Stop Looking at Your Goals
Constantly looking at your long-term goals is like looking for land every 5 minutes while you’re on a ship sailing across the Pacific Ocean.
You need to trust your navigation systems, get back down to the engine room, and keep shovelling coal!
By always looking at the end goal, we lose sight of what’s in front of us.
Have you ever watched the kilometres tick down while you’re driving cross-country? It’s maddening, like watching grass grow. You don’t need to constantly be watching it; you can feel the momentum around you. Trust that you’re moving forward.
I’m guilty of constantly looking too far ahead.
What does my life look like when I’m 65? Am I completely retired and planting my newest set of tulips in the garden? Am I still in an office, drawing diagrams on a whiteboard? Or am I sitting at a desk in my home office, tapping away on my Macbook 3000 Pro X, busily working on my next book?
Either way, I know my end goal is to die knowing I’ve lived a fulfilling life where I explored my curiosities and was a helpful human to my friends, family, and society as a whole.
So how am I living into this concept? I’m doing it right now by writing this article and attempting to publish at least five articles a week.
I’ve managed to hit 14 days in a row, but now I’m thinking I’ll scale it back a bit. I’m starting to feel the strain of trying to do a daily post. Even if I publish five articles a week, I’ll still hit my goal of 100 articles by the end of the year, and that’s what really matters to me.
The problem with constantly looking at my end goal is that it seems so far away. Which it is, of course. I’ve still got 85 to go!
But what this does is not necessarily encourage me; in some ways, it drains my energy. It reminds me that it's so far away.
I’m looking up over the stern of my ship and can still on ly see the endless ocean and no sight of land.
What I really need to be doing is concentrating on the next 10 miles of my journey. I focus on just getting the next post out, and then the next one.
What’s in front of you?
Looking at your long-term goals can be discouraging. Especially if you have lofty goals of saving the world.
Firstly, your goals should be attainable, but that’s a whole different article.
Instead of constantly beating yourself down for not achieving your long-term goals, focus on navigating the next week, month, or quarter.
What are the things that you can do now to incrementally work towards your goals?
Do you want to turn your food truck into a global culinary empire rivalling Gordon himself?
Here’s what you can start working on right now:
- Start setting yourself up for expansion by digitizing your processes to inform business decisions
- Begin developing your manual tasks into repeatable and scalable process
- Kick off your brand through marketing and customer success
Note: I used this example because I’m actively helping my sister grow her food truck business. (Shameless plug: Check out Viet Q Foods)
These can be broken down even further into consumable tasks.
Small chunks of work that will compound over time to drive you towards your long-term goal.
Want to land on and colonize Business Empire Island?
This is the coal shovelling you should be doing now instead of standing there with your binoculars, sitting stagnant in the water.
Rely on systems, not motivation
Setting goals feels good. It’s been shown that the simple act of writing down your goals provides you with a feel-good hit of dopamine.
It’s why you get that burst of energy at the start of a new novel endeavour and you work at it night and day.
But your motivation starts to wane after a few weeks, maybe months. Your burst of nitrous has started to fade, and ‘life starts to get in the way’.
Motivation comes and goes like the tides, which is why you need to create systems that allow you to constantly inch forward no matter what level of motivation you’re at on any given day.
You can grow your one-person business by growing your network and reaching out to at least one person every day.
Keep your systems simple and your incremental goals small, almost to the point of being too easy; just make sure it creeps you a little bit closer to your goal with every step.
Greg McKeown wrote a great book called ‘Effortless’ on this very topic. I highly recommend it.
Your goals change as your priorities change
As your life progresses, things will change. You’ll experience more things, maybe find a partner, maybe even have kids—these all change your perspective on ‘what is important’.
Your goals need to change with you.
My goal 10 years ago was to own a Nissan GT-R (oh man, that’s a beautiful car), but in the last 10 years, I got married, bought a condo, and had a child.
So this goal of mine slipped further and further down the list (I actually completely forgot about it until now).
I started to reflect on ‘why’ this goal was important to me.
Did I need a $100,000+ car for transport? Nope
Would I enjoy paying $200 a week for gas? Nope
Did I need a car to validate myself and show everyone how successful I was? Nope, I have my family, and that’s all I care about now.
All this happened within a 10-year (probably shorter) time span.
Today, I’m perfectly happy driving my little electric car with a baby seat in the back.
Am I lame because I gave up my dreams and am now living the life of a suburban Dad? Not to me; my priorities just changed, and so did my goals.
My goals now are to create more time and space so I can spend it with my wife and son.
While I believe you need goals and direction, take them with a handful of salt. Because your priorities will change, and your goals should follow.
Reflect to see how far you’ve come
We’re surrounded by a cocoon of media constantly barraging our senses with stories of overachievers. The Musks, Bezos, and Zuckerbergs of the world are doing amazing things.
All of them remind us how far behind we are or how that could be us if we just worked harder, took bigger risks, or were smarter in some way.
We’re very rarely encouraged by social media to take a minute and reflect. Step back and see how far we’ve come and appreciate all the things that we have right now.
It may seem like we’ve just been spinning our wheels for months or even years on this hamster wheel of life, making zero progress.
We just need to take a step back to see the experiences we’ve had, what we’ve learned, and what we’ve achieved.
Final thoughts
Having goals is great; we should all strive to better ourselves in some way and have targets to do so.
But what’s more important is action.
- Define your goals, spot them on the map, and then get to work.
- Lean on systems instead of motivation to navigate the ebbs and flows
- Incremental progress over time is more effective than giant bursts
- Keep a loose attachment to your goals; they’ll change as your life progresses and your priorities change
This is my way of taking incremental steps towards my goal of being able to write more, maybe even turning it into a full-time thing. Who knows? As long as it aligns with my goal of exploring my curiosities.
My goal is to publish 100 articles by the end of 2023.
This is article 15 of 100.
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