goals.
Something you should really get around to one day is not a good goal.
Something you don’t actually want to do is not a good goal.
Something other people think is a good idea is not a good goal.
Good goals rock your damn world.
Some of the things on that list were good things to have on a list, sure. They just shouldn’t have been on that list. They should’ve been on the Things I Should Stop Fucking Around On list or the Things To Get My Mother To Nag Me About list or maybe the You Get To Go Shopping At Hermes When You Accomplish One Of These list.
But goals? Goals should be AWESOME.
Your wife wants you to get a promotion? Your father-in-law wants you to change your investment portfolio? Some chick on a blog somewhere thinks you should quit your day job? Newsflash, buster… those make really shitty goals.
Here’s my little trick on finding great goals. Ask yourself the following question:
“Would I bust my ass to accomplish this even if it wasn’t on a list?”
Yes? Then it’s a good goal.
***
Stay tuned for:
Day Two: Accountability: Is It For Losers?
Day Three: Batshit Crazy: Creative Ways To Meet Your Goals
Day Four: Disheartenment, Disillusionment, and Other D Words
Day Five: Reevaluation: What To Do If Your Goals Were Stupid After All
(Hint: If you subscribe to IttyBiz, you’ll get all of these. Automagically.)
I, too, have been guilty of super-stupid goals. Why? Because I let that absurd, immature, want-everyone-to-like-me image of what I “should” be get in the way of what I WANT to be. For me, that leads to goals made for others and not myself.
Why is it so hard to be honest with ourselves about what we want? What am I so afraid of?
Here is to slaying this demon in 2010…
And that leads to not meeting your goals because they were stupid in the first place. And that leads to thinking of yourself as someone who can’t meet goals. And that leads to too much tequila.
All bad, bad, bad. :)
“Because I let that absurd, immature, want-everyone-to-like-me image of what I “should” be get in the way of what I WANT to be”
A friend of mine calls that “shoulding all over yourself.”
OMG, that’s awesome.
I was going to chime in about goals but I’m too excited about something else: you don’t drive? I love other people who don’t drive.
I have a driver’s license, which I got only because I was able to take the test in Connecticut, where it’s way easier than in NY.
I failed in New York before I even pulled the car out of its parking space. In Connecticut, after weeks of lessons with Uncle Mike’s “Big A” Driving School, I nearly failed the test again because I was going 15 miles the whole time. The guy felt sorry for me because I cried, and gave me a pass.
I drove all through college with many near misses, but don’t any more because to me, it doesn’t seem smart to do something you’re not very good at that can kill you.
So, “start driving again” is on my list of pretend goals, but not real ones.
HURRAY for pretend goals!
It never ceases to amaze me how many people think everyone should drive a car. You have to go through psychological testing up the butt to drive a one person plane. But a car?
And then you get that look. What do you mean you don’t know how to drive? And you’re like, seriously? Do you SERIOUSLY think it’s a good idea for me to get on the fucking HIGHWAY?
And then we’re back to the tequila again. :)
Many, many people should not have driver’s licenses. They should never get behind the wheel of the car. Particularly if tequila is involved. Me, I’m from Boston. ‘nuf said.
Great post! Can’t wait to read the rest of the series.
A few months ago I flipped through a notebook and found an old list of “100 things I want to accomplish in the next 1000 days”.
Have a baby? Big fat check mark!
Get real job with real salary? Big fat check mark!
The rest was nonse like “return books to local library in time to avoid late fees”. Seriously.
This incident led me to my own personal death-bed-test things that look lide goals:
I imagine myself in the last hours of this world. Loved ones gathering around to hear the final words from my lips: “I’m sorry, for all the times i failed as a wife, mother or friend, but let’s all find comfort in the fact, that I managed to return all books to the library in time…” Silence…
Let’s just say, that library books is not on my list for 2010…
Loved ones gathering around to hear the final words from my lips: “I’m sorry, for all the times i failed as a wife, mother or friend, but let’s all find comfort in the fact, that I managed to return all books to the library in time…”
Oh my God, that was hilarious!
Great job on the baby and the job, though.
If I didn’t know any better, oh, fuck, never mind.
