Goals have a property we can call immediacy. An immediate goal is directly connected to whatever you’re doing right now. For instance, right now I’m typing this with the goal of finishing the article you’re reading. By contrast, less immediate goals are less directly connected to what you’re doing right now. For me, right now, a less immediate goal is to help project teams work more effectively. I’m typing this, in part, because I hope that people reading it might gain some insights that they can apply.

Achieving your goals requires both passion and action. Knowing when to emphasize passion and when to emphasize action are the keys to managing yourself, or others, toward achievement.

A goal’s immediacy determines the effectiveness of any particular goal achievement strategy. To achieve a less immediate goal, focus on it. Contemplate it. Imagine it. Imagine achieving it. Imagine having achieved it. When you do, you wake up your passion, and you unconsciously do what’s necessary to achieve that goal.

Imagining success is far less effective for immediate goals. If I want an ice cream cone from the store across the street, imagining it probably won’t make it happen. To achieve immediate goals, focus on what you have to do, and then you’ll take action.

For a less immediate goal, focus on the goal, and the doing will take care of itself. For a more immediate goal, focus on the doing, and the goal will take care of itself. It’s when we get the two confused that we get into trouble.

To help people and organizations achieve goals, use these same principles. As a manager or leader, you’re responsible for your own personal goals, but you also take some responsibility for organizational goals and for goals of subordinates.

When the goal is immediate, do what you can to help people focus on what they need to do to achieve the goal. When the goal is less immediate, do what you can to help them visualize achieving it.

For instance, a near-term project milestone is an immediate goal. Although focusing the attention of the team on the milestone might be helpful, still more helpful would be a focus on this week’s work, because that’s what people must do to achieve the goal.

On the other hand, since goals related to, say, business development tend to be less immediate, a more vision-oriented approach is likely to be more effective for them. Focusing a team’s energies on what life will be like when we complete this set of projects could provide people with the guidance they need to set their own priorities consistent with that less immediate goal.

There’s a time for passion (imagining), and a time for action (doing). One without the other doesn’t work. Knowing when one is more important than the other is the key to achievement.

It’s when we get passion and action confused that we get into trouble.

by Rick Brenner 

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I make my living helping people figure out how to create careers that light them up, so I end up having a lot of random conversations about career passion. While the idea is appealing to everyone (because who wouldn’t want to love their work?), it can also kick up a fair amount of skepticism.

No doubt some of that skepticism is fueled by an overdose of happy-thought gurus who are long on fluff and short on realistic implementation. But a big part of it is also tied to an all too common misperception that pursuing passion is little more than unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky dreaming. That misperception is fed by a number of widespread myths. Here are four of the most common myths that prevent people from stepping into their potential.

Myth No. 1: Pursuing your passion is selfish and self-indulgent. Too many people fall prey to the notion that if it’s fun, it must be selfish. And of course we can’t have that! Better to stick our noses to the grindstone and grit our teeth. (What’s up with that?) Is creating a career where you feel energized and engaged in your own best interest? Of course! But finding work you love is also one of the best things you could ever do for your loved ones.

Imagine the difference between someone who grinds through the day in a job that sucks the life out of him and someone who actually gets energy from the work she does. Which one would you want to be around at the end of the day? Which one is going to be a better wife, husband, parent, or friend? When you love what you’re doing for such a significant portion of your waking hours, the positive ripple effect on your family, your coworkers, and even just random people you encounter can be substantial.

Myth No. 2: You have to be “realistic.” People say, “Sure, I’d like to pursue my passion, but when it comes to work, you have to get realistic. I have responsibilities. I can’t just go chasing after fun.” After all, work is called work for a reason, right? You don’t get paid to have fun–or so many of us believe. There’s often an element of this myth at play in myth No. 1. (”I can’t be selfish and have fun because I have to get serious and take care of my responsibilities.”)

Don’t get me wrong. I agree wholeheartedly that, yes, you do have to be realistic. But it’s important to be clear about what realistic means. For many people, what they really mean is “Here’s a wet towel I’d like to smother that dream with.” Realism becomes another word for unquestioned pessimism, and it becomes a great (and often unfounded) reason to say no.

