How I Set My Goals
I spent three months living in Buenos Aires with my then boyfriend. Once we were walking back to our flat and talking about what we were going to do later in the week. It was raining. In fact, we were caught out in one of those torrential rainfalls that flood the streets and make it impossible to catch a taxi ride home. So we waited out the worst rainfall in a restaurant, bought a very tacky, semi-transparent umbrella in a Chinese shop and embarked on a walk home. We didn’t feel we had much of a choice and anyway, it was still a warm night.
We’re walking, chatting away when suddenly my boyfriend stops. Right in front of us, there’s a man with a knife in his hand. I’m hysterical. I’m pretty convinced we’re going to die and so I scream and scream, and scream. My boyfriend keeps shouting NO, NO, amazingly remembering his basic Spanish. There are no words from the guy. He’s clearly after my shoulder bag. It’s an oversized tote bag in which I keep my camera bag - I’m very into photography at that time, my brand new iPhone, my purse and so on. But somehow it doesn’t register at that time and so it doesn’t occur to me to simply give it to him. Like I said, I’m convinced it’s not a mugging but a homicide to be. So I keep screaming and walk over to some fence behind which some security guard is just staring at the whole scene, unmoved. My boyfriend is trying to fence off the attacker with the Chinese umbrella. I never stop screaming. Finally, I’m not sure how but we manage to get away. Maybe it’s some oncoming cars that scare the guy, maybe people, I don’t remember. But we end up in a small restaurant nearby and soon talk to a plain-clothes policeman. Later we find out that the place we were walking through is a known dodgy area. And even later, I discover that my dress has a cut on its back. I’ve badly mended it since but you can still see it.
Every time I think of that night, I think of John Lennon’s words: “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making plans.” It’s a good reminder to take my goals and plans with a healthy dose of awareness.
And so, with all the awareness needed, let’s talk about planning. Let me share with you how I review and set my goals. Goals can terrify or they can overwhelm so many people avoid them. I take a gentle approach, where less is more. There is no point in productivity for the sake of productivity here. There is plenty of space left for life to happen instead. Let’s begin.
One of the hardest things to do in today’s world is listening and hearing oneself. When setting goals, question everything, ask if each of your goals is truly yours, or somebody else’s. It’s always more about the joy and journey than the destination. So you really need to get to know yourself, practice self-observation and self-awareness. Once you notice what gives your life meaning and glimpses of happiness, your goals will feed your need for them. Superficial goals are easy to spot - they simply feed the opposite. Sure, they can give you some momentary feeling of satisfaction, what society sees as success and achievement… but once achieved, you end up looking around and waiting for somebody else’s reaction. Be it recognition, pride, respect or admiration. We’re not interested in any of these here. Which is also a reason why I never encourage sharing your goals with others. When they’re truly yours, what do other people have to do with them? There is nothing to prove to anybody. Your goal is yours to keep.
Now, let’s assume you had some goals, say in previous year, and you didn’t complete them. When reviewing my goals, I look at every simple goal that I didn’t complete and ask myself these questions (I usually write down my thoughts to get a better clarity):
What is the reason why I didn’t complete this goal? Is it because it will take more time? Or is it because I was afraid of making it happen? Is it maybe because I set it without a strong enough WHY? It wasn’t really an intrinsic, my PERSONAL goal but an externally motivated one? Or have I experienced some change, maybe of circumstances, maybe of heart - which is possible - and didn’t find the goal relevant anymore?
It’s important to get to the bottom of the reason why. I’m not interested in a story I tell myself here but the genuine reason, drag it to my consciousness. There’s nobody here judging me, including myself. All I want is a better understanding.
Once I get that, I ask myself what I want to do about this goal next. Quitting is seen as a negative thing in general but in some cases, it’s the hardest but the smartest thing to do. And it’s important to recognize and accept it.
Sometimes I’m not that easy on myself as I know that our love of comfort is so strong that any discomfort will often convince us that we shouldn’t do something. So I ask myself: will working on this goal in the next year, next month, next week benefit me and people around me in any way? Is the cost of putting the effort in worth persevering? In other words - is this good for me long and also short-term? If so, I give the goal a go but make sure I modify it.
Let me give you an example. My goal for last year was to start running trails with a group of fellow runners. I didn’t complete that goal even though I did run throughout the year. I started dissecting the reasons why I didn’t complete my goal and admitted that it was the year I discovered yoga - I went on a yoga retreat and completed a few yoga chellenges on top of my usual yoga practice. I also trained for and went on my first open water swimming coaching camp. Plus I finally started kettlebell workouts. I still value running and don’t want to let go of it but I don’t necessarily need to run trails to enjoy it. So I modify my running goal and, that’s important, lower the bar. There’s no point in my setting a goal of running a 20km trail run in Spain after I didn’t even start running 10km trails in the UK. I stay humble and set myself a goal to run one 5k parkrun locally and see how I feel after my trail running goal after that. That’s it.