WHAT?! You’re killing me here!
Nothing. I don’t want to spoil anything for you. I’ll email ya.
OMG, you are so awesome!! Always funny & entertaining. Always brutally honest. And always writing great info. :) Happy New Year, Naomi :) And thanks for all the little smiles you put into people’s lives, in more ways than one!
Dan Pink has a new book out which I haven’t read yet, called Drive. On his site he has a link to a video promo. The promo takes about 2 questions each person should ask. The first one is, “What is your sentence.”
In a nutshell, the sentence should encapsulate what you stand for. I actually really liked this idea (and so I stole it)and wrote a sentence in the third person. I came up with…
“He helped people nurture their inner resources to go after and attain the life they most wanted to live.”
My goals now need to pass this filter in order to get on my list. It doesn’t mean the odd dumb one won’t sneak on there, but if it does I can always remove it for…well being a dumb-ass goal.
Dean
Can you PLEEEEEASE come to NYC so we can play??? #10 rocks. I’ve actually done this question mark thing with new business projects too. Always a genius move. So excited for the rest of the series woman!!
I’ve been in writers groups where we list our “goals” for the week. Like you with your early goals list, everything we all set for goals felt more like tasks for a to-do list instead. So, they really were stepping stones to goals, I suppose. But still …
Sometimes, the concept of breaking goals down into steps just plain sucks the magic right out of goals.
IMO, just thinking about a goal should give you an “oh-YEAH” zing of excitement, which is the kind of fuel you need to get moving. It may even keep you going when you make those practical plans and steps to achieve it.
And, BTW, most New Yorkers can’t drive.
Time to review the 5 things I want to accomplish in 2010 (both lists, as soon as I find both)
Rasheed
You know, you make a lot of sense!
I’m totally guilty of setting stupid goals. Goals shouldn’t be a to-do list of chores, and I’m not sure why I didn’t clue in to that before now. Thanks for spelling it out!
See, now I am going to have to either: 1) not read this blog while I write my own spiel about this mess or 2) pretend like you didn’t say have the stuff I was going to say.
If only there were a blog that talked about this stuff where you could write…
(And here I thought we were working out a content agreement about such things.)
In other words: good stuff, Naomi.
Have I told you yet today that you’re a fucking genius?
You’ve already made a bunch of people cry this morning, because PURSUING YOUR LIFE’S WORK IS LIKE THAT. It makes you cry with joy.
Especially when menehunes are involved.
Learning how to cook is never a bad goal and easily acheivable. You could take a couple of beginner’s classes if you’re really uncomfortable in a kitchen, or get a couple of cook books designed to teach like Alton Brown’s “I’m Just Here for the Food” you can easily work your way through that and learn quite a bit.
When you can walk into your kitchen and asses what you have on hand and make a meal, then you know you’ve reached your goal.
BTW I’m 42 and still haven’t bothered learning to drive, I just have no desire to do so. ;)
I love the idea of making separate lists for the “Noooooo I don’t waaaaaaaannna!” pretend goals and the “Dude, you TOTALLY want to do these, how will you pick the next one from such an awesome list of awesome!?”
…In fact I think I will call them just that!
Can I steal those headings?
Shyeah, go for it!
Sweet! Thanks! :D
Nobody ever makes eating more chocolate cake a goal. Why? Because it’s something they’d do anyway (assuming they’re not one of those weird people who hates chocolate) – even if it wasn’t on a list.
Which leads me to this question: Why make a list of goals — especially if the definition of a good goal is “Something you’d do anyway, even if it wasn’t already on a list” ? What does it accomplish for you?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. Just did a whole podcast on it yesterday. Looking forward to the rest of your series. :)
My contention is that most people shouldn’t make lists of goals, unless doing so makes them happy. If you like lists, make lists.
On the chocolate cake front, I think that if you’re not eating as much chocolate cake as you want to, you might want to write it down to remind yourself that you have permission. There’s also a difference between the stuff you want deep down and the stuff Cosmo or Oprah or Seth Godin have convinced your conscious mind that you want.
