Are We There Yet? How To Set Goals You Can Stick To Part 1

I haven’t blogged for a while — I’ve been busy with a new job & get­ting back into the gym after a few months off. In the blog­ging world irreg­u­lar blog­ging is a car­di­nal sin, so if you’ve missed my reg­u­lar posts, you can look for­ward to more fre­quent blog­ging over the next few weeks as I write a series on achiev­ing greater busi­ness and per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity and suc­cess by stick­ing to your goals.

It’s hard to re-establish a rou­tine when there are big changes in your life. Under those con­di­tions I strug­gle to main­tain the feel­ing of progress I crave — and I know I’m not the only one. When your boat gets rocked, even in a pos­i­tive way, the goals you set for your­self can appear to be slip­ping out of reach. How can you keep track of whether you’re mov­ing for­ward, or mov­ing back­wards, when the goal­posts keep moving?

In this series I’ll gra­tu­itously bor­row ideas from Jim Collins (again!), Sally Hogshead and oth­ers, to give you tools that will help you remem­ber where you’re going, why, and how far along the road you’ve come. (Jim Collins’ amaz­ing book Good to Great: Why Some Com­pa­nies Make the Leap… and Oth­ers Don’t is a must-read for any­one inter­ested in what makes a busi­ness suc­cess­ful. Sally Hogshead’s fan­tas­tic book, Fas­ci­nate: Your 7 Trig­gers to Per­sua­sion and Cap­ti­va­tion is like mar­ket­ing oxy­gen for your busi­ness, your per­sonal brand — and most rel­e­vant to this series, it will give you great insights into what in your envi­ron­ment and per­son­al­ity makes you tick as a per­son. Click the links to check them out on Ama​zon​.com).  Through­out the series I’ll ref­er­ence and rec­om­mend other books and web­sites as well to add to your body of knowledge.

To kick off this series, we’ll start with the basics.  The first thing you’ll need, if you’re going to get any­where is a pur­pose. Not a wishy-washy, fluffy state­ment of some vague ideal — rather, you need to be able to say in ten words or less, what it is you do, and why it’s impor­tant. This isn’t just an “ele­va­tor pitch”. It’s for your cus­tomers, but it’s also for you. If YOU don’t know why you’re doing this thing, how do you expect to succeed?

When the shit hits the fan you need some­thing vis­ceral and mem­o­rable you can hang on to, to get you through the sticky bits.

In my next post you’ll dis­cover a great way to define your pur­pose and turn it into one of your most pow­er­ful pro­duc­tiv­ity tools.  In the mean­time, check out the books above and post me a note in the com­ments sec­tion with your thoughts.  Let’s get a dis­cus­sion started — what is it that YOU find most chal­leng­ing about stick­ing to goals?

Related Posts:

• Why The Hard­est Things Should Be The Easiest
• Busi­ness Secret Spices 3: Purpose
• Avoid­ing Work
• The Four Hour Work Week Process
• 3 Rea­sons You Can Achieve More by Doing Less