Goals

I have just dropped one of my goals, which brings my total down to three.  Strictly speaking, one of them is simply a supporting goal for the other so in reality I have just two goals.  Of those two goals one is clearly more important to me that the other.

Do I really need that second goal?


In fact do goals really help us achieve our goals?  I think it is inevitable that they do, especially if you write them out daily as proposed by Dick Tracey.  I haven't fully developed this habit - I have a regularly review goals habit on my list of 8 habits that are waiting for the me to focus on, and I will probably switch that to a daily review when I get to it.  But I do it often enough to know that it does increase my focus on what I am trying to achieve.  But I also found two unexpected side effects.

First off, regular review makes the goals more plastic.  Because I think about them more, I ponder them more and modify them more.  This is unambiguously a good thing and has saved me wasting time on stuff I am never going to use.  But it does, when you think about it, sort of undermine the concept of a goal.  Is a goal that can potentially be reset on a daily basis still a goal?

The other effect was to give too much emphasis to one of my goals - the one I have now decided to phase out.  I would sort out a plan, but because this particular goal was both easier and more appealing than other things I should have been doing I found it crowded the other things out.  When I thought about it, I decided that although I wanted and still want to achieve that particular goal I didn't want it interfering with my main goal.   Having discovered that I don't currently have the willpower to limit my time on it, I have had to demote it completely.

So what I have found is that my goal setting is now hardly worthy of the name.  When in the past I have devoted large chunks of time - several hours - to working on my goals I have come up with long lists and compelling word processor documents.  I have enjoyed the process and I feel that I have done something beneficial.   But faced with a continual daily scrutiny of no more than 10 minutes, my goals have shrunk considerably.  I think  I need to keep this under observation for a bit longer before I draw firm conclusions.