Category Archives: Goal Achievement

Progress Update: My New Goal Setting Course

Goal Achievement, Goal setting, Uncategorized

In previous posts I wrote that I would be launching my new goal setting course: ‘Goal Setting 101’ soon.  I seem to have been saying that for months!  In fact my original target completion date was way back in September 2019.  In this article I want to discuss this delay in achieving my goal and see what can be learned in the context of setting and achieving any goal.

Why is it taking me so long?

1. An unexpected work opportunity arose at the end of September and I am now much busier than planned and my time is taken up with the new work.
2. The course is taking much longer than I expected with much more work and upskilling involved than I anticipated.

Let’s look at the above two reasons for the delay in launching the course. The first reason is acceptable because we have to be flexible and be able to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. This new work opportunity was too good for me to say no to and I decided to jump at it. One of the dangers of goal setting is tunnel vision where we are so focused on the goal that we don’t see other opportunities or we are so inflexible that we cannot take advantage of them.

Tunnel vision is one of the potential disadvantages of goal setting.

Planning fallacy

The second reason for the delay in launching my new goal setting course is related to my old nemesis the planning fallacy which I have written about before. We become over-optimistic about the effort and time needed to complete a goal. In other words there was far more work than I anticipated in researching and creating the course and the goal turned out to be much harder and longer than planned. In addition to the work involved I am also having to learn new skills along the way on course creation which to me is not a drag but a real bonus and I am enjoying learning as I create. However the upskilling involved adds to the time involved in course creation.

Input goals

Since last October I have been plugging away at course creation at the rate of about 30 minutes to 1 hour per day. This was my input goal to just focus on small daily progress and forget about the output of finishing the course. I am not sure exactly when I will be finished the goal setting course but I am getting nearer now and the daily progress has built up over the months. I expect to finish the course in the coming weeks.

There is only one way to eat an elephant, a bite at a time.

Desmond Tutu

Just keep going and enjoy the journey

One of the most important things of all in working towards any goal is to start from where you are now and just keep going. Keep making daily progress. If you miss a day here or there along the way that is OK. Start again today and keep going. We can all fail to reach deadlines we set for ourselves like I failed to complete my new course last September. So what! Start again and just keep going. You can achieve anything you want bit by bit and remember to enjoy the journey and learn lots along the way. Sometimes we focus so much on the end result that we forget to enjoy the journey to achieving our goal. Remember the journey is your life!

Covid-19 & Creativity

What better time now during a Covid-19 enforced lock-down to actually complete my goal setting course!  It’s a great time to get stuff like this done.  Although I recognise it is not easy for everyone with children confined to home and potentially a lot of distractions. Even spending half an hour a day on your key goal can make a huge difference over time. Maybe you always wanted to write book, start a podcast, create a course, learn a language, learn to play a musical instrument or start a blog etc. What is that big thing for you? My question now to you is what can you spend 30 minutes a day working on? In a year’s time you will be happy you started today!

Best wishes and keep safe,

Tom

Update July 2020 – the course is now live and online!! Job done – or not quite…I have continued to make updated and improvements since I launched the course. Check out the course on Udemy here.

Goal setting 101: How to Set and Achieve Goals

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At the moment I am working on developing a new online course on goal setting. The title of the course is ‘Goal setting 101: How to Set and Achieve Goals’. My goal is to complete the course and publish it by the end of September 2019 [stay tuned for further updates!]. I am very much enjoying working on this goal because I am taking the opportunity to refresh my own knowledge on goal setting, reflect on my goal setting experiences as well and review and update my own goals. Currently I have three goals. I recommend setting no more than three goals at a time because I find that if I have too many goals then I become torn between different goals and end up achieving very little. I like to focus on one to three big and challenging goals at a time.

Why Goal Setting?

Goal setting is a topic which has interested me all my life. I have been setting goals since I was a kid. Reflecting back on goals that I have set in the past they have a tendency to come to fruition. However not necessarily in the way that I intended them to happen. The planning fallacy is a constant challenge. In short the planning fallacy is where we tend to underestimate the resources and time needed to achieve a goal and overestimate the benefits of achieving the same goal. We can spend years chasing a goal. Imagine how disappointing it is to finally achieve a goal only to find out that it was all a waste of time and you should have focused your time, energy and resources elsewhere! This is why we need to be careful about the goals we set for ourselves and also to be ready to drop them and pivot if something better comes along.

Watch out for my forthcoming course launch towards the end of September 2019!

Quarter 4 – 2019

By the way this is a good time of the year to be thinking of your goals. At the end of September we will be starting the last quarter of 2019. Did you set goals for the year ahead in January? How has the year gone for you? Are you on track to achieving the goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the year? Don’t worry if things haven’t worked out as well as you expected. If you hit the ground running in the last quarter of the year you can certainly turn things around and make 2019 a year to remember!

“Goals. There’s no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There’s no telling what you can do when you believe in them. And there’s no telling what will happen when you act upon them.”

Jim Rohn

Keep an eye out for my forthcoming course launch. In the meantime I am giving away a limited number of free copies of my audio-book ‘Experiments in Personal Change’ on audible. If you would like a free review copy please email me for the promo code tcarroll@lifeisalaboratory.com The audio book is packed full of life changing tips and you might even use some of the ideas in the book to inspire your last quarter goals 2019.

Best Wishes,

Tom