Goal Setting to the NOW
If you took the time to read my last story then you know that I’m currently reading “The ONE Thing” by Gary Keller. This is a man who has built an international real estate giant from the ground up. His “secret” to success is that he didn’t become successful because he was able to do everything but because he was able to do one thing; the ONE Thing.
As I have been reading through the book, I’ve talked to a couple of other people that have either already read it or were in the process of working their way through it. Regardless of who they were, they all told me that their favorite part was Chapter 14: Live By Priority. It wasn’t just because of the knowledge that Keller imparted on them during these ten pages but because it was time to take action.
Let me backtrack just a bit and explain what The ONE Thing is and what it really means. Keller explained that everyone needs to live with a purpose and priority. Our purpose is why are we doing what we are doing while priority is what do we need to be doing in order to fulfill our purpose. To quote the man himself: “Purpose without priority is powerless.”
What he is trying to tell us is that we need to find the single priority — and he stresses that this word is singular, no plural — that will lead us to success. In order to constantly remind ourselves of how to stay on the path to success, he developed what he coined the Focusing Question: What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary? Pretty deep stuff when you stop and think about it but it makes a ton of sense. If there’s something you can do now that’s going to make your future endeavors either easier or unnecessary, wouldn’t it make sense to attack that with all of your ability and attention?
After reading Chapter 14, the reader is instructed to stop and write down goals — both short- and long-term — that will have us living by priority. Being able to wake up every single day and know what your most important task — your ONE Thing — is and have a sole focus should be hugely beneficial to everyone.
While I do chart all of my work on FreeCodeCamp’s courses in a personal spreadsheet and have goals and deadlines in my head, it’s not written down and certainly has never been made public before. I wish I had gotten to this chapter sooner because I feel that if my goals were not only written down for me to read but published for others to see as well that I would be more apt to reach these goals. I also know that my goals weren’t very long-term in hindsight with the furthest one being just one-year into the future. Not only have I come up with goals from today until one-year from now but I have my someday goal written and recorded for me to work to.
When thinking about your ONE Thing, we are implored to think both big and small. What is the end goal for what you’re striving for? Where do you want to end up when it is all said and done and for what reason? This someday goal should be lofty and something that will require some serious work to achieve. For me, I’ve established that someday I’m going to own, run and operate my own web development company here in Boston. Majoring in management in college and having the ability to organize, direct and collaborate with others, I think that having my own company where I’m able to hire like-minded individuals like myself would be a lot of fun.
That someday goal is way off in the future, much further than five years, but needs stepping stones to get me there. For a five-year goal, I want to manage my own team of developers within a company. Be it fully front-end, back-end, designers or a mixture of all three, I would like to be able to head of the team that is part of a bigger organization.
My original “long-term” goal is now known as my one-year goal. In one year I am hoping to accept a position as a developer for a local web development company in or around the Boston area. When I originally started the FreeCodeCamp courses, this goal was set for two years into the future — May 2019 — but has been moved up significantly. Not only do I think it’s a possibility, I truly believe it is more than realistic and will happen if I tackle the smaller dominoes ahead of this one.
Those smaller dominoes come in the form of monthly, weekly and daily goals. Since I’m starting this on August 9th, I’m behind a week on this planning. Regardless, the goal for the month of August won’t change. By the end of this month I want to claim my front end development certificate from FreeCodeCamp. This is the first certificate program that I started back in May on FCC and 61 hours and 41 minutes later, I’m four projects away from earning that certificate.
My weekly goal for this week is to complete the Advanced Algorithm Scripting section of the certificate program as well as completing the first project of the Advanced Front End Development Projects section. After roughly 45 minutes of work today, was able to check off one of those two weekly goals as I was done with the algorithm scripting. For tomorrow, I’m going to start working on building a JavaScript calculator. When I wake up and give serious thought to what needs to be included in the project, I’ll have a much more detailed daily goal and will mentally prepare for my work with a clear direction to take.
Goal setting has always been a fun idea to me, but I think my problem always was I would say things like “I could get this done by” or “it’s possible for me to learn this by”. Rather than having that gray area or lack of priority and purpose, these goals were either setback further into the future or never achieved at all.
My mindset has changed, even while typing these goals. For the monthly goal for August, I almost typed in “Try to claim my front end development certificate from FreeCodeCamp.” That doesn’t seem too bad, right? I stopped myself because those first two works — Try to — was my old way of thinking. No longer is giving an effort and attempting things good enough. Becoming much more results-oriented and goal-driven is going to become a strength for me.
These goals I’ve set are now affirmatives and things that I will do. With the spreadsheet setup and ready to go, it’s time for me to set reminders in my phone to not only plan my daily goal but to review my weekly, monthly and yearly goals!
