For as long as I can remember, I’ve been lectured on the benefits of goal-setting. Every marketing guru insisted that life is a sort of cosmic darts match: pick a target, squint heroically, throw.
Only, it never quite landed for me. Let me elaborate…..
Back in my Hong Kong banking days, I took over and managed an Investments department. My first task was a 12-month forecast of the coming year’s revenues, domestic and overseas.
That year, the market had been dozing like a sleeping cat, but there were stirrings, and I, sometimes an optimist, predicted we’d double the current year’s numbers.
My boss, a man who trusted a spreadsheet the way a Buddhist priest trusts incense, declared my forecast over enthusiastic. He halved it to a modest 50%.
As it happened, the markets boomed, and two months into the new year, we’d hit my original 100% increase for the whole year.
Was I applauded? Given a bottle of champagne? Of course not. My forecasting was considered inaccurate. Much like my usual “Could do better” school reports.
The moral? We’re all fumbling around in the dark. The future doesn’t send a memo.
And yet we’re told, by books, by podcasts, by people who own whiteboards, to plan our personal lives with the precision of a military campaign. As if life were tidy, obedient, and fond of co-operating.
Consider our caveman ancestor. Did he ever chisel into the rockface a hunt on the next full moon? Hardly. His job was simple: bring home a boar for roasting on the spit every few days or the family starves. That was it. Immediate, tangible, undeniable.
Today we’d sneer about those prehistoric days and remark on our many advances. But maybe the caveman got some things right. Instead of writing encyclopaedic to-do lists that are brought forward from week to week in our digital diaries, perhaps we should minnimise the number of tsks we set outselves tasks and actually complete them.
Mend the fence • Finish that half-written article.• Work out how the new software works • Call the insurance people and price haggle • Read the marketing book you bought and haven’t opened yet – do 25 pressups while the kettle boils.
Better the satisfaction of small victories than the rollover of postponed remorse.
Every year, like many people did, I gave up alcohol for February. A short month, a soft promise. But I’d spend the month counting down the “only ten more days” like a prisoner scratching the wall.
Eventually I realised how pointless it was. So I changed tack. I stopped doing one small thing for one short month and instead gave up three things: chocolate, coffee, alcohol for three months.
Oddly, it became easier to achieve. Probably because it mattered more. For me, having an underlying reason was the key.
So if you want to achieve more, maybe stop doing things the way you’ve always done them.
The future is unruly, unplanned, and entirely uninterested in your neat intentions.
Adjust accordingly, and you’ll stand more of a chance
Graeme Dinnen
ResourcesForLife.net
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