What’s Your Big Goal This Week?
For the last few months, I’ve been trying to figure out an effective goal-setting system for myself. There’s always been goals I’ve set in my head and visions of what achieving those goals would look like. But somehow most of these have failed when it comes to execution.
Now, I finally think I’ve found an effective system that’s been working for me and it’s made up of 2 parts.
1: Set yourself one big goal for the week
Why a week?
New year resolutions and fancy annual goal setting exercises are rarely effective. The time frame is just too large and there’s so many external variables beyond one’s control that will impact how the year pans out. I’ve tried a month as well but even that felt too long. However, a week — that feels just right. 7 days is not a long time to lose sight of the goal and it’s likely that you can be in full control over what’s in store for the week — whether it’s your calendar, other commitments or any external events
Why one goal?
Prioritisation is key and forcing yourself to think about just one thing drives results. It’s why the Sprint process developed by Google Venture Labs is so effective — spend the whole week going after one big problem. The moment you set yourself multiple goals, even if it’s just a couple, it has a negative impact on brain performance. This is backed by numerous research papers, some of which we will discuss in a podcast around this topic.
2: Have a buddy to hold you accountable
There’s a reason why personal training in gyms is so effective in actually getting people to use the gym in the first place. It’s because you subconsciously know you have someone you’re accountable to — there’s someone waiting for you in the gym and it generates a feeling of guilt if you don’t go. In other words, when you feel you’re letting someone else down, it’s more likely to drive you than the feeling of only letting yourself down.
Using this principle, we’ve developed a buddy system in this community where you and your buddy hold each other accountable to that one big goal for the week. Each week, you discuss your progress towards the previous week’s goal and set yourself a new one for the coming week.
Try this for yourself, and we’d love to hear from you about the impact it has on your ability to achieve your goals.
Great To Awesome provides millennials with the resources to pursue careers of impact and a platform to connect, collaborate and create with each other.
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About the author: This post is written by Anshul, a co-founder of Great To Awesome. Anshul recently quit his job at a large FTSE 100 multinational in London to pursue impact start-ups in emerging economies.
