Goal Setting Secret – How to Achieve Any Goal

 This article looks at how a deliberate shift in our views on goal setting can net drastic cumulative results in the long run.

Whether it’s career goals or personal goals, we’ve all been there – setting aggressive and sometimes overtly ambitious goals, chasing after it, hitting road bumps and eventually become de- motivated to never see the goal come to fruition.

Nobody likes to be stuck in a plateau. You might spend months working hard towards a goal without seeing any progress. It can be incredibly frustrating to feel your motivations go unrewarded.

How you react to a plateau will decide whether you’re going to eventually be successful. While many people react by burning themselves out or quitting, some people continue showing up, every day. The people that show up, through sheer patience, will eventually break through their plateau.

Why Get-Rich-Quick Schemes Fail

I see this as a blogger. A new writer will start a blog, often with great content, but after 8 months they stop blogging. Some expressed ideas that the blog would become their future business, so they can’t claim they weren’t committed. While they stopped writing, the soon-to-be successful bloggers continued to write, every day.

I see this as a gym-goer. Every January the gym is full. After a few weeks it’s quiet again. People purchased year-long memberships to use them for 3 weeks. Sure, they can claim they were too busy, or that they didn’t really need to exercise, but that’s a rationalization. While they quit, the truly healthy people continued to show up, every day.

I see this as a student. There are a lot more pre-med students than medical students. There are more people at the beginning of an academic program than at the end of it. While some people cram for exams the last minute, other people develop studying habits that last them their entire degree program.

Getting rich quick doesn’t just fail because the methods are scams. They fail because the people they attract were never interested in what it takes to succeed to begin with. They wanted an immediate solution to a problem that requires a lifetime of dedication.

The Secret to Goal Setting: Deliberate Slowness

Instead of offering the fastest path to success, I want to offer the opposite: the slowest path to success. Instead of promising you can get rich quickly, I’d like to suggest that you can get rich over several years or decades. Instead of promising to lose 14lbs in a week, I am suggesting that you can be healthy for a lifetime.

Deliberate slowness to goal setting isn’t a popular mantra these days. In a fast-paced world, everyone is looking for shortcuts. They want to know how the superstar managed to becoming incredibly successful in a few months. They don’t want to hear about the person who meticulously planned her success for a decade.

However, despite it’s lack of glamour, deliberate slowness with goal setting is a more effective mantra. It forces you to stop craving the immediate acquisition of your goal, focus on the process and get down to the doing. This focus on processmakes it more likely you’ll keep your goals once you achieve them. More importantly, a focus on process allows you to actually enjoy the path to success instead of viewing everything as an obstacle towards it.

What Are You Going to Master in 10 Years?

Think about your plans in terms of the next decade, and not the next few months. When you think in terms of a decade, your strategy changes. Instead of trying to frantically push effort into the current moment, you focus on the continuous behaviors you need to succeed. Instead of trying to achieve a goal for the moment, you focus on how to sustain it for a lifetime.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his excellent book Outliers, proposes that it takes 10,000 hours to master any skill. Virtuosos and computer hackers alike all need to put 10,000 hours of work in before they reach true mastery of their craft. If you spent 3 hours a day, for almost every day of the year, it would take you a decade to master a skill.

Instead of looking for the quickest route, look for the most sustainable route. Don’t worry about what will get you there immediately, look at what will keep you there in five to ten years.

As a blogger, this means continually outputting content, on a regular schedule. My own website (ScottHYoung.com) has over 700 articles in the archive, most of which still gain traffic and comments to this day.

As a gym-goer, this means sustaining the exercise habit, rather than adopting radical workout strategies. I’ve been going to the gym 3-5 days per week for over four years. Instead of taking on every dieting fad, I try to maintain a simple diet that is both healthy and sustainable.

My goal setting aims for the long-term. I don’t subscribe to the motivational advice saying you should manufacture unlimited confidence in yourself so you can achieve any goal. I think the downside of this approach is that whenever your false confidence doesn’t meet reality (which often happens) you crash and find it more difficult to put in the effort. I’d rather set highly realistic goals and commit to investing the energy in them day after day, year after year.

Building the Foundation

Beneath any skyscraper there is a large foundation. In order to build upwards, you first need to dig downwards, otherwise you’re resting on uncertain ground. The same is true of life. Before you can try to radically shift your blogging strategy, experiment with your gym routine or juggle a double course load, you need to build a foundation.