There’s nothing wrong with taking realistic stock of the situation and acting accordingly. In fact, the likelihood that you will succeed goes up exponentially if you do. I think of that as “positive realism.” “Negative realism,” on the other hand, takes stock of the obstacles and simply stops. It doesn’t say, “OK, here are some of the challenges blocking my path. Now, what are some possible ways around that?” We’re amazingly creative, we humans, but when we buy into negative realism, we allow ourselves to be trapped in a tiny box of possibility.

Myth No. 3: Do what you love, and the money will follow. Sorry, folks. “Do what you love, and the money will follow” is actually the abbreviated version. The full version is “Do what you love, work really, really hard, be patient, be persistent, be open, work really, really hard some more, and the money will follow.” Not quite as catchy, I know, but much more accurate.

When you set things in motion in the direction of your passion, things do have a way of happening. Doors open you would never have known were there. Opportunities come up you would never have imagined. But it’s not guaranteed. Just because you’re doing what you love doesn’t mean you’re snorting magic fairy dust that will automatically turn the dream into reality. You have to get there the hard way, just like anyone else.

Myth No. 4: I’m limited by the rules. This one makes me want to scream. When I hear a variation on this theme, I always have to resist the urge to look at them and bleat, “Baaaaaaaah!” Sheep! Whose rules?

“The rules” create a needless barrier between you and your potential. I frequently hear people look back with regret on the career path they chose, saying it ultimately left them feeling unfulfilled and stuck. They got sucked in by external rules and expectations about what success looks like, what is respectable, even what kind of life they should live. And not so surprisingly, they ended up living someone else’s life. When you follow cookie-cutter rules and take a cookie-cutter approach, you’ll get cookie-cutter results. Pursuing your passion is inherently about creating your own path. It’s about breaking out of the ruts and saying, “No, guess what? These are my rules. This is the way it’s done.”

A real-world perspective: If you want to succeed in pursuing your passion, you have to be realistic, and you have to work hard. You also have to question assumptions and be creative in figuring out ways to make it happen. You have to ask the hard questions and sometimes make the hard choices. It isn’t pie in the sky. Making it happen is a very down-to-earth, nuts-and-bolts process requiring you to develop a deep awareness of both yourself and the world around you.

After years as a professional malcontent, Curt Rosengren discovered the power of passion. As a speaker, author, and coach, Rosengren helps people create careers that energize and inspire them. His book, 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work, and his E-book, The Occupational Adventure Guide, offer people tools for turning dreams into reality. Rosengren’s blog, The M.A.P. Maker, explores how to craft a life of meaning, abundance, and passion.

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I’ve finally realized that I need to put together a 5-year plan to continue my personal development and reach goals. I’ve found your post, Think About Your Life Goals , and it’s started me in the right direction, but left a lot of open questions. To start, I really don’t know what questions I should ask myself to get to the items I really want (if I even know what I really want in the first place). Is there some sort of personal plan worksheet that you know of that would cover the complete realm of development? I feel that I would be more successful if I could easily view my goals and track my progress within one main document.

A great question, but to tell the truth, since I wrote that article, I’ve simplified my goal-planning system. A lot. I’ll get into that simple system in a minute, but let’s break Bob’s question into three parts:

1. How to choose life goals

2. How to get there

3. How to keep track of all your goals and actions

How to choose life goals
There is no perfect answer here. Some people have known for awhile now what they really want, but just haven’t pursued it, and for them, it just takes a little contemplation to realize what they’ve wanted all along. Others will have a more difficult time, as they have never figured out what their dream is, or what they’d like to accomplish. For them, I’d make a few suggestions:

1. Take some time for quiet contemplation.

2. Think about what’s important to you.

3. Think about what you’d like people to say about you when you die.

4. Brainstorm — make a list of all the things you’d like to do in life, things that sound fun and exciting and wonderful, and then choose the best of the list.

5. You don’t have to come up with your life goals right now. You could just think of something you’d like to achieve over the next 6 months to a year, and continue to explore different things until you find your dream.

How to get there
If you know your goals, the next question is how to get there. A great method that I’ve seen numerous times, most recently by Mark Joyner in his Simple*ology system, is called backward planning, a method used by the military. Basically, here’s how it works:

• Have a clearly defined goal with a clearly defined outcome — you should be able to visualize what it looks like when you’ve accomplished the outcome.

