I’ve had a few people who have asked me how I’m measuring what I’m doing and how to pick goals in general. I’m no expert in any of this, I’m just sharing what I’ve been upto here.
Picking the goal is actually the easy part. As I mentioned in my procrastination blog post, the things we tend not to do are Important but, Not Urgent in nature ( do read the post )
So, pick goals that fall in that bucket, where there is no deadline for completion that is set for you. It’s precisely because there is no deadline out there for this, we tend not to go after goals like this.
I think of goals in 3 types:
- Effort goals
- Output goals
- Custom goals I’ve created a template goals sheet in case anyone’s interested.
This isn’t exactly rocket science, the point is to keep it simple.
An effort goal is one where I count the amount of time I spend doing some activity, example, in the sheet, if playing the ukulele is something you want to be doing more of, measure how many hours you’re spending doing that.
An output goal is one where regardless of amount of effort you put into something, what is the outcome you’re able to derive from it. In the sheet, lets say you want to do 1000 pushups this year, regardless of how long it takes or how fast you do it, the only thing that matters is the no of pushups you do, week on week.
A custom goal, is an outcome goal, but, with modified and clear milestones to hit. For some people, just joining a driving class might be a huge impediment to learning how to drive, doing that in itself should count towards something even if the over-arching goal is to learn how to drive.
This is essentially how I’ve been structuring and going after my goals.
One of the things to keep in mind is that at all points, you’re trying to figure out how well you’re doing with the Important but, Not Urgent goals of your life. You could be having a 13% year, but, that’s 13% more than if you hadn’t done this.
That’s the way I’m looking at it anyway.
I hope this is of help to someone out there!
Best of luck with your goals, there’s still 6 months left in 2018, go out and kill it!
Sainath