That foundation is your habits. The things you do, regardless of your motivation or feedback, every day and every week. I write articles for my website twice per week, regardless of whether my traffic spiked or it crashed. Regardless of whether I made a thousand dollars or a dime. I write because writing is the foundation of my work, and it comes before everything else.

If you can build the proper foundation, you can build almost anything on top of it. Because your foundation will continue to put effort in for you, even when you’re stuck in a plateau, too busy or exhausted, it is the most valuable part of your goal setting strategy. With a foundation, you can then try all the experiments and tricks you want to use to speed your success.

Figure out what you would need to do, every day or every week, in order to sustain your goal. What’s the bare minimum output level you’d need to meet. Once you define this level, make it a habit. Commit to it for at least thirty days without stop. Then commit to continuing it for another ninety days.

Once your foundation is set, you are far less likely to quit out of exhaustion or frustration. You can experience virtually any setback, and continue to show up, every day.

Goal Setting Motives – Lifestyle? Or Means to an End?

One major difference between people who continue and those who quit, is the way they approach their goals. The people who continue see the path to their goal as part of a lifestyle. The people who quit see the path to their goal is just a means to reach their objective.

If you go to the gym, is that because going to the gym is part of your lifestyle, or only because you’re trying to lose thirty pounds? Are you blogging because writing every day is part of your life, or is it just a stepping-stone in order to becomewealthy?

Integrate your goals into your lifestyle. While part of this is the same as setting habits, it’s also an attitude. Ask yourself whether you would continue to work this hard, once you’ve reached your goal? If the answer is no, then you probably won’t be able to continue in the long run. If you get stuck or your goal takes longer than you realized, you may never reach it.

Set Aggressive Goals, Realistic Deadlines

Set big, world-changing goals for your life. Just be patient with the deadline. I’d rather have world-changing goals for myself that I foresee taking decades, than minor goals I anticipate accomplishing well ahead of schedule.

Your deadline is more than just a motivational tool. It also frames how you view your goal. Setting longer deadlines forces you to pick sustainable, deliberately slow strategies for success. Setting unrealistically short deadlines forces you to cut corners, take shortcuts and scam your way to the top.

Goal Setting Sustainability

Sustainability is a popular word for the environment. It means choosing solutions that will continue to work in 50 years, just as they work today. But, sustainability also applies to your life and goal setting. If you take on paths that aren’t sustainable, you’re violating the principle of deliberate slowness.

Ask yourself how long you can continue this current path. When will you give up after not seeing any results? If the answer is less than “forever”, your strategy isn’tsustainable. If there is a clearly defined quitting time, you aren’t pursuing a sustainable strategy.

I’m not saying you need to continue the same strategy forever. But, if you have the potential to do so, then you greatly increase the odds that you won’t quit for the wrong reasons.

Don’t Pursue Half-Committed Ventures

The side-lesson of deliberate slowness is that you shouldn’t pursue half-committed ventures. If you want something, you should be committed to realizing it whether it takes only a month or a decade. If you aren’t willing to wait ten years to complete your goal, then you probably don’t have the persistence it takes to see it through to the end.

When Deliberately Slow is Surprisingly Fast

In my life, I’ve taken on goals from a deliberately slow perspective. When I started my business, I set my first important income goal for three years, not six months. When I started exercising my fitness targets were measured in months, not weeks. When I set out changing habits, I did so, one at a time, for at least one month each.

Talking to a short-term thinker, and my approach seems painfully slow. They will point out how I might be able to double my business in a few months, or increase my strength within a week.

But if you actually look at the track record, deliberate slowness is the faster approach. If you only focus on one habit change per month, you can completely rewrite the behaviors of your life in less than a year. Three years to build a business looks painfully long in the future, but after it’s done, people comment on how amazing your success is.

Just Do It. (Every Day)

The current motivational mantra is “get started.” Nike says, “Just do it.” Guy Kawasaki’s book focuses on the Art of the Start. But I think a better mantra than get started would be to “show up, every day.” Instead of just trying to get started, show up every day so that you have a chance to finish.

* What are your goal setting secrets to achieving your dreams? Share your thoughts and stories in the comment section. See you there!

Some Reasons Why Your Boss Can Hate You!

