Action vs Results Based Goals

In earlier posts I talked about my dreams and goals in terms of wanting to develop software and needing to pay the bills. I think of a goal as being something precise, that can be measured and perhaps has a deadline attached to it. For example, “have a monthly income of $xxx by xxx date”. On the other hand a dream is less precise, doesn’t necessarily have a date, such as being free to spend my time writing games.

We all Talk About Goal Setting

I read some blogs about personal development and I quite often find a post about goal setting. One thing that is often talked about is setting the high end goals, the things you want to be and do years from now and this is something I think about a lot myself. Zen Habits has a post about setting your life goals which talks about the value of thinking about the things you want to achieve before you die and then breaking that down into 10 year goals, 5 year goals and so on.

This can seem very obvious - take a big goal and break it into smaller steps and then work on those. The problem I see is that often these goals, even the ones that are broken down are focused on the end result we want to achieve - a certain amount of money earned, number of pounds of body fat lost, number of readers to a blog and so on. What’s wrong with that? Those kinds of goals don’t spell out exactly what it is you need to DO in order to achieve them.

What’s the Next Action?

When you spend time thinking at the higher level, about your life and what kind of person you want to be, it can be very nice and fluffy but that doesn’t necessarily guide you towards how you should best spend the next hour of your free time. Life is a series of moments. Even the greatest goals ever achieved, are done one day, one hour, one minute at a time. So, what I like to do is think about the result I want and then figure out what action do I need to take to achieve that result?

The title of this section “What’s the Next Action” is very much a mantra of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” way of working which seeks to always be looking for the next action to be done in any given project. Personally I think it’s a good way to work, to be focused on real actions.

A Blogging Example

For example, this is a brand new blog. Many new bloggers set goals in relation to traffic, RSS readers, blog income and so on. That’s fine but how are those results achieved? I’ve thought about this and came up with a list of specific actions I need to take to achieve those goals:

• Post good quality content regularly, ideally daily
• Find other blogs in my niche, link to them, participate in their discussions
• Get involved in social sites that are relevant to my niche
• Learn about blogging, and the ways in which I can be a better blogger

So in any one day rather than worrying about how much traffic I’m getting or how many RSS subscribers I have, I can concentrate on producing quality content and getting involved in the community around my niche. If I focus on the doing, then the results will come naturally.

Incidentally, I haven’t actually got any goals for this blog yet. I’m just using it to record my progress and to practice my blogging skills in general as I think that blogs are important even if I don’t fully understand their true significance yet.

Tracking & Measuring

Of course, just working hard blindly without tracking and measuring is not smart and it’s always best to work smart, not just hard. On a regular basis I can track my progress towards the goals and see how I am doing. I can check to see if my actions are moving me forwards towards the results that I want, and if not, I ditch them, tweak them or find new ones.

To wrap up, let me point you towards another great post from Zen Habits that gives a guide on setting and achieving your life goals. I especially like the example of starting a part time business to allow you to quit your job and work from home :-)

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