GOAL SETTING EXERCISE 🏆

It’s a new year and time for New Year’s resolutions. You have no doubt thought about making one but even if you already have one,  I encourage you to do something different – replace  New Year’s resolutions with New Year goals.

You see, resolutions don’t paint a picture of your future (that's why most resolutions are never kept). Only clear, vivid, burning goals can paint a vision of the future and provide the inspiration we need to keep moving toward  that vision.

Luckily, 2020 is not just a New Year, it’s a new decade – a decade of AI, self-driving cars and the first human landing on Mars. It gives us a unique opportunity to design our life for the next 10 years. What do you want to become by year 2030?

Bill Gates famously said: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”

Here is a goal-setting exercise that will paint the picture of your next decade. Portray your future, you in 10 years. What do you look like? What do you do? What have you achieved? 

When you have a future in mind, one that you are truly excited about, making meaningful changes in your life becomes much easier. 

Goal setting exercise  

STEP 1 – DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT AND WRITE IT DOWN. 

Open a word or google docs or grab a piece of paper (you can transfer the goals to your computer or phone later) and write down what you want in the next 1-10 years.  Write down at least 50 goals. Make the list as long as you can but don't spend more than a few seconds on each goal.

Here are some of the questions to get you started:

• What do I want to do?

• What do I want to see?

• What do I want to have?

• Where do I want to go?

• What skills do I want to have?

Make sure to include goals from these following three categories: 

• Financial goals:  incomes, savings, investments 

• Material Items: home, car, boat, ect. 

• Personal development goals: - get fit, lose weight, start a family, better lifestyle, special skills, ect

STEP 2 – PUT A NUMBER ON IT. 

Once you have about 50 goals on your list, put a number next to each goal. This number signals how many years you think it will take you to achieve this goal. Split them into four separate groups: 

• 1-year goals – My targets 

• 3-year goals –  My plans

• 5-year goals – My ambitions

• 10-year goals – My visions

Your goals should be evenly split between the groups and have at least 10 goals in each one. If you have too many 1-year goals and not enough 10-year goals – think again and add some more 10-year goals.  

STEP 3 – TALK YOURSELF INTO THE GOAL OR TALK YOURSELF OUT OF IT. 

Now pick your four most important goals from each group and describe them in a paragraph. Why is this goal important to you? What are the reasons you want this? When you're unclear about why something is important, you usually don’t give your best, but only put a half-hearted effort into it. What you want is a powerful motivator but the reason why you want a certain goal is the most powerful motivator of all. It has a great pull. After thinking about the reasons, you might find some goals that you thought were important are not that important at all. This is the part where you either talk yourself into it or talk yourself out of it. 

After you have completed the exercise, you should have 16 well-defined goals that you sold yourself on. Transfer your list of goals now to a google doc, notes app or trello – a place where you have quick access to it on the go as well as your computer. 

This list is now your roadmap to the future you. Whatever your goals are, they are affecting you all day long. They affect your handshakes, your attitude, how you feel. Your goals affect how you look, how you dress, how you walk, how you talk – all day, every day. Your personality, conversation, activity are all affected by your goals. 

You can rearrange them or rewrite them once a week. You might add new goals and remove old goals. Goals should not be rigid. Your list of goals grow and change as you grow and change. Goals provide you with a direction to follow to achieve your desired outcomes. Goals involve planning, preparing, and taking action. Setting goals is not something you do in January once a year, but a continuous process. Starting at the beginning of a new era is just a neat trick to fool ourselves into actually doing it — a fresh start. 

Setting goals  is also a lot of work – that's the reason most people don't do it, and why you need a structured method for it. These goals will be like a magnet: they’ll pull you in the direction of the future you have envisioned for yourself. You might not have the answers on how to achieve them right now, but if you want that future badly enough, you will find a way to get it. The answers to the solutions will become evident the more you set, plan and prepare your goals.