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Setting Achievable and Well Formed Goals
I want to earn a fortune! I want a Ferrari, a seven bedroom mansion, and a villa in Tuscany!
Are these really goals? I would suggest they are little more than dreams and naive desires. If you make these your goals, most of you sadly should prepare for disappointment and ironically the few who get them should also prepare for disillusionment.
I am not saying that it’s wrong to want a super car or a villa; that’s great, but unfortunately it’s the bit in the middle that gets missed. How the heck are you going to do it?
You might invent a car that runs on polluted water, with fresh mountain air pumping out of the exhaust as a waste product, sell the patents to the world’s motor industry and retire with untold wealth. Even this magical formula might not be as simple as you might think. Are you prepared to:
- Spend hours upon hours calculating how the engine will work and cover the huge initial investment costs needed to fund the development?
- Fight for commercial sponsorship against thousands of other applicants?
- Sacrifice your relationships, and miss your children growing up as you dedicate everything to this project?
- Deal with the patent thieves and others who would not want to see your invention succeed?
- Lose contact with those you hold dear so that when you do finally accumulate all this wealth you have no true friends or family to enjoy it with?
- Not so simple is it! Unless of course the answer to all the above questions is YES!
A well-formed goal should take account of the following:
- Identification of the steps you will need to take in order to achieve it
- Awareness of your wider and deeper values
- Awareness of your skills, and what you will need to work at developing
- Knowledge of the likely time frame
- Clear identification of the benefits of success
- Clear identification of the risks (personal and financial)
Goal setting is essential, but not without careful thought and working with someone else, or even a goal setting tool, to help you structure your thinking.