Last Updated on May 1, 2021 by Ava
Last Update – 9/15/2019
Setting goals is powerful. Maybe you’ve never thought about it. I know I hadn’t before I was basically forced to. I set goals without knowing that’s what I was doing, but it wasn’t very effective. My goals strategy was to set one goal at a time and sort of willy nilly work toward it as I was living life.
It never occurred to me to make setting goals a priority. Your number one goal should be to set goals!
In a hurry? Grab the show notes in PDF format. <<<
A Little Bit of Backstory
When I was working in Las Vegas as a Technical Writer, I worked with around 10 other writers and a couple of videographers. My boss was a nice enough guy, but he was just that…my boss.
He was one of those self-help enthusiasts who pined over goal-setting and having these kum-bah-yah meetings each morning with all of us.
It made me want to puke, honestly.
I was fresh from a long line of bosses who just didn’t give a rip, and that’s what I was used to. I didn’t know it at the time, but this guy was going to change my life!
Early on, he decided the entire team should set goals and share them at our morning meetings. I was defiant. The first meeting where we were asked
to share our goals, I informed him that I didn’t have any.
I mean, seriously, I was there to do the work required of me which entailed writing policies and procedures for the Service department, not set goals. My goal was to complete my work and get paid.
I was asked to remain after the meeting where I was told gently that I would have goals, or I would not have a job there.
Needless to say, I became the goal-setting poster child.
What I found was that setting goals spilled over into every aspect of my life making it more productive. I became a goal-setting machine. My boss used my story any time his goals program was met with resistance by anyone else in the entire company.
Why You Should Care About Setting Goals
You’re probably wondering how this relates to you and creating cashflow…
In a Harvard Business Study that asked the simple question:
Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?
84% had no goals, 13% had goals that weren’t written down, and 3% had clear, written goals with plans to accomplish them.
10 years later…
The 13% who had unwritten goals were making twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all.
Even more shocking than that, 3% who had clear, written goals were earning an average of 10 times more than the whole other 97%!
Now, if this goal-setting thing sounds like someone has too much time on their hands, well…they probably also have fistfuls of cash according to that study.
Goal setting isn’t that hard. The system I use has me setting a couple of sets of long-term goals and also short-term goals. For example, I have 5-year, 1-year, 9-month, 6-month, 3-month, 1-month, weekly and daily goals.
Full disclosure, I really only actively maintain the last 3 while I visit the others a few times a year. The way it works is that my daily goals are the steps to accomplish my weekly goals. My weekly goals are the steps to accomplish my monthly goals, and so on.
SMART Goal Setting
I use the SMART system for goal setting developed by Mr. George T. Doran in the 1981 issue of Management Review.
SMART is an acronym for:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-based
Grab these free printable goal worksheets to get started >>> Goals Worksheets
We are also publishing a goal-setting journal that will be available on Amazon next quarter, so please consider subscribing to our mailing list so you can be notified when it becomes available.
Using Goals to Diversify Your Income Streams
In Episode 1, I talked about building multiple streams of income. Using goals to do that is the only way in my book.
Setting goals help you to clarify the task. Once you’ve done that:
- You have clear steps
- The steps pull you forward
- Help you focus
- You will begin to notice momentum toward accomplishing your goals
That’s a Wrap
What do you think? Do you have goals? Does it sound too time-consuming or complicated?
Think about it like this…
The time you spend on goals is an investment toward doubling your current income. Can you use twice the pay? I thought so.
Start simple…set ONE goal and work toward accomplishing it this week. I’d love to hear from you in the comments about how it goes. Goals become addictive really quickly.
Until next time…turning your passion into cashflow!