How to set goals, so that they come true in 2010!

One year ago my friend, Diver, and I started the great tradition of setting goals for the future year.

We will definitely follow this tradition this year. We’ve already planned to sit up in some cozy place and write down all our goals for the 2010. However, before doing that, we decided to review our goals for the 2009: what we succeeded to reach and what we didn’t. This review meeting brought us very unexpected and interesting openings – the real life lessons on writing effective goals! :)

So, we took our sheets with goals written for the current year and started reading them by turn. After reading aloud each goal, we noted whether it was implemented. If it was – we noted what helped to succeed with it, and if not - why it failed.

By the mid of the list we discovered the following interesting tendency. Goals which were complex, like “travel-to-Italy-Hungary-Poland-with-two-friends-one-girlfriend-and-favourite-pet-by-car-swim-in-Mediterranean-Sea-visit-Caorle-and-during-the-travel-eat-kilos-of-spagetti-and-drink-litres-of-wine” – were not implemented. Otherwise, we usually succeeded in goals which were simple, like “Travel to Europe with my friends”!

Also we noticed that unrealistic goals (we called them the “the space goals” :)), like earn 500.000 $ or reach 1.000.000 unique user at the web startup usually were not reached as well.

And maybe the most interesting lesson was the following. Sometimes we were setting the goal, however meant (wanted) completely different thing. E.g. one of my goals was “Buy tour to Paris to dad and mom”. Actually, my real goal was “bring some romantics in their relations, so that they would feel as a real couple”. I failed with Paris, however, succeeded (as I feel) with romantics (I used to buy tickets to theater and cinema for them etc.)

The life lesson here is: “Universe brings me what I really want with all my soul, not what I may write on a sheet of paper”.

Besides that, when setting the goals, we sometimes set the means of reaching the goal, not the goal by itself. E.g. consider the following goal: “Get 10.000$ by launching the Pizza business”. In this statement the goal is to earn 10.000$. However, the statement limits the way of reaching the goals to only one way – opening the Pizza business. But what if I win 10.000$ in a lottery or find them on the street or find a job with a 10.000$ salary per month? Yeah, I sometimes limited myself in such way.

As a summary, we’ve written down the following characteristics of effective goal, we will keep in mind when setting the goals for the future 2010 year. So, in order succeed with goal, it should be:

• Simple
• Realistic
• Positive
  

Also, remember to set the goal, not the means and write down what you really want!

Thank you, Dima, for these life lessons. Now I’m sure, I'll succeed with most of my goals for the 2010 year!

Now, do you have your own tips regarding setting the goals and reaching them?! ;)