Setting The Right BIG Goals Not Setting Biggest Goals
Goal-setting can be tricky and I think it's overvalued.
There's a lot of pressure put on goals to do the job.
James Clear has a great anecdote about the ineffectiveness of goal-setting. If you have teams, two competing teams show up, don't both of them have the same goal in order to win the game and yet only one team can win the game. So is goal setting the thing that we really, really need?
I personally like to think of goals as an aim, more of a direction than a destination instead of a finishing point, because when you make it the destination, a few things tend to happen.
We see ourselves approaching the goal and we have a tendency to let up.
We hit the goal, that's awesome, but then we wonder, well, what's next? What's my next destination? Goals and achieving goals can actually feel very unsatisfying.
Maybe we don't even come close to the goal, we don't hit the goal, we don't succeed at the goal and that becomes demotivating and frustrating and its own self. So then what are we left to do?
I like to think of goals like a Goldilocks and the three bears where she's looking for the thing that is just right.
This one is too hard. This one's too soft. This one's just right. Maybe our goals, things can be too big. They can be too small. What is the just right goal? And the acronym that used to remember this is B.I.G, setting big goals. Now the cool thing about this is that you can use this as a macro and you can use it as a micro.
So a macro on planning a project, on planning your year, or you can use it as a macro in planning what you want to accomplish in a given period of time or what you want to do with your day just to maintain sustainability, to be more consistent, because that's going to be one of the biggest keys to actually achieving those goals.
So what does B.I.G stand for?
Baseline Goal or the Bare Minimum
What is the absolute minimum, the baseline thing that you need to do in order to have some modicum of success. So if I was going to plan out a year and figure out what all of my expenses are, and I'd go, I need to at least be able to pay my bills.
What is the bare minimum of that? What is the baseline that I need to hit? By the way, I have a nice planning document, a spreadsheet that you can use in order to figure out what your baseline goals are and what that bare minimum number should be. If you want access to that, just message me or leave me a comment.
Ideal Goals
This would be what makes life comfortable? What would get you ahead? I like to think of this probably two times whatever your bare minimum, your baseline goal is. So what is your ideal goal?
Ginormous or Game Changing Goal
What is the thing that makes a huge difference? You could feel that impact in your life and in your business if you hit that goal.
The challenge with that goal is a lot of times that's a stretch goal and we're stretching a little too much. We're stretching so much, we're pulling some muscles, we're getting hurt reaching for that goal.
And that goal can leave us either feeling hurt, frustrated, because we didn't hit it or just overall demotivated from the whole thing. But that's usually the type of goal that we set when we go into goal setting, into business planning, into yearly planning, into some sort of goal setting program. We're stretching so much for what I call that ginormous game-changing goal. I would think that's probably four times above what your bare minimum, your baseline goal is.
I want to show you how you can use this as a year macro, and then even as a day, micro.
But let’s just review real quick:
You have your Baseline Goals, you have your Ideal Goals, and then you have your Ginormous Game Changing Goals.
I think you want to set all three of those.
Now here's how you can look at that as a micro level.
So you plan out your year and you go, here's my baseline. I need to make a hundred thousand dollars a year just to pay my debts, my bills to have a decent living that I'm used to right now. So ideally I'd like to hit 200,000. That allows me to get ahead, allows me to put a little money away, maybe for an investment. And then my ginormous goal would be $400,000 and that would be game-changing. I'll be able to maintain a really nice lifestyle and then have some money left over to make investments and really get ahead.
That's how you could look at your year, a macro goal.
When you break it down into even a week or how I like to look at it as a day, I know what my bare minimum, my baseline is that I need to hit each day. So what would make this a baseline day? What would make this an ideal day and what would make this a game changing day?
I don't know about you. But for me, some days I wake up and I feel like I could move mountains. I feel like I can accomplish anything. So on those days, I'm going to go ahead and aim for my ginormous goals. Other days, I don't feel my best. I feel a little off, I get in my own head, I start second guessing some things and start having some doubts.
And on those days is when I turned to my baseline goals and I go, well, I have to at least do this. And I've learned from that from myself and working with coaching clients over the years, decades now is a lot of times we act in this all or nothing. If we feel it, we go for it. If we don't feel it, we don't do anything.
But let me tell you, when you start at least hitting those baseline goals and most likely more often than not what happens is once you get going on the baseline goals, you just do the baseline activities, you do the baseline things that you need to get done, then you feel a little bit better and you bump up to at least the ideal activities and goals that you are any four on that day.
So in the worst case scenario, you're only hitting the baseline.
Most often, you're going to at least get to ideal. Those are the real game-changers when you're doing the baseline activities, the baseline things on the days where you don't feel like it, it's not the days where you feel every other week, one day, every other week, you feel like moving mountains and changing the world. Those aren't the game changers. It's the days when you don't feel like doing it, but you do it anyway. Even at the minimum, even the smallest amount, those become the things that are game-changing for you.
I have a one-page worksheet on setting B.I.G Goals. If you want access to that, just leave me a comment or send me a message and I'll be happy to share that worksheet with you.
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