Conversely.
“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.” —M. Russell Ballard
Introduction
There’s no shortage of well-intentioned folks setting new years resolutions. Similarly, there are plenty of naysayers laughing on the sidelines. The truth is, the naysayers have a point, resolutions don’t do much for most people; still what President Ballard says is undeniably true. The question then is how do we “learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals“.
One of my endeavors over the last 7 years has been to learn how to set goals. While I have yet much to learn, I offer this method as a small part of a work in progress, something to chew on, discuss and add to you your own personal goal setting process as you see fit.
In my mind, a year-long goal to me has three parts. I’ve labeled them (1)Vision, (2)Metric, and (3)Accountability method. Another way to think of them is as the spirit of the law, the letter of the law, and the law, as in “the law is after me! For what it’s worth, I’ve accomplish goals that I structure like this ~80% of the time whereas, for goals that I didn’t structure like this, my success rate is about 20%.
Vision/Spirit of the law: Describe qualitatively what you want to accomplish. Perhaps you already have an action in mind, take a step back and think to yourself why do I want to take this action? For example, Kara and I decided that for 2021 we wanted to read some of each other’s book recommendations. It wasn’t immediately obvious why we wanted to do that until we started turning it over in conversation. In a nutshell, we wanted to “Converge our viewpoints on critical topics and develop an appreciation for differing viewpoints on non-critical topics.” this exercise would also give us fodder for mutually interesting conversation during drives and help us relate our shared experiences to things we had both read.
The key to a successful vision seems to be knowing where you’re at and where you want to go. If you’re not sure about those two things, don’t get discouraged. This exercise is actually a great way to take stock of your situation. I’d recommend developing each of your year-long vision statements before moving on to metrics and accountability methods. That way they can adjust and respond to each other to form one grand vision, without the minutia of the rest of your plan getting in the way.
Metric/ Letter of the law. This aspect of a new years goal most closely aligns with the classic SMART framework. Once you have a vision, craft a Specific, Measurable, Aggressive, Realistic, and Timebound law to use as a measuring stick for your progress towards change. For example, for 2020 I had a vision to improve my understanding of God’s ways through personal daily scripture study. To measure my progress on this vision I set a SMART goal to have 300 new notes in the New Testament at the end of the year.
The key to a successful metric seems to be balancing between aligning it with your vision and making it easy to measure. Many of the most important things are impossible to measure directly, either because they are insubstantial or because it would be prohibitively expensive to design a proper test. Indeed some visions might require two or more metrics to best encapsulate the vision. Still, given a participant who understands the vision behind the metric (you) imperfect metrics absolutely can serve as useful benchmarks of progress.
Accountability Method/the law This is the place where I have most often messed up my resolutions. The trick seems to be to see yourself not as a sovereign entity of perfect self-control, but rather as a group of individual entities warring for control of your mind and body (no I don’t have dissociative identity disorder;). For now, we can think of you as two entities, your conscious self that wants to accomplish your long-term goals and the internal toddler who is incapable of thinking about anything but right now. You can’t just tell the toddler to shut-up and fall in line (you can try, it just hasn’t ever worked for me). He is a raving child, yelling, crying, whining, and arguing incoherently, yet unignorably. He will cry about that sugar until you give it to him (or distract him), and he will not cooperate when you want to exercise.
When you’re making your goals for the year he’s probably being pretty quiet (it doesn’t affect him right now), but when you head out to accomplish them he will be very present. The trick for this step is to figure out what he needs to be able to agree to your goals as your going about accomplishing them. The things that work best on my internal toddler are immediate, visceral, and shiny. They can be punitive- or rewards-based. This step is also the device that I use to actually measure the metric listed in the step above. We’re basically talking about glorified checklists here, but don’t be deceived, the glorification is essential.
To get your creative juices flowing, here are a few ideas that appealed to my inner toddler. For a family exercise goal, we drop shiny marbles into a specially purchased vase after each session, when it’s full (planned for December 2021) we’re going to get some new exercise equipment. For the previously mentioned book swapping goal, we purchased two attention-grabbing bookends and made 12 fake books out of cardboard to place between the books. As each recommended book is completed, we’ll replace the cardboard blank between the bookends. Whatever works for you, you’re thinking about ways to motivate a tired and frustrated toddler to do what you want them to when the going gets rough.
Conclusion
In summary, this method will give you the vision to see the mountain peek you wish to ascend, a compass to determine your progress towards that goal, and motivation that will get the misfit band of toddlers (or hobbits if you prefer) that is you, to keep going. One, or even two of the three don’t work well; you need all three. Having a vision but no compass means you’ll get lost when the distant peak becomes obscured by clouds of gloom or forests of pressing tasks. Having a vision and a compass, but failing to frequently celebrate milestones will quickly lead to discontent among your ragtag band, but striving for a goal, walking the long roads, and navigating the unexpected obstacles with purpose and direction, will make your team, you, stronger and more capable. That’s true, whether you reach Morder or not.
Journey before destination.
Good luck!