I think that a key reason we don’t meet our goals is that we turn making them, working towards them and then (rarely) achieving them into these crazy circus productions.
Maybe if, instead of making a big list of so-called goals, we picked one or two or three insanely important ones, we’d actually have a chance of achieving them. But we feel like we can’t do that, because accomplishing only three things this year doesn’t feel like enough in the excitement of New Years’ Eve.
But not many of us can point to a year when we’ve accomplished three things that were absolutely, desperately important to us. Probably because we’re so caught up in, like Camilla said, reaching our goal of getting all of our books to the library on time. Maybe (officially belabouring my point now) if we stopped thinking so hard about the library books, we could spend time giving the awesome stuff the attention it deserves.
Can you shoot us a link to your podcast? That would be supercool.
Good points. I especially agree with you about differentiating between the things YOU want vs the things that [insert X celebrity or family member here] have semi-succeeded in convincing you that you “should” want.
The ‘cast yesterday was about giving permission instead of setting goals/resolutions. Maybe a little woo woo, but it’s the closest I can come to Goals without balking. I think you might find it interesting. :)
Blog post:
http://www.fictionette.org/writecast/writecast-new-years-permissions/
iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=346527135
There’s a chocolate VEGGIE cake (well, half of one) in my kitchen. Most of the ingredients are good for you, and it’s actually nummy. Is that having your cake and eating it too?
Awesome, thanks Naomi. Now I’ve got to figure out what I want.
Hmmm. Great point about how goals should be *your* goals, but now you’ve got me wondering (again) about a sticking point for me. As in, what do you do if you’re a recovering Type-A control freak who is trying hard NOT to wear herself down to the ground anymore?
The Dave Navarro school of motivation (which you’ve summed up admirably with “Good goals rock your damn world” and “Would I bust my ass to accomplish this even if it wasn’t on a list?”) makes COMPLETE sense to my intrinsic overachiever, but that’s the part of me that has landed me neck-deep in stress my whole life.
The other part of me, which I’m trying to nurture, is absolutely terrified of jumping back into that again, even though there are lots of big things I’d like to do this year…oh, like, you know, START A BUSINESS.
So how do you balance “bust your ass” motivation with sustainable taking-care-of-yourselfness?
Ah! Perhaps this is the Chocolate Cake Rule. Perhaps the rule is different if you’re one of them. Maybe you, as a chronic overachiever, should turn your focus to overachieving in chocolate cake and bubble baths and mindless romantic comedies? Tell yourself you’re going to watch 100 stupid movies this year, and seal the deal by putting it in a spreadsheet?
That way, you speak to yourself in your own language. Because let’s be honest… it’s not like you’re going to STOP being an overachiever in stuff like business. This way you can channel the energy for the other stuff too.
Or maybe I just really like being the catalyst of the chocolate cake revolution.
Mmm… cake.
I love reading what you write and I can’t agree with you more. Goals SHOULD rock “your” world. If they don’t rock your world they will not happen or you’ll be all resentful attempting to do them. If they rock another persons world, well that’s just wrong!
I love the quote by Audre Lorde (a gay, black, blind and now, sadly, dead writer/poet/activist)It says: “When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important wether I am afraid.” Love that. It’s one of my theme songs!
To me that says, forget about the car and driving, it’s not a part of your vision. HOWEVER, if your vision requires you to get somewhere you might “choose” to learn to drive just so you can get to where you long to be.
I’m simply saying don’t make the little things your goals. Make the vision for your life the goals and the little things will line-up with that goal or not.
Stepping down of my horse now. :-)
Can’t wait to read more. You rock Naomi!
Rachel
“Something other people think is a good idea is not a good goal.”
Wow! That should be tattooed somewhere on your body at birth so you never forget. I know I set too many goals when I was much younger because other people thought it was a good idea.
On second thought – maybe just tattoo something like SOPTIGING.
o, here it is, January, and The Company That Employs Me is heading into Annual Focal Review time. Which, to our HR department, means “Did you make your ‘goals” for last year and what are your ‘goals’ for this year?”
I hate this. My “goals” are always the same: Do my job as well as I can, to the best of my ability. Provide excellent support.
