Are Your Goals Working For You Or Against You?

Strategic goal setting is a critical element of success. Setting challenging goals and detailed action plans can propel us in our careers and personal aspirations.

Goal setting is an essential ingredient in most success metrics. If we don’t set goals, we won’t have something to work toward and consequently won’t have a way to measure our success or failure. There is, however, both a strategy and art to setting goals that motivate success.

Recently, I observed a trend among authors on Twitter that caused me to feel disheartened. People posted their goals for the day, and they appeared lofty and vital. Once I started to analyze them further, I realized most of the goals people were listing were entirely out of their control. Goals such as selling a book or getting reviews were dependent on someone else doing something while the author passively waited.

I would put most of what I read under the category of intentions or wishes, which can be powerful tools in and of themselves. Setting intentions can create shifts in energy much the same way practicing thankfulness creates positive changes in our brain. To label these things as goals, though, will only create disappointment.

One key element with goal setting is giving ourselves something to strive for. Something that will motivate us to pursue our craft and be successful. But if we set the wrong goals or label our hopes and dreams as goals, we may become frustrated, stagnant, or disillusioned. Nothing thwarts progress and success like disillusionment! What then is the anatomy of a goal, and how do we avoid setting counterproductive goals? Here are a few things to consider.

First and foremost, any goal we set must be in our realm of control. If we set a goal that we cannot reach, we are wasting our energy. So, when I saw authors setting goals that included selling a certain number of books in a day or securing a definitive number of reviews, I found myself feeling anxious for them. Both of these goals rely on someone else’s action to be met. While it isn’t wrong to have a sales goal, we need to delineate it in a way that puts the control back in our hands.

The goals we establish must be measurable, attainable, and include an action plan for reaching the finish line. Action plans are crucial to our success. If we set vague goals or goals out of the realm of possibility, we can be left feeling like a failure. We see this regularly with dieting and exercise. The focus tends to be on a number on the scale rather than adopting healthier habits. Or we decide we are going to work out every day without considering whether our schedule will allow us the ability to do so.

If you’ve read books about success, you will notice that goal setting is discussed extensively. You will also see that setting more than 3–5 goals is counterproductive. Reaching our goals requires us to be laser-focused. We must home in on what we want and how we can get it. It’s also interesting to ask ourselves why a particular goal is significant. As a writer, it is easy to believe that my worth is based on someone else’s response to my writing, leading to goals that affirm this false belief. I regularly ask myself “why questions” concerning my goals to reorient my perspective.

It might be helpful to look at goals with both a macro and micro view. Start looking at what you want to accomplish in the next three years, then drill down and set yearly and monthly goals to lay the foundation needed to reach your long-range goal(s). Perhaps the five-year plan is to write a novel or a memoir (the macro view). You can then set short-term goals that will lead you to reach our end game goal, like weekly word counts (the micro view).

Many authors set a goal to get published. Almost anyone can self-publish in today’s digital publishing world, so this is a reasonable goal. However, if the goal is to become a traditionally published author, we step onto a slippery slope because the goal is now dependent upon a publisher accepting the manuscript. I still believe getting traditionally published can be a worthy goal to work toward. But I would caution that we need to dislodge this goal from our self-worth, or we run the risk of feeling like a failure.

Here are some key questions to ask as you set goals:

1. Is my goal dependent upon me, or on the actions of others?

2. Is my goal attainable (can I reach it)?

3. Is my goal measurable (how will I know if I reached it)?

4. Do I have an action plan for reaching my goal?

Being a writer is a unique experience, and often setting goals can be complex and confusing. Depending on what you write (fiction, non-fiction, magazine articles, etc.), there is a tendency to link our personal value to the opinions of others or to measure our success in terms of what does or doesn’t get published. I think there are better ways to measure our success as writers. Here are some sample goals that can be utilized by someone who ultimately wants to get published (all five goals will feed into a long-range plan to get published):

1. Write 12,000 words each week

2. Publish three articles per week on Medium

3. Enter one writing contest each quarter

4. Increase your social media presence/interactions

5. Find a critique partner or writing group to engage with

Strategic goal setting is a critical element of success. Setting challenging goals and detailed action plans can propel us in our careers and personal aspirations. The trick is to make our goals work for us and not against us!