(Read the overview for the basics of this 90 day push.)
Proficient-ish
With two-weeks left on this goal set, I’m back in a productive groove, so I think the primary purpose (of these goals) has been met. But I was WAY off on my goal formulation for my creative projects – I chide my clients and others for cutting corners on the “thinky” part of goal setting, so it’s only fitting I out myself! I set the goal intellectually – it was what I “should” do – leaving out the all-important emotional motive.
I absolutely had to finish the edits on my novel “Black Nouveau” – in retrospect it would have been best for me to set the goal at “11-weeks or until completion”. By tacking on “Hard Knox” edits with the same metrics, I’m doing edits I know I’ll go back and re-write immediately, and it’s really sapping my enthusiasm. That said, the nice thing about these short goals is that they’re over relatively quickly, and with these large-scale projects a couple of weeks one way or the other doesn’t make much difference.
I bring this up is to remind you (and me) that DESIRE is the key factor in success or failure with a goal. You’ve got to want it – bad. If you choose a goal because you’re “supposed” to, you’ll probably quit it, or sabotage it. It’s vital that you choose goals that are personally meaningful, and deeply important to you. When things get tough, and they always do, it’s this passionate personal desire that you’ll use to push past the temporary setback.
For me, distraction is the price I pay for poorly considered goals. It becomes both:
- Easier to find a million other things more interesting
- Harder to “make” myself focus on the goal
I put “make” into quotes because that feeling of “forcing yourself” is a dead giveaway that you’re not emotionally connected to your goal. So, I’ll muscle through the next two weeks with gritted teeth, and make sure I bring real passion to the next set of goals!
The 90 Day Goals
Black Nouveau Edits – Success
“Hard Knox” edits….Weak! But will persevere to the end. Start page: 70 End page: 95
Weight Loss – Success
Lose a minimum of 1 pound per week. Week start: 280.0 Week end: 279.0
(Stickk goal: 279)
Blog posts – Success
Write and post a minimum of 3 posts per week.
Journal – 5/9/15: Gratitude, Skin and Ultron
Out of the Past: Mouse-mageddon
90 Day Transition: Week 8 Report
Key Learnings:
- Desire & Passion prerequisites for success: Too easy to lose focus when you’re not emotional about the object of your goal.
Things to watch:
- Better scheduling: I sound like a broken record I know (does anyone still know what a broken record is?). If there’s one thing I’m still failing on, its effective time management hour to hour, and day-to-day. It’s something I may need to make a goal on its own.
In summary, get emotional and stay emotional. It’s very easy to “drift” mentally, the world if full of shiny but low-value distractions, the best way to counter this is to make sure you’re deeply in love with the idea of succeeding at whatever you’ve chosen.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor E. Frankl