We are halfway through the year, and too many of us have made inadequate progress toward our goals. Previously, we have examined enemies of accomplishment, such as fear, discipline, and competing priorities. Today, we address overcoming other impediments.
Failure to Launch
It is time to start if you have not thought about your goals since your New Year’s Eve toast. While working out 200 days during the remainder of this year is mathematically impossible, you can work out 100 days, which is infinitely better than zero. In this circumstance, a greater tragedy would be allowing what you cannot do to stop you from doing what you can.
If you lack motivation or are easily distracted, reconnect with your original reason for establishing the goal. If you choose wisely, the goal stirs you. Pursuing it makes your eyes sparkle, and you forget the less important things occupying your mind. If you launch that business or write that book, you will not grieve over failing to plant a garden, create a five-year plan, and almost everything else you wanted to do but did not.
Discouraged by Too Little Headway?
Remember, most progression is not linear. Perhaps you have not reached that tipping point when the return on your effort multiplies.
The training time required to go from the couch to running one mile without stopping is double the time needed to move from running one to two miles. You know making the second million dollars is easier and faster than the first.
Other times, experience reveals that your plan needs a course correction. Instead of responding to ten random help-wanted ads daily for a month, you learn that pursuing ten targeted introductions through your network is far more effective. Rather than being discouraged, be pleased that executing your plan taught you what does not work and what will.
Abandoned Ship?
The pursuit of a goal may correctly lead you to abandon or redefine a goal.
Did you decide to remain a lawyer instead of pursuing a passion for personal training? Did you moonlight at the gym for three months, personally experiencing the life of a trainer? Or did you daydream about the noisy gym and malodorous bodies without spotting one person at the weight bench? Your integrity will inform you if you abandoned it because of fear, a lack of diligence, or a thoughtful conclusion after a legitimate trial.
Taking a six-month sabbatical in Spain this year when you have children in school, a mortgage, two car payments, and little savings was an overly ambitious goal. Instead of abandoning your aspiration, modify the goal to formulating a well-conceived plan of saving, asset disposition, alternative income sources, etc., allowing you to take the sabbatical in two years.
On My Mind
Do your efforts resemble traffic during rush hour, moving in fits and spurts?
Are your goals posted in a place they cannot escape your consciousness, such as your keyboard, journal, or bathroom mirror? The “haunting” presence almost subconsciously stimulates action, and you gravitate towards your goals.
Tracking your activities is another form of raising visibility that inspires action. As a poor sleeper, I set a goal of sleeping at least seven hours per night, four nights per week. I decided to enter an Outlook calendar appointment each night I slept seven hours and to record the number of nights on my weekly goal spreadsheet.
Knowing my calendar would confront me every morning with an available spot for a good sleep entry and that there would be a weekly reckoning with my spreadsheet, the number of good sleeping nights magically increased even before I did any sleep research or began using blue light glasses.
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Regardless of our progress, a midyear evaluation helps us remain committed to our (sometimes modified) goals and maintain (or take) steps leading to accomplishment.