How To Set Goals You Won’t Ditch After Two Weeks
Including a Miro template so good, it will knock you out of your socks
Welcome to 2023. You are now entering week two of this new and exciting year.
By now you are well on your way to completely abandoning your new years' resolutions, just like you do every freaking year.
You ask yourself, why do I keep doing this to myself?
My advice, go watch the Rocky Balboa movie and learn from the Greatest boxer of all time!
In this article, I cover why you fail in pursuing goals, learnings from product managers to succeed, how to set inspiring goals that keep you moving forward, and give you a Miro template that will knock you out of your socks.
If you know what you’re worth go out and get what you're worth! — Rocky Balboa
Why you fail in pursuing your goals
So there you are. You set yourself some amazing personal- or career-growth goals.
Goals like:
I want to become a thought leader in the noble art of catching pigeons
or
I want to speak in front of 1000 people about my passion for crafting handmade soaps out of lego.
Whatever goals you set yourself, you are not able to reach them.
Sure you probably have a laundry list of excuses ready, how fear held you back, how priorities shifted, or how you were unable to focus on them.
Let me give you a bingo card and go through each of the top reasons why you think you fail. Feel free to use your dabber (learned this amazing word here, while writing this article) to stamp any of the reasons that resonate with you.
If you collect them all make sure to shout BINGO!
Fear of failure
- Inner fear.
The fear of failure, or disappointing yourself when you don’t achieve your ambitions. - Outside fear.
The fear of what others might think about your goals. Fear they might make fun of your goals or tell you, you will never achieve them.
Procrastination
There is always plenty of time or a better time to pursue your dreams. Putting things off is easy.
Excuses
Pretty much linked to procrastination. Excuses are a way to protect ourselves against shame and anxiety. It’s our natural defense mechanism, so why not use it?
Lack of belief
For some, the imposter syndrome might kick in. For others it is just the inability to tap into their own belief, feeling disempowered. The biochemistry of belief is a nice article about the mechanics here.
The goals aren’t exciting
Goals are to give you excitement, to drive you to pursue them. If you can’t dream big it is difficult to start small.
Not having a plan
If you are able to dream big but are unable to plan out a direction on how to get there, it is still no good.
Not taking action
Even if you have a big dream and a plan for how to get there, if you don’t take action, nothing happens.
Not tracking progress
If you are taking action, it might be you’re taking the wrong action, or you find out that the action is not enough to reach your targets. Not knowing how you are progressing toward your ambition is extremely demotivating.
A lack of focus
This used to be my personal favorite, being a person who, like a little puppy, has a general interest in almost everything. With a lack of focus, you might find yourself not doing anything at all, or “half-assing” it.
Giving up quickly
People expect the world and at the first little hurdle give up. On a personal note, my parents handled this well. Me being a kid with tons of interest, especially in sports, I tended to give up quickly. That’s why I was only allowed to join a sport if I gave a one-year commitment to try it. And yep that worked like a charm for me!
A nice read (also available as an audiobook) covering most of the before-mentioned reasons is Wilda Hale’s — The Fear of failure
What you can learn about goal setting from Product Managers
Let’s have a look at what product managers do.
A product manager is said to be the CEO of the product, responsible for establishing the vision, and roadmap, and realizing the expected outcomes for the customer, through discovery and delivery.
The Vision
The product vision is there not just for the product manager. A great compelling vision is one that inspires customers and rallies teams around achieving it. The vision is exciting.
The Roadmap
The roadmap is the strategic direction toward achieving the product vision. It talks about the goals and themes being pursued over time and uses actionable Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), supported by Key performance indicators (KPIs) and Metrics. Progress towards achieving them is tracked.
Discovery and Delivery
Discovery and delivery are where the action happens. It is about never giving up and keeping moving forward, as that’s how winning is done! It is about uncovering needs, validating assumptions, experimenting, and finding the best ways to meet needs.
Outcomes
It's the result that matters right? Outcomes show the impact made. The contribution to the OKRs.
With the above, you have a better idea about what you can learn from product managers about goal setting.
Now let’s combine the key reasons for personal-growth goals failure with the daily business of product managers
- “Be stubborn on Vision, but flexible on details”, is one of Jeff Bezos’ famous quotes. Product Managers truly believe in their vision.
- The roadmap and direction toward achieving the vision are to be exciting and provide focus and an actionable plan
- Product managers manage fear by, testing early on, and expecting and accepting you will fail multiple times.
- They learn and fail early and cheaply. This is why experimentation and creating prototypes are crucial. It significantly reduced the risk of making excuses.
- Product Managers don’t need to be right, they just have to be right, which means they welcome to have their own assumptions proven wrong.
- Being busy bees, always looking at competitors' market trends, and ways to uncover needs and wow the customer, procrastination is pretty much not in the book of product managers.
- Giving up quickly, as a result, isn’t either, always looking for ways to get more market share.
Setting goals that inspire you to keep moving forward
Time to use some product manager best practices to craft and make your goals happen.
Growing is about showing up.
Whatever it is you want to achieve, as Woody Allen said, “90% of success is just showing up”. Add a bit of structure and persistence to the mix and you are on the golden path to success.
Making it easy on yourself.
Use a structured approach, to make goals sticky, so you want to keep pursuing them.
If you don’t like the word structure, see it as helping yourself by writing down your goals, how you aim to achieve them, and how you are feeling toward reaching them.
Doing so aids you to follow through and reach them.
- Define high-level goals for each of your growth categories.
- Make each goal specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timebound (SMART).
- Go from big goals to an actional plan with small steps.
- Make pursuing them a daily habit. Successfully completing them will provide you with those well-deserved shots of dopamine.
- Set rewards for goals and progress made towards reaching them.
- Check-in on how you feel and progress towards your goals. Make needed changes.
- Be flexible. Be persistent, yet don’t be too hard on yourself. We all have our off days, we are not ChatGTP, we are humans with feelings and emotions and that makes us awesome.
Use this Miro template for your goal setting.
Enjoyed the training so far? If yes, it is time to put on your gloves, step into the ring and get going!
As Rocky said, “If this is something you wanna do, and if this is something you got to do, then you do it”.
Use this Miro template to create your self-growth plan, and stay motivated on the journey toward reaching your goals.
If you need some motivation or coaching, schedule a session with me at The Mentoring Club, and let’s spar together.
Signing off, Klaas Hermans for Sharpwitted.Ninja
