“Humans are the only creature on planet earth who spend their time pre-occupied with the future”
Do you realise that? No other living creature on earth share that behaviour. Animals and plants are basically only focused on staying alive, avoiding pain/seeking pleasure, and/or reproducing themselves. Fascinating, no?
That was the random thought that came to me this morning (okay, it wasn’t totally random, i had to do some brainstorming to get to that, but it makes for a decent intro don’t you think?). And it got me thinking on the nature of the future.
What is the one thing that pops into our mind when we think about the future. We might all have different context about the future. You might be thinking about your future in terms of your career, somebody else might be thinking about what the future holds for their sick family and so on.
But regardless of the context, we all will inevitably converge into one thing about the future:
Planning.
…or to use a more technical term : goal setting.
Yes i know, depending on how you’re doing, those two words might bring up certain emotions or feelings inside you right now. If you are the kind of people who regularly achieves goals and basically just winning in life and make the rest of us feel miserable about ourselves, you might have a positive attitude towards goal setting. But if you’re not, then the very mention of ‘Goal Setting’ is like hearing nails grating on a chalkboard. That unbearable, annoying sound which serves no other purpose than to put you on the spot and pry on your weakness — which reminds me: how is your goals for 2021 doing? 🙂
The ubiquity of goal settings
Although nobody likes to be reminded of their shortcomings, most of us at some level or another do set a goal either in a personal context or in an organisation. And despite research showing that more than half of us who make new year resolutions (probably the most popular form of goal setting there is) fail to achieve it, indicating a growing number of personal failures and discouragement from attempting at it yet again year after year, setting new year resolutions remains as the top of mind in yearly traditions, and goal setting in general, remains the prominent method we use to make sense of the unknown future. It’s basically how we deal with it. We deal with the unknown future by planning what we would do in a future scenario given the present information and other variables we have now.
And just like what we discussed in a previous post, because people are unique to each other, some of us come up with different methods in setting goals. With different methods, there will surely be differences on the effectiveness of each one. Some people would swear by a method, saying that it is the most effective. My personal view on this matter is much more agnostic. I don’t really care which method i use as long as it’s effective for me. And that is the keyword, because just like we can come up with a diverse set of ideas and methods for a task, we also have different context and situations that, in turn, also require its own unique solutions. Never allow yourself to be attached to any single method, tool, or even idea for that matter. Just as your situation is always in flux, constantly changing, you should always be prepared to make adjustments to the methods and tools you use.
In this post, i’m going to share with you my approach to goal settings and what methods and tools i use when i’m setting goals (obviously it will become relevant to some of you and not to others — that’s okay. You are even welcome to share your own approach down in the comments section). It is by no means a silver bullet, i still fail to reach a goal here and there, but on average i see an improvement in my overall productivity, and that’s good enough for me. But before i share my approach, we must first discuss how i was doing with goal settings before this:
The problem with goal settings
Perhaps similar to many other people out there, my first experience with goal settings started at January of whatever early years i become conscious enough to start thinking and actually care about the future. Probably 10, 15 years ago, i don’t remember, and who cares? It doesn’t really matter when, the important thing is, it’s been a while since then.
At first i bought into the myth that you can actually improve your life if you write a goal for it. So i did. I tried to write whatever good things i would like for my life. To be more healthy, to get more money, to become less of an annoying jerk, etc. This is what i call the ‘innocent period’.
After a while i noticed that things don’t really change merely because i had a wish for it to change. What is it that i’m doing wrong? I thought to myself. I started looking for answers online (luckily internet is already a thing back then) and then i learned quite a lot about goal settings. I learned, for example, that you need to be SMART about your goals (you know Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound), or that you should be mindful of your environment and the effect it has on you achieving your goals, or that you should actually take action to achieve your goals instead of just hoping to God for your goals to turn into reality.
I also learned about the things that caused us to not achieve our goals. Things like setting unrealistic goals, being vague, not having a clear correlation between our ultimate goal and what we should do at the moment to progress towards it, as well as subtler factors such as self-defeating mindsets, tendency towards procrastination, negative cues from the environments etc.
At one point i even become convinced that setting a goal is the wrong approach all along. Instead of setting a goal i should build habits that will carry my life towards the point i want to arrive at (which, if you think about it, is technically still a goal, just with a different name. Yeah i know, i was a dummy back then). This phase of my life is called the ‘exploration period’.
