This is an application I built to track my goals for 2016. You can view the current status of these goals
Theory
Goals as destinations
Traditionally, a goal describes an end-point to be reached. When you reach the finish line, you can cross off the goal and create a new one. Examples:
- I will lose/gain X amount of weight
- I will travel more
- I will write a novel
- I will learn to speak Turkish
For the first of these goals, at least it’s clear whether or not the goal has been accomplished or not. For the latter 3, it’s more ambiguous. (How do I know whether my novel is truly finished? How proficient must I be before I can say I can speak the language?)
The bigger problem with these goals is that although the goal-setter might have an idea of what the finish line looks like, the path to the finish line is not intrinsically defined through the goal itself.
Goals as journeys
::*To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. :-Ralph Waldo Emerson
8760 hours
Each of us has the same amount of time in a year. How we use these hours determines how we grow or decline from one year to the next.
The main idea behind this system of goal-setting is that by demarcating the hours to be invested in different activities, we take the focus off of the end point and instead focus on the journey, trusting that by walking the path, the end objective will take care of itself.
The path to the finish line
Let’s translate our four example goals from destination-oriented terms into journey-oriented ones.
- I will spend 300 hours exercising this year
- I will spend 200 hours outside of the city I live in
- I will spend 150 hours writing
- I will spend 100 hours reading, writing, speaking, or listening in Turkish
Reframing our goals like this empowers us in the following ways:
- Now, instead of describing an outcome to achieve, we’ve described how a person’s life will look over the coming year
- It’s easy to tell whether or not we’re on track to accomplish our goals with some simple math. If ::: (hours remaining in year / total hours in year) :is greater than ::: (hours remaining in goal / total hours in goal),
then we’re ahead of the ball. Otherwise, we have some catching-up to do.
- There’s no need to doubt whether it’s possible to achieve our goals. (Will I ever lose the weight? Am I really cut out to be a writer?) The important thing is to physically put your corporeal self in a gym, or to sit down and put a pen to paper or fingers to a keyboard. Those activities are within anyone’s reach.
Getting started
You can easily set some goals like this on your own and track them however you see fit. If you’d like to use the application I already built for this purpose, contact me and I’ll get you set up.