• What is the last thing you’ll need to do to achieve that outcome? If your goal is to publish a novel, for example, the last thing you’ll need to do (before the publisher does the layout and design, printing, marketing, etc.) is edit and submit the final draft.

• What is the thing you’ll need to do just before that step? In the above example, you might want to get an outside editor to review your draft and give your criticisms and suggestions and edits.

• What is the thing you’ll need to do before that step? In the example, you’d need to do a revised draft to submit to your editor.

• And so on, until you get to the first step. The first step is what you need to focus on. In the novel example, you might have “brainstorm novel ideas” as your first step.

If you follow this plan, you’ll have a step-by-step guide to achieving your goal. Now you just need a way to track your goals and achieve them.

How to track and achieve your goals - a simple method
As Bob suggests, it would take a well-planned form or software to track a bunch of goals, broken down by periods of your life (1 year, 5 years, 10 years, etc). That can be very complicated, as I’ve discovered myself.

So how can you simplify this? Of your life goals, choose one to accomplish within the next 12 months. If none of them can be accomplished in 12 months, choose a sub-goal of one of your life goals to accomplish in 12 months. And only choose ONE goal. Here’s an example:

Life goal: build my dream house
1 year goal: save $5,000 towards a down payment for my dream house

Once you’ve chosen your 1 year goal (and remember, only choose one — not one for each area of your life, but just one), then choose a medium-term goal that you can accomplish in 3-6 months. It should be a big chunk of your 1 year goal. For example:

medium-term goal: save $2,500 in 6 months

Then choose a short-term goal you can accomplish in 1-2 weeks. For example:

short-term goal: set up automatic deductions from my paycheck to go straight to savings — amount: $200 per paycheck.

The reason you should only focus on one goal at a time is that it’s hard to track a whole bunch of goals, and it’s hard to maintain focus on more than one goal at a time. If you just have to accomplish one thing this week, you can really put your energy into making it happen. But if you need to do 3-5 things in the next two weeks, it’s much more likely that you won’t do any of them.

So, focus on your short-term goal (1-2 weeks) and then when you complete it, choose the next short-term goal to get you to your medium-term goal. Once the medium-term goal is accomplished, choose a new medium-term goal to get you to your long-term goal (1 year). Once your long-term goal is accomplished, set your sights on a new long-term goal. Keep this up, and you’ll achieve a lot.

Here’s another example:

1 yr goal: Quit my job and work from home
medium-term goal: start an online business that will bring me income
short-term goal: brainstorm and research ideas for online business

I’ve found that this simplified system does a lot to helping me stay focused. It’s also hard to only choose one goal, as we always want to do 10 goals, but I think it’s worth it to decide what’s most important.

And the goal-tracking system is simple: on a simple 3×5 index card (or any sheet of paper), write down three things: your 1-year goal, your medium-term goal, and your short-term goal. When you accomplish the short-term goal, just cross it off and write a new one. It doesn’t require any fancy software or planning system.

The key is to maintain focus on your one goal, and to put all your energy into achieving it. Don’t forget it, don’t be distracted from it. Let it be the point on the horizon that you continually keep in sight, moving around obstacles but constantly heading towards that point. Maintain your focus, and you’ll achieve it.

by ZenHabits.net

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If you could just pick one or two (or seven) habits to create in the next few months — habits that will have the most impact on your life — what would they be?

I often get asked this question, because people are overwhelmed when it comes to starting positive life changes.

They ask me: what one or two habits should they start with?

It’s not an easy question. There are so many changes I’ve gone through, from quitting smoking to simplifying my life to reducing debt to many more. And they’ve all seemed life-changing, and they’ve all seemed important.

But if I were to start again, and had to pick one or two, it would be the one or two listed below. The list that follows is in order of what I think I’d do the first 6-7 months of changing my life … but realize that every person is different. No one should follow my choices exactly — you’ve got to figure out what works for you.

That said, if you followed the program below, and worked to develop these habits, you’d probably do pretty well.

How to Develop the Habits
I’ve written a number of times about developing habits, but here are the basics:

Do a 30-day challenge, focusing on just ONE habit.

