Accomplishing your goals can sometimes feel like climbing a Mount Everest – your confident you can start the journey strong but are less sure of your ability to finish.  Paying attention to the following list of things not to do can greatly increase your chances of reaching the summit.

1. Don’t include “shoulds” – do things because you have an appreciation for the benefit to be gained or the pain to be avoided that is associated with the goal
2. Don’t obsess over the bull’s eye – give yourself a range to shoot for instead of a single point.  In addition to the target, identify a lesser amount that you would be pleased with.  At the same time establish what you would consider a stretch goal.
3. Don’t “try” anything -  write your goals in a way that identifies the actions you will take, not what you will try to do.  In the words of the wise Jedi master, Yoda, “Do or do not … there is no try.”
4. Don’t focus on other people – if your goal is dependent upon others, re-write it to only include the action you can directly control.
5. Don’t ignore your past performance – if you haven’t been able to accomplish something in the past, it’s not reasonable to expect high performance.  Take baby steps if you need to and giant leaps when that is appropriate.
6. Don’t forget who you are – take your likes, preference, life purpose, etc. in to account when crafting your goals.
7. Don’t be vague – be specific enough in your wording so that you can clearly determine whether or not the goal has actually been met.

Yesterday, we started our journey through a list of things not to do in order to achieve your goals.  We started by going deeper in understanding our motives than merely setting goals because we should.  Today, we move on to our second don’t.

1. Don’t include “shoulds”

2. Don’t obsess over the bull’s eye

   There are very few things in life can be predicted with absolute certainty months in advance.  Given that why do we think it reasonable to set goals with absolute certainty build in to an inherently uncertain process.  This negates any progress made unless the specific target is achieved.  People often set weight loss goals (I’ll get to why this structure is something not to do in a later post in this series.)  If you set out to loose 35 pounds and only lose 32 did you fail?  Of course not.  So why not build yourself some slack in your goal setting.

   In business, forecasting is a common practice and every well run business has one.  These are used by boards to evaluate the performance of the CEO and by banks to evaluate the health of the companies to which they lend money.  CEOs aren’t necessarily deemed poor performers and companies are not necessarily considered high risk if they don’t hit their budgeted number.  Based upon past experience, there is usually some margin of error allowed – perhaps 5-10% depending upon the type of business.

   Learning from this practice, goals should have a target – something equivalent to the weight you would like to hit or number placed in the budget – and a minimally acceptable number based upon past performance.  This minimal number should require some level of effort and  make you feel as though have had to work for it.  It is not intended to be a sand bag or cop out but a realistic goal that symbolizing accomplishment.

   Just a minimum level and target are not sufficient.  Goals can be de-motivating if accomplished too easily.  If 35 pound is your targeted weight loss, what would it be like to reach 50 pounds.  A 10% increase in revenue seems doable, but a 25% increase would be phenomenal.  Go ahead and think about what an ultimate stretch goal might be.  Raymond Aaron call this the Outrageous goal in his MTO system that teaches these principles.

   The whole point of this don’t – not obsessing over the bull’s eye – is to give yourself a range to motivate yourself for any real progress you make towards your ultimate goal and to keep you motivated enough to shoot for phenomenal success.

   The rest of the list

3. Don’t “try” anything
4. Don’t focus on other people
5. Don’t ignore your past performance
6. Don’t forget who you are
7. Don’t be vague