Setting Goals

I was listening to a podcast from the Scientific American website the other day, and they featured the book “Getting Things Done:  The Art of Personal Productivity” by David Allen (http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=making-and-keeping-your-goals-10-01-13).  I thought he had some very novel ideas about setting goals that I thought was worth sharing, especially at the start of a new year. 

Many of us may have heard before that we only need a few goals that are clearly articulated and broken down into smaller chunks with clear deadlines.  This, some say, is the time honored way of getting things done.  Not really contesting the effectiveness of this method, David Allen talked about a different way of setting personal goals. 

Firstly, Allen said that thinking about goals is certainly a much better exercise than thinking of all the negative things that might happen or has already happened.  Looking forward to something that one wants to happen can also bring about good feelings and a healthier sense of wellbeing.  This somehow ties well with the realistic optimism idea that I had written about some time ago. 

Secondly, his advice on the best way to set goals is to set many of them—about 45, in fact!  These goals can be about anything in your life, including:  your ideal weight, your diet, your running time, your income, getting a project done, what an ideal weekend would be like, etc.  Initially, I must say that this suggestion sounded a bit too much.  At any rate, he went on to clarify that having these images was integral in keeping our energies up and about.  He further explained that we need to be flexible about our targets, changing them along the way as we see what might be realistic.  He incorporates the idea of being able to see the future better as time passes, and that is when goals can be tweaked to approximate what is more realistic.  He even opened up the option of changing the goal all together when one sees something better that one had not considered earlier. 

Finally, Allen urged his listeners to actually begin setting goals by cleaning up.  By this, he meant for us to focus on the hundred and one things that we might have been putting off over the months and years.  He says that setting goals about these matters first before adding on new goals might be just the thing to do in order to have a fresh start. 

After listening to this podcast, I thought that Allen did make a lot of sense.  He talked about the need to make ourselves feel good about what we want to work on, instead of beating ourselves about not being able to accomplish some targets we made for ourselves.  He also talked about being flexible about our goals, both in terms of how they are fulfilled along the way and whether or not we want to pursue them at all when we get sight of something better. 

Although he initially sounded like he was contradicting the earlier notion of making few and clear targets, I think his suggestions can work very well with certain personal goals.  The positive approach to goal setting is also quite empowering.