I use this approach with every single goal that wasn’t completed. I watch what’s happening with myself when I review those goals - am I feeling like a failure or am I feeling excited to slightly modify them and give myself another chance? It’s important to be aware of how goals make me feel and be intentional. Not just mindlessly rewrite them from one year to another, without any idea why. Be gently pessimistic about those goals. You didn’t make them happen for a year, so lower the bar if you want to keep them. Mindless ambition is a serious trap and a recipe for future disappointment with yourself. Always yourself, when it comes to goals, we’re not interested in others.
Once my goals have been reviewed and re-set, it’s time to add some new ones. There are many ways to do so. Some people use roles - you look at your life and roles you have as a person. Let’s say you’re a parent, a friend, a business owner. These will be the zones that your goals will be grouped in. Personally, I don’t like this approach as there are simply too many roles and my goals become a maze of subgroups and confuse me more than necessary. So, as always, I simplify.
I use values as my categories. You can call them life zones, if that’s easier for you. Here are my current ones: first comes health because if I’m not well, the other zones of my life will be affected most. Then come people - this zone includes my partner, my family, friends and people I work with. Next is learning - simply because I value it. Then work - on my business and my design jobs. Followed by fun, money and house. The last one is full of maintenance and improvements of course.
I take each of these categories, take a piece of paper and go a little bit crazy writing down what I’d like to complete as a goal in the next twelve months. Some goals will be further-reaching but I focus on one year only. I’m not a fan of five and ten year plans. The most crucial thing for me is making sure every goal is truly mine. Then I go through all of them and start editing. Ideally, I want to see between 3 and 5 goals in each category, not more. If my goals are big enough, this number is also big enough. I always keep in mind that life is full of surprises and will add plenty of sometimes less and sometimes more urgent things to my list along the way. So less is always more. Soooo... I decide which goals are events or tasks on their own, and which ones are habits. Sometimes they can be easily interchanged. For example, if I want to read 12 books in a year, I could add Read 30min a day to my habit tracker and focus on that. I never set wishy-washy goals like eat healthy or exercise once a week as I know myself enough that these things don’t mean anything concrete and so will end up being ignored. I always go deeper - for example, what do I mean by eating healthy in this year? I mean not having sugar in any form other than two squares of minimum 70% dark chocolate 21 days a month. That’s an easily trackable habit - added. What exactly do I mean by exercising once a week? Going swimming every Tuesday at 9pm. Great, added to my calendar.
You can tell that this way I free up a lot of space in my head and in my planner for goals that are not necessarily habits. And also, to a degree, let the process, or the system if you like, shape what happens. My weekly swimming can lead to coming up with an idea of attending a swimming holiday or learning a new stroke - something I didn’t intend to do to begin with but nevertheless popped up in my head with time.
To give you a flavour of my task-like goals - changing a window in the living room and investing 12k in the stock market are two goals that were on my list last year.
Mind mapping.
Now that my list of goals is ready, I need to do a bit of what some people call reverse engineering. Sounds very technical, right? And possibly daunting. I call it mind mapping to chunk things up. Goals can be overwhelming and if they’re big enough, they will make you feel excited but possibly also a bit unsure about where to start.
A friend of mine offered once to organise a small cocktail bar at his aunt’s 70th birthday party. He called me a bit lost, worrying that he was running out of time and still hadn’t done anything to make that cocktail bar happen. We mind mapped the whole thing within ten minutes. First, we started with the event right in the middle, our goal. Then we decided there would be three parts - before, during and after to think of so we added those. The before part would be the one asking for most attention. So we talked about what he’d need. We added researching three cocktail recipes, shopping for ingredients - some online, some offline - and loaning glasses and other equipment from family members, coming up with witty names and descriptions, typing up and printing a simple menu. As you can see, we added subtasks when necessary. Then we discussed the party - the only thing to do was to turn up earlier to set everything up and organise help for toilet breaks. After the party we mentioned cleaning up and returning all equipment.
My friend had a month to complete his cocktail goal. When the mind map was ready, we wrote down week numbers next to each task. Later on, he simply transferred these taks to his weekly planner. And that was it. The whole goal was mind mapped and chunked up, and I was told the cocktail bar was a great hit at that birthday bash.
This process applies to all goals - big and small. Sometimes your list of tasks will grow, it will be revealed as you chip away at your big goal. But if you do that initial planning, trace your steps from here to there or, there to here if you like, you will have a bird’s eye view of your whole journey laid out in front of you and starting will be simply tackling the first chunk of work, first leg of that journey.
And that is it. This is how I review and set my goals. A good thing to remember is that life is a bit like a race that everybody finishes. So there are no medals, no podium, no achievement. So set your goals, think long-term and focus on the process, not the “achievement”. There is no need to rush.
