Chris Compton — @twainingwheels | Kingsley Asuamah
Life From Different Perspectives: Setting the Goals That Keep You Focused and Energized
Part 9 of 20: Setting goals and tracking progress motivates you
This article is part of a series of articles written from the perspectives of two very different minds.
My name is Chris Compton. I am a 59-year-old American living in Atlanta, GA. I am writing about the 20 self-improvement facts in this article:
The article’s author, Kingsley Asuamah, is a 36-year-old Nigerian living in Ireland. He is writing about the same topics.
You can follow along and see how two strangers, separated by age, geography, and circumstance, view the world and the opportunity to develop as human beings.
“Setting Goals and Tracking Progress Motivates You”
This statement is obviously true. If you do it right.
Setting goals is the key to getting anything done. Think about it. What gets done without a goal? When you wake up in the morning, how do you determine what to do? You set goals. Often, your daily goals may be in the form of a to-do list. Even if you don’t write them down, you mentally chart a course and follow it. You may change it. You may abandon it. But if you don’t chart a course at all, you never get out of bed.
At its most basic level, a goal is a direction. Whether you are headed to the bathroom or starting a political campaign, your goal is to reach your destination. Is the eerie similarity of these two examples entirely coincidental? You decide.
Suppose you are staunchly anti-goal. “I like to go with the flow, man.” The most likely result is stagnation. With no goals to improve your circumstances, broaden your knowledge, or polish your skills, you will find yourself drawn to the same low-barrier-to-entry activities day in and day out, killing time and slowly running out of it.
“If you don’t make the time to work on creating the life that you want, you’re going to spend a lot of time dealing with a life you don’t want.” — Kevin Ngo
The Motivating Nature of Long-Term Goals
Most of us don’t give much thought to our short-term goals, like eating lunch or going to the bathroom. We may set, track, and achieve these minor goals regularly, but for the most part, this process happens in the background, as if on auto-pilot. I can’t speak for you, but in my decades of goal-setting, I have never written “go to the bathroom” on a list of any kind.
Long-term goals are a different animal. Long-term goals signify our future, and if there is one thing human beings have in common, it is an obsession with the future. We set these goals for a number of reasons:
- Defines Success: When we set a specific long-term goal, we specify the exact result that we will accept as evidence that we have accomplished our mission. We can clearly explain to someone else what we are trying to achieve.
- Establishes a Direction: With a clear goal in mind, there can be no doubt about our job. If we have defined success and it lies in the West, why waste time walking East? Each new day is an opportunity to do something, anything, that moves us toward our goal.
- Focuses Attention: Life is complex, and it’s easy to lose minutes, hours, or even days to distraction. Goals are distraction killers. When we have a clear objective, it becomes much easier to stop scrolling through pages of clickbait and get back to activities that move us in our chosen direction.
- Organizing Tool: Like the opening sentence of a well-written paragraph, goals help us organize our pursuits. By starting with the end in mind, we can break the task down into bite-sized pieces, each contributing to the overall quest. We can ask, “What’s next?” and know that the answer is available by simply examining the goal.
When we set a long-term goal, we are making a commitment to ourselves and declaring our intentions to the universe: “I am doing this big thing!” We simultaneously assign ourselves a project and an accountability partner. We can’t say, “I don’t have anything to do,” anymore. We have plenty to do.
Setting the Wrong Goals Can Be Demotivating
Not all goals are created equal. For a goal to be motivational, it must promise a positive benefit, be achievable, be challenging, and not conflict with our worldview. In addition, the time necessary to accomplish it has to match our definition of reasonable.
Qualities to avoid when setting goals include:
- Goals that are too difficult: The easiest way to derail your goal train before it even leaves the station is to set your sights higher than your imagination can accept. A six-year-old who set out to walk across Europe will give up before she makes it across the street. Tasked with the challenge of walking to her friend’s house a few blocks away, the same little girl will get the job done every time. Set challenging goals, but remember that they must seem realistic in your imagination.