- Write it out on paper, along with your motivations, obstacles, and strategies for overcoming them.
Commit fully, in a public way.
- Log your progress.
- Remain publicly accountable — report on your progress each day.
- Have support for when you falter — either in real life or online.
- Reward every little success.
- If you fail, figure out what went wrong, plan for it, and try again.

1. Develop positive thinking. I put this first because I think it’s the keystone habit that will help you form the other important habits. Sure, positive thinking by itself won’t lead to success, but it certainly goes a long way to motivate you to do the other things required.

I learned this when I quit smoking — when I allowed myself to think negative thoughts, I would end up failing. But when I learned how to squash negative thoughts and think positive ones instead, I succeeded. This discovery lead to me practicing this over and over, until I was able to form just about any habit I needed. It’s been invaluable to me, and I think it could be to most people.

Focus on this habit first, and you’ll have a much easier time with any of the others. Start by becoming more aware of your negative self-talk — do a little tally sheet throughout the day, marking a tally each time you notice a negative thought. Soon you’ll recognize them, and you can squash them.

2. Exercise. People who’ve been hearing me harp on about exercise might roll their eyes. Sure, exercise is healthy and all that, but how exactly is it life changing? I’m glad you asked:

It makes you feel better about yourself, and more confident. That leads to better success with other positive changes.

It reinforces the positive thinking habit — you need to think positive in order to sustain exercise.

It relieves stress and gives you time to think — this leads to better mental well-being in your life overall.

It helps with creativity. Don’t ask me to prove it, except to say that my best ideas and brainstorming sessions come from when I exercise.

3. Single-tasking. The opposite of multi-tasking — you’ve heard me harp on about this one as well. Why is it life-changing? A couple powerful reasons:

You’ll be more effective with your tasks and get more done. It’s hard to achieve important things if you’re constantly switching tasks and distracted by other “urgent” things.

You’ll be less stressed overall and (in my experience) happier throughout your day.

4. Focus on one goal. Just as focusing on one task at a time is more effective, and focusing on one habit at a time is more effect, so is focusing on one goal at a time. While it might seem very difficult, focusing on one goal at a time is the most powerful way of achieving your goals. When you try to take on many goals at once, you’re spreading thin your focus and energy — the two critical components for achieving a goal.

What if you have 5 goals you want to achieve? Pick one to focus on first. Break it into a mini-goal you can accomplish this month, if it’s a longer-term goal. Pick an action you can do today. Keep doing this until the goal is accomplished — do an action every day, finish the mini-goal, pick the next mini-goal to work on. Then, when your One Goal is completed, focus on the next goal.

Some goals are ongoing ones — like blogging every day, or exercising every day. In those cases, turn them into habits — focus exclusively on turning the goal into a habit, until the habit is ingrained. Then focus on the next goal.

5. Eliminate the non-essential. First, identify the essential — the things in your life that are most important to you, that you love the most. Then eliminate everything else. This simplifies things and leaves you with the space to focus on the essential. This process works with anything — with your life in general, with work projects and tasks, with emails and other communication.

This will change your life because it will help you to simplify, to focus on what’s important, and to build the life you want.

6. Kindness. Yes, kindness is a habit. And it can be cultivated. Focus on it every day for a month and you’ll see profound changes in your life. You’ll feel better about yourself as a person. You’ll see people react to you differently and treat you better, over the long run. It’s karma.

How do you develop the kindness habit? First, make it a goal to do something kind for someone each day. At the beginning of the day, figure out what that kind act will be and then do it during the day. Second, each time you interact with someone, try to be kind, be friendly, be compassionate. Third, try to go beyond small kindnesses to larger acts of compassion, volunteering to help those in need and taking the initiative to relieve suffering.

7. Daily routine. It’s so simple, but creating a daily routine for yourself can make a big difference in your life. The best routines, I’ve found, come at the start and end of the day — both your workday and your day in general. That means, develop a routine for when you awake, for when you first start working, for when you finish your workday, and for the end of your evening.

