Make it count — Reaching Goals
This sharing economy cyclone is taking everybody and every industry by surprise. We are now more knowledgeable in what it is, and how it is disrupting all previous traditional economic schemes. It has produced so much money in such short period of time, that we are seeing how big old players are now joining the trend (afraid of being left behind); and startups poping up like popcorn, flooding marketplaces with same basic services, but different approaches.
This is great for competition.
If we have competition, we have much better options for the consumers. More options means market flexibility. Hence, more room for providers.
The whole point of this sharing economy exercise is to help us as providers, to get there… get to this point of our lives where we will have achieved what we have aimed for all this time.
The only way to do so is setting up goals, and see them thorough to the end. Goals are what we want to think of when we are tired of obstacles. Goals are those meaningful things driving us to do a bit more. Goals are the ones that makes us turn off the tv and put our time to good use.
People perceive goals as things easy to speak out loud, but hard and daunting to achieve. Generally speaking, most of people who set a goal for a definitive period of time won’t achieve it. Why does this happen? Different reasons. Furthermore, people are very unaware of how external environment affects the way we fight to keep on track for goal reaching. Environmental facts are a great deal when aiming for a goal (many times we get distracted by immediate gains because it surround us, rather than stopping and thinking for the long run of achieving what we said we would).
Even tho, we set and actually achieve goals on a daily basis: we get up and go to work. We have to get things done. We do. We go home and have to take care of the family. We do. Another day goes by. Your basic goals are cover. Everyday.
We probably need to dig deeper in the reasons that make us achieve a goal, or fail in the attempt. If we get to understand the why, we will tend to address it rather than falling in the trap.
Hopefully we will…
There are several reason why a person wouldn’t achieve a goal. One of them might be unrealistic forecasts or lack of minimum effort. Most of the time people would get derailed of the goal due to lack of self-control (when we give in to the immediate unhelpful environment which is depicting an easy way out or a ‘small’ break of goal promise).
Other reason might be lack of rigor when aiming at getting things done. People might tend to take the goal setting a bit ‘lightly’. Apparently is in our nature to take things lightly. Who would have thought… It is easier to speak out loud that we are going to do this or that, but we end up not doing what we claimed we were going to do. It is easy to get derailed of the objective. Probably getting out of the comfort zone is a big reason here.
If you do not write down your goals, you are not serious about them. Scientifically proven fact. If you are not serious about them, you do not internalise them. That is as good as doing nothing. Better off not promising to do anything.
On the other hand, people who reach their goals indeed, are featured for simple exercises, and a bit of intrinsic determination. Exercises like break the big goal into smaller, easier to achieve ones is a start. This way they wouldn’t feel discouraged by the titanic job that might represent trying to go for the big prize straight away. This is also completed by writing down a plan to achieve your small goals, and how they will actually escalate to the big one.
One of the main reasons why people do achieve their goals is commitment in the form of necessity. Unfortunately, many times achieving goals for some people is the difference between today and tomorrow, life and death, well being and ill-being. In this position, people do want the goal bad enough to make it happen at all cost. It would be really good if we figure a way to transpose those feelings into a regular goal reaching situation.
In the sharing economy business, it is imperative to have goals. We already know we are doing it as providers because it is a good way to make some extra bucks. But it is necessary to have a north arrow to make this extra bucks count for something meaningful. It doesn’t have to be big or small, just well estated.
Once we have correctly thought of what we want out of this #newconomy, it would be highly recommended we insert milestones in the way. Make your big goal, whatever it is, workable in smaller pieces. We have seen above that breaking goals down into smaller more manageable pieces of objectives, is the smartest way not to get distracted from the big picture. Psychological behavior follows the same pattern regardless of the size of the goal: motivation that brings the success in it, or the actual experience of ‘living’ the goal itself.
Once we have these small milestones, we have an enormous ace under the sleeve to make sure we advance towards our main dream:
Peer support, direction and feedback. This becomes a challenge to yourself and makes you accountable for your social behavior. In this case in the sharing economy world.
This gig economy is a social interaction intrinsically. It makes all the sense that we rely on each other to get where we want to be. When we share our goals to peers in the marketplaces, we open up to the people in it, and show our commitment and desire to collaborate in the activity we are all enrolled in. These brings some amazing consequences, like people supporting and helping you along the way with feedback of situations they had on their own journey, and tips and tricks of the profession that you could use to leverage your game.
When you challenge yourself to make it happen, have a plan in mind and get out there to seek support, you become accountable in the social manner to accomplish your objectives. The fact that you know that they know what you want to do immediately makes you serious about it. Makes you see it to the end.
When is your name in the line of fire, the perception others have of your persona, you are worried this doesn’t get trashed. You need to comply.
In conclusion, setting up goals is the easy part. Sticking to the efforts we need to do in order to get there, is not. We shouldn’t be afraid or feel defeated before starting on the goals track. There are people out there who want to achieve things for their well being, and would be highly benefited from sharing their pains and approaches with someone else. Just think of it as when you need to talk to someone about something. You are stuck emotionally for example, and need a shoulder to cry on. What happens immediately after you expose all of your worries? Most likely the person in front of you would have good insights as an external observer of how you should tackle your issues. You feel better instantly. You fell great-full for sharing. Same thing here. Share your goals, leverage in each other and be a bit organised. Baby steps, but with determination.
We all can do very good in the sharing economy, just need to stay focused, have tangible goals and support each other. Make it work for you. Make it worth it.