- Goals that are not clearly defined: One of the main reasons we set goals is to organize the task. When we clearly define our objective, we can visualize the result. We can imagine doing the thing we set out to do and feeling the accomplishment that goes along with it. If we set a fuzzy goal like “learn to talk to women better,” it’s hard to know where to start, what actions to take, and when the job is complete. Often, we just give up rather than try to fill in the blanks.
- Goals that conflict with our personal code: We all have a story, and it’s this story that we use to answer the question, “Who are you?” Our story is comprised of our past, our moral compass, and our worldview. When we set a goal that would require us to act inconsistently with who we believe we are, the conflict will make the goal distasteful, and we will quickly take steps to avoid working on it. A self-described “honest” person with a goal centered around robbing banks is unlikely to become a successful stick-up man.
- Goals that are too easy: You accomplish easy goals all the time. Because they are easy, you don’t consider them to be goals; they are just daily activities. You don’t celebrate brushing your teeth or feeding the dog. If you clutter up your goal sheet with run-of-the-mill activities, your mind will discount the list altogether.
- Goals that are unimportant: Your goals must matter to you. You should be able to explain why you want to accomplish any goal you undertake. If you set a goal to visit 25 different countries, you need to have a reason, or you will probably give up. Your mind naturally processes the resources required to cross the finish line. If the resources required far exceed the perceived benefit, you have no shot.
- Goals that never end: When you climb on the treadmill, you have a plan. You’ll stop after a certain time or distance. Goals should follow the same pattern. Consider the goal: “maintain healthy eating habits.” No matter what you do, you can’t ever accomplish this goal. Your internal referee will congratulate you for making changes to your diet, avoiding unhealthy snacks, and keeping your portions in check, but you’ll never get to celebrate, and before long, that goal is going to feel like an albatross.
“If you’re bored with life — you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things — you don’t have enough goals.” — Lou Holtz
Practices for Setting and Achieving Motivating Goals
We’ve discussed reasons for setting goals, why they motivate us, and some pitfalls to avoid, but how should we actually set goals so that we are likely to achieve the result we are looking for?
- Start with the end in mind: Imagine yourself on the other side of the process. Your goal has been accomplished, and you are different. What changed? How did you do it? What specific habits did you build to support your evolution? What habits did you eliminate from your life?
- Define Success: Create a concise statement with measurable expectations. If you are trying to lose weight, what will your final weight be? If you plan to save some money, how much will you accumulate? Set a deadline.
- Think Small: Your goals should be big. As I said earlier, small goals clog up your already too-long to-do list. Don’t set a goal to read one page of a book. Your steps, on the other hand, should be small! If you set a goal to read and understand War and Peace, reading page one is an excellent first step. Building a daily reading habit begins with reading and comprehending one page at a time, time after time, until reading becomes part of your routine.
- Keep Score: Americans live in a competitive society. We want to be the best, have the most, and weigh the least. I don’t recommend this approach to life, but I strongly recommend that you treat your goal list like a game. Write your goal down in big letters somewhere prominent in your home or office. Make a list of steps you are going to take to make it happen. Celebrate every step. Every step you check off will serve as renewed motivation to accomplish something else.
- Tell the World: People in the US keep a lot of secrets. We worry about being exposed as immoral or, worse, unsuccessful. We keep our goals to ourselves just in case we fail. It makes sense. Who wants to fail in front of their friends? The truth is that in order to make a big change in your life, you have to become a different person, and you cannot make this transformation unless you believe that you are this new version of yourself. Telling other people about the new you is a powerful step in becoming that person. Try it.
Nothing is Impossible
“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” — Audrey Hepburn
I spent almost sixty years evolving from a newborn relying on hospital staff to care for me in an incubator to a fat, heavy-drinking, real estate broker.
In less than a year, I stopped drinking, lost 60 pounds, and became a writer. In just a few weeks, I will begin my bicycle journey from Miami to Seattle.
If I can do that in a year at my age, what is possible for you? Set some goals, make some plans, tell the world, and change your life.
The single most important step in accomplishing anything is committing to it and beginning the process. Why not start today?
I’ll be looking forward to meeting the new you on my journey.
Chris Compton
03–29–2024