How will that change your life? It will help you get a great start to your day, and finish your day by preparing for the next day. It’ll help you firmly root the productive habits you want to firm in your everyday life. It’ll help you focus on what’s important, not just what comes up. It’ll help you make sure you get done all the things you really want to make sure gets done everyday. And that can mean a lot.

by ZenHabits.net

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Because there is a big difference between living and merely existing…

• Educate yourself until the day you die. – The time and energy you invest in your education will change your life.  You are a product of what you know.  The more knowledge you acquire, the more control you have over your life.
• Take good care of your body. – Your body is the greatest tool you’ll ever own.  It impacts every step you take and every move you make.  Nourish it, exercise it, and rest it.
• Spend as much time as possible with the people you love. – Human beings are emotional creatures.  Family and close friends makeup the core of your emotional support system.  The more you nurture them, the more they will nurture you.
• Be a part of something you believe in. – This could be anything.  Some people take an active role in their local city council, some find refuge in religious faith, some join social clubs supporting causes they believe in, and others find passion in their careers.  In each case the psychological outcome is the same.  They engage themselves in something they strongly believe in.  This engagement brings happiness and meaning into their lives.
• Excel at what you do. – There’s no point in doing something if you aren’t going to do it right.  Excel at your work and excel at your hobbies.  Develop a reputation for yourself, a reputation for consistent excellence.
• Live below your means. – Live a comfortable life, not a wasteful one.  Do not spend to impress others.  Do not live life trying to fool yourself into thinking wealth is measured in material objects.  Manage your money wisely so your money does not manage you.  Always live well below your means.
• Be self-sufficient. – Freedom is the greatest gift.  Self-sufficiency is the greatest freedom.
• Build a comfortable, loving household. – Home is where the heart is.  Your home should be comfortable and lined with love.  It should be a place that brings the whole family together.
• Always be honest with yourself and others. – Living a life of honesty creates peace of mind, and peace of mind is priceless.
• Respect elders.  Respect minors.  Respect everyone. – There are no boundaries or classes that define a group of people that deserve to be respected.  Treat everyone with the same level of respect you would give to your grandfather and the same level of patience you would have with your baby brother.
• Mix it up.  Try different things. – Seek as many new life experiences as possible and be sure to share them with the people you love.  After all, your life’s story is simply a string of experiences.  The more experiences you have, the more interesting your story gets.
• Take full ownership of your actions. – Either you own up to your actions or your actions will ultimately own you.
• Over-deliver on all your promises. – Some people habitually make promises they are just barely able to fulfill.  They promise perfection and deliver mediocrity.  If you want to boost your personal value, do the exact opposite. Slightly under-sell your capabilities so that you’re always able to over-deliver.  It will seem to others like you’re habitually going above and beyond the call of duty.
• Listen more.  Talk less. – The more you listen and the less you talk, the more you will learn and the less you will miss.
• Focus more on less. – Think in terms of Karate: A black belt seems far more impressive than a brown belt.  But does a brown belt really seem any more impressive than a red belt?  Probably not to most people.  Remember that society elevates experts high onto a pedestal.  Hard work matters, but not if it’s scattered in diverse directions.  Focus on less and master it all.
• Exploit the resources you do have access to. – The average person is usually astonished when they see a physically handicap person show intense signs of emotional happiness.  How could someone in such a restricted physical state be so happy?  The answer rests in how they use the resources they do have.  Stevie Wonder couldn’t see, so he exploited his sense of hearing into a passion for music, and he now has 25 Grammy Awards to prove it.
• Savor the natural joys of simple pleasures. – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the best things in life are free.  They come in the form of simple pleasures and they appear right in front of you at various locations and arbitrary times.  They are governed by Mother Nature and situational circumstance and captured by mindful awareness.  It’s all about taking a moment to notice the orange and pink sunset reflecting off the pond water as you hold hands with someone you love.  Noticing these moments and taking part in them regularly will bring unpredictable bursts of happiness into your life.
• Reflect on your goals and direction. – Not doing so is committing to wasteful misdirection.  The process of self reflection helps maintain a conscious awareness of where you’ve been and where you intend to go, giving you the ability to realign your trajectory when necessary.
• Leave time for spontaneous excursions. – Sometimes opportunity knocks at unexpected times.  Make sure you have enough flexibility in your schedule to respond accordingly.
• Be here now. – Right now is the only moment guaranteed to you.  Right now is life.  Don’t miss it.

Marc and Angel Hack Life

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