I don’t want to get a promotion. I don’t want to be a manager. I don;t want to change jobs. My goal is to do This Job as well as I can. To excel in my work. That’s my goal.
I’m considering pasting this article into my review form this year. Right next to the “goal” set for me by my manager at last year’s review. The one that matches “Something other people think is a good idea.”
Thank you. I loved reading this.
My only goal for the year is “Be Awesome!”. Seriously.
As in, instead of all the shoulda and “I really need to get this done” and the “wow, I could do this next awesome idea until i get distracted or it gets hard”.
You know, just BE. And then awesome. Like, together.
Also, I am going to make this into a nice sign to hang over my desk. That’s on the “stuff I need to do more of to stay sane” under the heading “do more arty things”.
@Vicki, ugh, HR goals. Maybe try “Gnaw off both hands so I no longer have to complete any worksheet given to me by HR.” It’s not like they’re going to read it.
I’m going to put that on my form that I was supposed to fill out two months ago. I’ll let you know if anyone notices. Seriously.
Oi Dunford! I’ll do the goal setting round here, I’m sure I bought that part of the Internet a few months ago and I’m a genuine ex-spurt.
On a more serious note, 14 squirrels died today and nobody gives a damn least of all.
Sir Richard sends his best.
I was still typing then and it posted. WTF is happening woman?
I meant to say, least of all YOU!
@ Rachel ” Goals SHOULD rock “your” world. If they don’t rock your world they will not happen or you’ll be all resentful attempting to do them.”
Seriously, you really think that?
@Tim I do think that.
We’re never as happy or of more service to the world as when we’re doing something that’s true to our own voice.
If we are climbing a ladder that someone else set up for us, we’re likely to procrastinate, feel frustration, and even resentment.
What part of what I said are you surprised at?
This came for me at a really good time. Thank you, Naomi.
@ Rachel – The bit about goals having to rock your world, it’s total nonsense imo.
I could point you to dozens and dozens of clients that have achieved goals that didn’t rock their world. I have myself achieved goals that were purely means to ends and I was either way about doing them.
Of course in an ideal world what you say would be great, but in reality it doesn’t work like that.
I have been a super-conformist for my whole life. Which is only 33 years, but still. I have lived other people’s goals personally and professionally, and I am so done. I can’t believe the freedom that comes with choosing my own goals, that I actually want to accomplish. So. Freaking. Brilliant.
My goals for last year was to buy the house, have a baby and fit in size 6 jeans again. Can you see the slight contradiction there?
I got the house, but I’m slightly behind on a baby thing – I’m 7 months pregnant, look like a beach ball on legs and said jeans are at the bottom of my wordrobe.
This year goal – survive child birth. Why absolutely everybody got a horror story to tell me, why?!
PS.
Ohm and the business thing – I will need to figure out how to work from home, have a baby and NOT be labelled WAHM or mummmy blogger or any other thing that people come up with when they think -you got a baby, so your brain, skills and eductaion evaporated.
ps. not the labels itslef are wrong. Is just that certain kind of people that use them to look down on you – I recently got a question if I’m only going to design websites for baby products from now on. Huh?
Go Naomi for sparking such a lively conversation and thank you @Tim for engaging me as you have. This has really helped me articulate my perspective.
@Tim, I agree with a bit of what you’re saying, we do have to do things that don’t rock our world BUT ONLY as a way to get to the big thing that DOES!
I have physicians that come to me because they long for something more. Some people are good, even great, at rolling a bolder up hill. Bully for them. Is that what we really want life to be about, being able to shove through and hit the mark, even if the mark is designed from the exceptions of others. Or the mark is what we think we should do?
I am not saying that hitting YOUR OWN MARK will be a piece of cake, not at all! I don’t ask my clients to side step hard work or emotional heavy lifting.
Your goal has to be YOUR goal. You’ve got to want it so badly that you’re not going to give it up even if you hit obstacles. If your vision for yourself is so strong and so personally meaningful that the fear can no longer prevent you from getting behind the wheel, you know you have found your mark.
This is the philosophy I use with my clients born from my own experiences. I’m a legally blind woman who was the first of my kind to receive an MFA in VISUAL arts from the University of Michigan. I’m a woman with BIG goals!