This time I thought to blog about a topic on which many people discussed with me in past, and I know few friends of mine who always faces the situation. It is a situation in which you consider that your boss actually hates you, and you don’t even know the reasons too. Well you’re probably correct that your boss hates you, and it can have many reasons.

Well actually there can be many reasons behind why your boss hates you, but the prime factor remains with your work habits. Here I would also like to tell you something interesting, that your thinking can be a misconception for you too, as you are thinking that your boss hates you, but it might not be true too. Here are some reasons why your boss can hate you:

Attitude:
Call it as bad attitude, or you are too argumentative with your colleagues, it can damage your image in your work place. Doesn’t matter, if you are having authority at your work place, but it won’t allow you to show your disagreement with your employees in a manner which can disrupt the environment of your work place. Come up with a new idea to show disagreement, like one of my friend’s uses official mail to show his disagreement rather than arguing with his subordinates.

Wasting Time:
One of the prime reasons why your superior hates you is because he find that you waste too much time. Be it using your mobile phone for long-long time, or spending too much time on social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut etc., or constantly chatting with your colleagues or friends, or constantly updating your pictures,  these are some non-work activities which can surely increase the hate for you in the mind of your boss. One of my friends who is an HR in a MNC, told me that these days she is meeting with many employees who prefer to spent more time on Facebook and chatting. According to her, there are some times when you can feel bore and you can spend some time on killing these spare moments, but if you are using more than 25% of your entire time on all these activities then you are not a good resource for your company. And it is enough to generate anger in the mind of your boss.

Late Coming:
Another reason for which any boss can hate his employees is late coming. Well, it might happen that you are facing some problem and you became late to reach to your work place, but it cannot happen on all the days. Occasional late coming is avoidable, but if you are continuously making a practice of always coming late, then your boss has all the right to hate you. One of my friends, who are a Marketing Manager, told me that many people did not understand that they are breaking the chain of the productivity of the company by coming late. This is yet another reason why your boss has all the right to hate you.

Other than the above mentioned points, there are some more reasons too for why your boss can hate you. It can either be because you ask too many questions, or you lack the passion or interest in your work, you are a bit more gossipy than others etc. A good employee is the person, who can read the mind of his boss, and deliver according to his or her wish. So what I always suggest to a few friends of mine that first go through the mind of your boss and read what is going inside it, and then mould yourself according to what he expects from you. It will surely help you to reduce the level of hate in the mind of your boss, and also avoid spending time on unproductive works at your work place.

How To Prepare Yourself For Job Interview?

I have seen around thousands of articles on the same topic, but still I thought I should share my own views on how to prepare you for job interview. Everybody in this world feel nervous while facing the interview. What are the questions the interviewer is going to ask me? This is the question which comes into the mind of everyone who is going to face the interview.

Well, if you can get an idea about the interview questions a prospective employer might ask you then you can face the interview confidently. It can increase your confidence and lower down the hesitation while facing the interviewer. Once you know the probable questions then you can take the help of a big mirror, and ask yourself the same questions and give response to the mirror. This exercise will surely increase your confidence.

The most common question which an interviewer can ask you is why you want to leave your present job. The reason behind your intention to leave your present job will explain him your character. The interviewerwill judge your stability on the basis of the response which you will give to them.

Second most common questions ask by the interviewer is tell me something about yourself, and it will be your real test. Will you be able to explain about yourself in front of the mirror? If yes, then you can surely do the same in front of the interviewers too. Remember one tip, always start with your personal detail and then follow it with your educational detail and then move towards your professional detail. To conclude the topic you need to say about the hobbies. This is my personal experience that this will surely please theinterviewer.

Another one is where would you see yourself after two or three years of time. This question too need very diplomatic answer, actually it is an art to please the interviewer. You should know about how you can please your interviewer, while replying to this question you should remember one tip, your response should tell the interviewer that you are interested for staying in the company for as long as possible. It will build the trust on you.

The most important question asked in any interview is about your expected salary. You should be prepared for this question, I still remember the early days of my career when I always get confused with this question and use to face some alter situation at the interview table.

Although it is hard to prepare in advance for an interview as the interviewer might ask you some unwanted question at any moment during the interview, but these questions will surely boost your confidence and thus you can face any question asked by them. Also don’t forget to have a bit of study about the company for which you are giving job interview. It will display that you are serious about the opening.

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