“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.”
- M.C Escher
If you’d like to work on personal goal setting, here are some of my favorite tools, articles, videos, and a podcast to help inspire you.
1. Review what you have learned in the past year. Sit down and brainstorm a list of your the most meaningful moments, events, memories, accomplishments, and mistakes. Try to extract lessons from those things that you can use.
2. Conduct a “personal brand” audit to see how you’ve grown in the past year. You can copy and use the brand equity checklist located here.
3. Honestly identify chronic problems you have. This is tough to identify and admit, but we limit our own growth with chronic bad habits. What are those 2 or 3 habits you have that impede your personal growth? If you can’t answer that question, think about the 2 or 3 things you wish you could do better. What’s preventing you from doing them? Then, use the 5 whys method to determine the root of the problem, and try Leo Babauta’s one habit at-a-time modification method.
4. Ask yourself 3 simple questions, and truly answer them: What are your passions? What are your values? What is your purpose? If you take the time to sit down, clear your mind, and truly answer these questions, you’ll shift your focus to lining up your life with them.
5. Dig deeper to understand how to improve yourself this year using your answers from #4 above. Some recommended ways to do this: Envision U’s 45-day leadership challenge, Mark Stevens’ success self-analysis, FranklinCovey’s organization systems, and Tim Ferriss’ Low Information Diet series of articles.
6. Establish your prism – the lens through which you see things. As we learned in the Mark Stevens interview, successful leaders have a prism they use to provide context to the world around them.
7. Get motivated! Let these inspirational video and audio clips lift you up when you’re in a bad mood, or just not in the right frame of mind to work on setting goals: Tim Ferriss on thinking big and challenging conventional thinking (video, especially the last 1/3 of it). A former New York Yankee batboy on persistence (podcast, a fantastic story about how he got the job). Michael Jordan on failure (YouTube video).
8. Set no more than 3 achievable, memorable goals that you can do one at a time (linearly, so you aren’t trying to accomplish more than one at a time). Then, track your progress. Make sure you accomplish one of these goals in January to capitalize on the power of momentum!
Good luck!
The Tim Ferriss video is wonderful, thanks for sharing.
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Heya. I have been wondering if spam posts annoy bloggers as much as they pester readers? I truly hope against hope that this collection of information remains spam free forever. Thanks for your time. I appreciate your opinion.
Well, spam is a part of running a blog, so it just needs to be dealt with constantly. It is an opportunity to create better software, and get even more focused into your blog’s comments, who is real, who is not, etc.
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Number 8 is very important. I do set several goals at once but they are always goals that compliment one another.
Nicely done.
Thanks Mickey! As for the “tracking progress” part of #8, I like to use this personal development plan template:
http://dotconnectorblog.com/personal-development-plan-template/
It has a simple checkbox-style area on the right to track progress on major goals as you reach them.
Thought I’d share in case you didn’t come across that article…
Be well.
Cheers – I’m actually in the process of putting something similar together myself. You are so much more likely to achieve a goal if you track your progress. No two ways about it!
Anyone else who reads this… check out Regis’ template and seriously consider using it.
Hi Regis,
The biggest obstacle for me this year for my blog was learning all the ins and outs of how to do it. I have never had any problems taking action on a goal when I am inspired to do so.
Learning from those who have already achieved the success we want helps as well.
Hi Justin – I couldn’t agree more. One great piece of advice I learned early on is that “if you want to climb a molehill, talk to someone who climbs mountains.” Learning from those who have done it is such a great tool for your own personal development, regardless of the topic.
Btw, loved your article “Why Am I Always Tired?” – http://www.mazzastick.com/2012/02/29/why-am-i-always-tired/
I too have found that shorter sleep patterns augmented with naps can work well. More of my sleep tips can be found here: http://dotconnectorblog.com/cant-sleep-how-to-sleep-better-tonight-5-tricks-plus-a-bonus-tip/