Too many exploration can make you exhausted though. At one point you will need to stop, take a look around and to process what you have learned so far. This is the most important phase in my experience. I call this the ‘convergence period’. This is where i realise the truth that i just mentioned earlier. That there is no silver bullet that will work for every single person. If you are wondering which goal setting method is the best, you are asking the wrong question. Because all of them works, but for it to work for you, you need to choose some and arrange them in combination with other methods that is very specific for your situation.
Think like a plumber
Okay, enough about the past. Let’s dive in to the nitty-gritty details, shall we?
When i’m thinking about achieving a goal, i find it useful to think like a plumber. Let me explain.
This is massively oversimplifying things, but the main job of a plumber is to make sure that a certain amount of water (or any other liquids for that matter) can transfer efficiently from point A to point B without any leakage. Think of your goals as the amount of water you have at point A. If that amount of water arrives at point B intact, without any (or at least minimum) reduction in volume, that means you have achieved your goal. What are the things you should pay attention to in order for that to happen? Well, again, this is oversimplifying and i’m not a plumber myself, but let’s try to think about this problem using common sense shall we?
1. The first thing we have to make sure is the specification of the pipe itself right? It is the medium through which the water will be transferred. If you have a large amount of water to transfer but your pipe is very thin, you can still transfer it, but it will take a long time to finish. And if the pipe is not properly insulated, it will cause leakage which will reduce the volume of water received at point B.
2. The routing of the pipe: The shortest route between any two points is a straight line. A good plumber knows this and while it’s not always possible in real world situation, the plumber will operate based on this principle and seek the most optimal routing possible. Adding unnecessary tangents will only result in a delay in the time it takes for the water to reach point B.
3. The angle of the pipe in relation to gravity: on planet earth, anything that is not supported will always falls downward. A good plumber will always use this fact to his advantage in setting up the pipe to transfer the water efficiently.
4. Sometimes there is only so much a plumber can do with the basic tools he/she has. If a plumber wants to deliver water from a main pipeline up to the 35th floor on an apartment building, he/she has to use modern technology to do so, namely water pumps. Water pumps enable us -at a cost- to bypass natural inclination such as gravity and deliver the water to places hitherto not possible.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
So based on those common sense principles, i derived my own approach to goal setting, which is:
1. Be as specific as i can about my goals. What is it, units of measurement i use to define the goal, the target date / time by which i want to achieve it, as well as the breakdown of that goal into smaller, more manageable goals (i call them ‘milestones’). If i can’t break it down into smaller milestones, that tells me that my goal is either unrealistic or unachievable at my current situation.
2. Develop a to-do list that directly impacts the achievement of the goal. For example if i set a goal of losing my weight by 10 Kgs by the end of the year. That translates to roughly 1 kg of weight reduction per month. What are the things i should do to lose at least 1 kg every month? Well things like: limiting my meals to twice a day, doing 20 push ups every weekday, limiting my carb intake (bread, rice, noodles, etc) to one serving a day, etc. This point correlates strongly with the first one. If i can’t break down the goals enough to come up with a daily set of things i need to do, most of the time, it will not get done.
3. I try to make small adjustments to my daily routine that will help me in achieving my goal. For example i try to use the bicycle whenever i need to go somewhere in my neighbourhood. Because in my mind i know i have the double benefits of saving gas money AND getting physical exercise while doing so, it makes it easier for me to do it and before long it becomes a habit in my life.
4. I am quite picky when it comes to using tools for my daily routine such as recording expenses, doing office work, or (you’ve guessed it) managing a to-do list. To do lists in particular has been tricky, because i have a habit of trying out various things and then abandoning it without realising the reason. But after thinking about my own work style and habits, i now have my own configurations of tools to help me keep on top of my progress such as Trello boards for goals (divided into yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily to do lists), google calendar for tracking events, and CherryTree for recording any ideas or learning material.
When it comes to goal setting, you really don’t need to have a complex model or fancy concepts. Sure it works, and it might look cool, but more often than not, those added complexity just makes everything more confusing than it really is, and confusion ultimately makes us prone to make mistakes. Sometimes you just need to use the basic tools.
Sometimes you just need to think …
like a plumber.