What, bigger than this? http://snipurl.com/tyjos
@Rachel, I’m with you and Naomi. Goals that won’t rock your world are stupid goals. When people achieve goals like the ones @Tim is talking about, it’s perseverance gone amok or a subgoal that gets them closer to an unstated world-rocking goal.
Of course, we’re notoriously awful at predicting what will rock our world. An awful lot of us seem to believe appeasing a parent or out-achieving a sibling might do this. Bwah hah hah! As the incredibly inspiring teacher Hubie Jones told me way back when, it’s actually easier to find a new family than to live as the person you think your family insists you be.
“it’s actually easier to find a new family than to live as the person you think your family insists you be.”
Dear Lord. That’s awesome.
And freeing. Be you. Let them deal with it. Replace any who can’t. 36 years of wow since then for me.
My gosh, Naomi, I gotta admit, when I first started reading this post, I thought, “What $*@# is Naomi talking about now?” But the farther I read, the more I realized you’re sooo right. Our minds are so full of shoulds that many times, we make goals because that’s what our mother, best friend, mastermind group or society tells us we should want.
So now I have to go back and redo all my life planning, LOL! No, actually I’m glad I hadn’t gotten around to it – too late for January 1, oh well!
Thanks for this and looking forward to the rest of the series.
hey naomi!
i’ve been lurking around your blog for a long time, but this post inspired me to make a comment.
my stupid new year’s goal is to “have a sucessful blog”. why do i now realize that this is stupid? because it’s just a general all around goal. it doesn’t make me focus on what i should actually *do*.
so i started thinking about new goals, like maybe, actually *read* my RSS feeds every day, or perhaps start to build relationships with niche related bloggers. tonight i’m actually going to sit down with paper and pen *gasp* and make a real list of goals to get me on the right track.
My God, honey, I don’t know ANYONE who thinks they have a successful blog. And I know some pretty successful bloggers. :)
Good luck with your pen adventures, and welcome!
I am never a big goal setter at the start of a year I will set myself little goals – like get this done by then but nothing huge but now I want to set myself some really good inspiring goals that I mean and that I will stick to, thought your post was great and a great way to start the year.
stupid goal – try not to eat bad food after drinking.
realistic goal – blog more regularly.
Refreshing. Laughing out loud about your waterman pen. “Nothing like setting a goal to settle for second best.” Yes set a goal for what you truly want, not for settling and getting something you don’t want.
One of my goals for the year is to tell people when they rock. And you, Naomi, rock like a big stone listening to Metallica in a rocking chair. This is just what I needed to read.
Oh man, just when I thought you’d let me down… there’s so much advice about goals that seems so contradictory. So I go back to Phil Gosling’s “Success Engineering” and reread the part about ‘a goal is “I own a ____ beside the sea in ____.” or “I can speak ______ language fluently”. Anything with a deadline attached is just a task to be managed, not a goal.’
So many definitions… but I like Phil’s because in his universe a goal is the big stuff that fires you up, while all the little steps you take to get you there are not goals, but to-do list fillers – tasks to be managed.
Definitions aside, it sounds like you and Phil agree more than I realized at first – just keep your attention on the big stuff, and once you’ve got that covered, the little stepping stones will sort of become obvious. Do the right little stuff in the right order (even if it doesn’t excite you), and getting the big, exciting stuff is almost a given.
You read my mind, Naomi.
Goals define us. Goals make us great. Goals are the only way to go from paper to creator.
Ok, that sounded utter schmuck but it’s so true. The only way I can get on my bike and ride it is to figure out where I’m going.
I set myself a goal this year to write a blog post every day to sharpen up my writing. 10 for ’10. And posterous.com is making it so easy for me to publish it to all my media channels so I never forget what I set out to accomplish.
My one big problem is discipline in focusing on goals. So a few days ago, when I set out my goals for the year, I vowed to print them out, laminate them and deny myself beer if I ever deferred from the job in hand.
So far, so beer!
Again: awesome job. You’re an inspiration to many!
super site and glorious article.I am going to copy this website.