Setting goals you can get excited about.
People are always looking for ways to “be more productive”. They want to do more, take on more, “keep themselves busy” all in the chase to feel like they are “enough”.
“Where does this pressure come from?”
For years, we have been inundated with the idea that who we are is synonymous with what we do and achieve. Self-care has been deemed a luxury. Time-off feels preposterous. And working to the state of burnout in whatever role we are in often becomes us — scheduling our lives to the point that spontaneity becomes anxiety-provoking and rather than checking in with how we feel that day or what seems reasonable to expect from ourselves, we stay focused on the “plan” so that we don’t “get behind”.
Over time, this pressure overtakes our vision and goals. We lose sight of our “why” — the purpose behind the “what” — and become so bogged down with getting shit done that we forget to ask ourselves how it all fits in with who we are and where we want to go in life. Like hamsters on that ridiculous wheel, we keep running, feeling as though we are perpetually about to fall over but are too scared of what it would mean to get off.
“But you said we were going to talk about goal setting?”
We are. Having goals and a plan is not the problem. The problem is in what is driving our goals and who we are making decisions for. If you want to work your way up in a tech company and become an executive in the next 10 years because the job and company bring you joy and challenge you in ways that are important to you, then let’s talk about visions and goals. But if you feel trapped in a company, are working your way up because you can/are good at it but secretly loathe the job you are in, then that is an entirely different conversation. Being more productive and setting goals you can achieve is no longer my goal. Instead, I would want to talk about why you are still forcing yourself down this path.
“Okay, so then how can I set goals that are actually meaningful to me? How do I know?”
The most important thing about setting effective goals that you actually give a shit about is to first, know what you give a shit about. For me, that clarity comes from learning my values (anchor points) and clarifying my dreams (destinations).
To clarify your values, take some time to complete a values assessment. Your values define your core principles and should be present in all we do — in some capacity or another. By living in line with and setting goals that connect to our values, we inherently have more energy to dedicate to the work and can better leverage momentum to complete the tasks.
Creating your vision and leaning into your dreams can be done in a variety of ways. I like to use the “Future Day Fantasy” tool that can be found in my Goals, Intentions, and Dreams webinar. It’s a guided meditation to help you walk through and see what you envision your daily life looking like when you really connect to your wants and needs. You can also create dream or vision boards, look up guided meditations to visualize your dreams or simply journal.
Once you get clear on the values that anchor you to yourself, your work and your dreams in life, step backward and think about how it connects to the life you lead right now. How is this life contributing to your values? How does your current life continue to move you forward to the life you continue to or will thrive in?
A client of mine has found a really awesome method to write out her daily and weekly goals by connecting them to her values and dreams. Instead of writing out a list that looks something like this:
“Practice Mandarin skills”
“Clean up the kitchen”
“Make a plan for Spring Semester”
She leads with her value and ends with her dream:
"To feel excited and prepared for working with other communities and cultures, I will practice Mandarin tonight.”
“Tonight, I am going to clean up the kitchen because when I have a cleaned up kitchen space, it makes it easier for me to relax when I get home and causes me less anxiety when I am preparing meals.”
“My brain often creates more anxiety around ambiguity and because it is important to me I feel prepared for the upcoming semester and have a plan to best manage my mental health, I am going to work on creating a rough outline for what my semester plan will be.”
Does this take more time? Absolutely. Does she feel more accomplished ad excited about her “task” list? F*ck yes she does. And what’s more, she has also been able to start setting goals for self-care and ask herself where she wants to spend her time each day by checking in with what she needs and how she can feel fulfilled.
Now, there are a couple of critical pieces I think are missing from this — how much time to invest in each of these goals, how we know when they are complete, etc.
This brings me to the second piece of optimized goal setting: adopt a more structured approach to setting goals. Yes, that’s right. I mean to have you think about all of your tasks and goals that you set from a different angle. Keep the sentiment of the above example and then go a bit deeper.
“How do I do that?”
In order to best put everything in one place, I decided to enhance an already standardized goal-setting strategy to make it more comprehensive and easy to remember. Many of you are familiar with SMART goal setting — a goal setting strategy to help you think more concretely about your goals. The basics are great and provide the structure I mentioned. The problem with the original plan? It missed out on step number 1 - it did not have you think at all about the connection to your values or dreams. And so, I developed the SMARTY (yep, just 1 extra letter) method that not only includes considerations for your “Y” (haha get it) but adds in some other nuances to each of the other layers.
Check it out below:
We have a finite amount of time, money and energy (which many of you have heard me refer to as your f*cks) to spend in a day — it is important we invest them in outcomes that bring meaning and value to our life. I lived for so long setting goals and being the overworked, over-productive, extra busy, high-achiever. And for what? Why? I spent countless hours pursuing a degree I had no interest in, working on a relationship I was no longer invested in and making choices that made everyone else’s lives easier. And if you are reading this, you have found yourself here in one way or another as well.
It’s nothing to judge ourselves for - it’s easy to fall blindly into the ring of conformity. And, it is what we do with the information once we gain this clarity that is important. So, while the hamster wheel may have seemed safe — and sure, it had some payoffs — do you really want to stay on it? The choice is yours. Invest wisely.