This Year Will Be Different – Five Tips to Setting & Achieving Your Goals

By Mark A. Tenney

Well, here we are, at the beginning of another New Year. 2017 is in the rear view mirror and we’re all anticipating what this new set of 12 months will bring.

In the time-honored tradition, we begin the year feeling some desire to take another look at what we’ll do with all this time and potential out in front of us. We set goals, with the best of intentions of achieving them. We’ll work hard and persevere, we tell ourselves, and it’ll be awesome when we achieve what we set out to do.

The problem is that when February rolls around, we’ve either not started, or lost our enthusiasm, or we just didn’t have the time, or whatever. Our goals remain unfulfilled for yet another year. Will this be the result again this year and every one from now on? Or, will this year be different?

Everyone knows that each person comes into this world with unlimited potential. Yet, somewhere along the path of growing up, we lose the belief that we can be anything we set out to become. We get into ruts and get comfortable and lazy.

Much has been written, spoken, and discussed about goals, achievement, and making the most of human potential over the years, so my intention here isn’t to provide anything earthshattering or unheard of. It is simply to share five ways to make the process of setting goals and sticking to them a bit simpler and more achievable.

1. Set goals from what inspires you. If you’ve ever watched a TED Talk, you know they are captivating and inspiring. Carmine Gallo, the author of the best selling book, “Talk Like TED” studied why these talks are so effective. He broke down the formula into nine lessons. The first is, “Unleash the Master Within”. His point is that passion leads to mastery and mastery is the foundation of excellence. Therefore, in this first week of the New Year, ask yourself, “What am I passionate about?” What is one thing that you love and inspires you? What is an idea or inspiration you’ve had floating around in the back of your mind for months or years that you keep putting off acting on because you don’t know where to start? Extract it and write it down. Put it on your fridge or in your phone so you’ll see it. Once it’s out in the open, decide what is realistic to do with it.


2. Start somewhere. That’s it. Just begin. As a communications and creative professional, I’ve always maintained that the most critical moment in the creative process is staring at a blank document wondering where to begin. The secret is, it doesn’t matter. The very act of beginning jumpstarts the creative process and inspiration starts to flow. Once it begins, let it run. After you’ve established what’s been waiting to be released, go back and read, edit, update, redirect, and refine it until it’s right. In a 1977 New York Times article, the American filmmaker, Woody Allen, is quoted as saying “80% of success is simply showing up.” If this is true, what do you have to lose by simply jotting down a few things you’d like to do this year and making a plan to achieve them? The greatest secret to success is simply taking the first step.


3. Break it down. Once you’ve captured a few things you’d like to achieve in 2018, take some time to break them down into smaller steps. Set smaller goals that tie into the bigger ones and how they should be approached. Imagine your main goals as large circles situated above a series of smaller circles in descending sizes representing actions that need to be taken to achieve the main goals. Once mapped out in this fashion, go to work on the smaller, easier actions in a way that brings your goals closer to becoming realities. Celebrate the little successes and learn from the inevitable failures and move on. The key here is building and riding momentum until your goals have been accomplished. As you work deliberately and with what author and psychologist Angela Duckworth calls “Grit”, you’ll be amazed and delighted with what you have accomplished.


4. Make time and space. In 2008, celebrated British inventor, Dr. John C. Taylor unveiled an unusual and captivating clock, which is also an extraordinary piece of modern art installed on the exterior of Corpus Christi College’s library at Cambridge University in England. The clock was dubbed the “Corpus Chronophage”, derived from the Ancient Greek words ‘chronos’ and ‘phage’, meaning ‘time-eater’. I bring this up is to make the point that in our busy, sometimes frenetic schedules, it’s tempting to claim the easy go-to, “I didn’t have time” for not getting something done, while unintentionally feeding the metaphorical ‘time-eater’ which consumes whatever we give it. 
   
   How do we combat this insatiable beast? The best way is to train yourself to spend time on what matters most to you. Along the way, you may need to make some adjustments to your downtime hours. In my experience, two of the ‘chronophages’ in our modern lives that do the most damage to achieving our goals throughout the year are television (including Netflix) and social media with all its permutations. In 2018, why not set a goal to leave the TV off for one extra night per week and use the time to work on a goal or two? In this manner, you act in such a way to reclaim the time that would otherwise be consumed by the voracious appetite of the ‘time-eater’.


5. Establish a rhythm. About 10 years ago, I decided to begin writing in my journal every day. Looking back, I’m not sure what my motivation was to take on such a task other than I felt a desire to document my life and not let the time pass without capturing the moments that mattered to me. I bought a blank journal, wrote my name and date in it, and began. It took me a while to get into a rhythm. There were many times that I would climb into bed and turn off the light, then remember that I hadn’t yet written that day. Sometimes it took a supreme act of will to turn the light back on, pull out my journal, and jot down a few thoughts and impressions I wanted to keep. After several weeks of dogged persistence, I settled into a habit that has become a practice that is like clockwork. For the past 10+ years, every night before I retire, I spend a few minutes writing in my journal. My wife will sometimes give me a date from a past year and ask me to read what happened that day. After reading what I wrote, she’ll say something like, “Oh! I remember that…I had forgotten about it,” and we’ll spend some time reminiscing. These moments are important to our relationship and our family because the past remains a part of our present. The key point here is to remember that no matter what they are, goals are valuable parts of human growth and development and are meant to stretch you; they’re set up to make you work for them. That means you’ll need to make some adjustments in order to pay the price required by the goal. This is not new thinking. Way back in ancient Greece, old Aristotle himself is said to have written: “Excellence … is not an act but a habit.”

There's more that can be said about goals, but I’ve said what I wanted to for now. These are just five things I’ve learned about the importance and benefits of setting, and working towards goals. You probably have some things you’d like to say about them too. If so, feel free to add them in the comments below. In the meantime, I wish you a Happy New Year and challenge you to make 2018 the year you set, and work to meet, the goals you’ve been putting off.

Mark Tenney is an expert in brand development and management, measurement of brand effectiveness, internal communications, marketing, change management and creative innovation with broad experience across a range of industries, markets, and disciplines.

©2018 MarkTenneyCreative