Category Archives: Goal setting

Covid-19 Ireland Update & Goal Setting Course.

I hope you are keeping well wherever you are in the world. I am going to get to the goal setting course later in this blog post but first I want to give you my Covid-19 update.

As I write this I am under lock-down in Ireland due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. We are now heading into our 11th week since the schools and colleges closed on Thursday March 12th. Our national holiday celebrations on St. Patrick’s Day, 17th March were cancelled. On March 27th, Ireland was placed on full lock-down with all non-essential journeys banned for two weeks. Of course the lock-down was extended and as I write this (May 24th 2020) we are still under lock-down. Easter celebrations were cancelled. We stayed at home for two bank holiday weekends in May and June. Bars, restaurants, hotels, churches, sporting clubs and activities etc were closed/cancelled. The Irish government required us not to leave our homes except for essential journeys such as to buy food or medicine. We were allowed only exercise within 2kms of our homes.

Is this really happening?

When I reflect back on what I have outlined above it all seems surreal and like something from a novel or a film script. Restrictions are starting to be eased gradually. For example we can now travel up to 5km from our homes to exercise. More shops have been allowed to re-open such as hardware stores. We are currently on a pathway to a phased re-opening of the country over the next few months provided the virus does not re-surge.

Those less fortunate

On a personal level I have been fortunate to date in that I still have work and my children can still continue their education using digital platforms while the schools and colleges are closed. I am also very conscious that we are far more fortunate in Ireland than in many other less well off parts of the world because we have government supports such as income support, if needed, to help us as we are confined to our homes. In less developed parts of the world people have been under lock-down without even food/income (parts of India for example). In other countries the lock-down has been brutal with people being beaten and shot dead in some African countries (e.g. Kenya and Nigeria). For millions of people around the world the pandemic has so far brought death, sickness, hunger, poverty and lost earnings, business failure and stress. My sympathy goes to all those affected by the pandemic so far.

None of us know what is around the corner but I think it is important that we all do our best now to set goals around self-education, building new skills for the future and preparing for a world changed by this pandemic.

My Goal Setting Course Update

I just want to you give an update on my new goal setting course which I have now completed (finally!) and which is live on the Udemy platform. The lock-down is a great time for you to get crystal clear your own life’s purpose, the direction you want to take into the future and the skills your need to acquire. This is a great time to build new skills but you must be clear on what you want first and who you want to become. You then need to know how to set great goals to take you from where you are now to where you want to be.

Free goal setting course

Course description

Many people set goals and perhaps you also set goals for yourself. The question is how effective are those goals? How compelling and inspiring are your goals? What is your success rate on goal achievement? According to U.S. News & World Report, the failure rate for New Year’s resolutions is said to be about 80 percent, and most give up on their new year goals by mid-February. The good news is that effective goal setting is a learned skill that we can all acquire and improve upon. None of us can afford to take goal setting for granted. This course will show you how to set compelling and life transforming goals that will bring out the very best in you and take you life in a new and exciting direction of your own choosing. You have the power to make your life whatever you want it to be through effective goal setting. This course is action orientated and by the end of the course you will have set up to three key long term goals to propel your own life forward in new and exciting directions. Don’t wait until new year to set effective goals. You can set goals any time of year. Also don’t assume that you know everything about goal setting already. Even experienced goal setters can benefit by renewing and constantly refining their goal setting skills.

Enroll Now

You are welcome now to enroll on my Goal Setting course . I would appreciate if you leave a review of the course and and if possible you could send me some feedback on what you liked and what could be improved etc.

As for myself I have already started work on my next course. A change of tack this time as I return to another favourite topic of mine: beekeeping. In fact it’s a wonderful time of year to be making that course because it gets me out into nature and I am enjoying every minute. That is as might be expected because course creation is aligned with my own personal hedgehog concept or ikigai. If you want to find out what I mean by that please enroll for the course!

Stay safe and well.

Tom

PS Please also check out my other course which is very relevant to this blog post – Future Skills 2030 – Prepare for the 4th Industrial Revolution. Start planning today for the skills you need to stay relevant in this fast changing world. Special offer $13.00 – Offer Expires 06/24/2020 04:06 AM PDT (GMT -7)

“The future depends on what you do today. “

Mahatma Ghandi

Progress Update: My New Goal Setting Course

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.