Reaching a Micro-Goal

I have sat through 138 hours of college courses, and I was never in a course that really taught me how to set and achieve goals. In fact, college classes generally set goals for the students. At the beginning of every class, students are handed a syllabus that defines the specific assignments and goals throughout the semester. The syllabus serves as a map for the course. After college, life doesn’t hand me a syllabus.

When I began my podcasting project, I had a goal to reach 250 listeners within six weeks. I reached 260 listeners in three weeks. I am very excited, because if I didn’t reach my goal I was going to evaluate pursuing the media platform further for my specific topic. For some more experienced podcasters, that may seem like a really small number of listeners. However, I know that achieving every long-term goal requires accomplishing smaller goals that lead to the larger finales. For example, in graduate school, we have course-spanning tasks, which are small portions of a very large paper we turn in each unit.

I have slowly began designing my life syllabus. It is tougher than I thought, but I when I design my own map, reaching each destination along the journey is much more satisfying. I am very happy with my 260 listens, and I look forward to reaching more people.