Progress on this goals debate.  I’ve gotten something of a reputation now for being a one-note johnny, asking everyone I know how they go about setting goals.  Reaction is mixed.  A large number of people tell me they don’t set goals at all.  This leads me to ask them what they think a “goal” is, and boy, the answers I get from that question certainly are varied.

I have divided it up like this: on the one end, we have God, who does not set goals, because He always does exactly as He purposes.  On the other end we have a one-year-old.  One-year-olds do not set goals, either, because they can’t do it.  They have wishes, but if they cannot immediately satisfy them, they are incapable of changing their behavior to obtain the things they want eventually.  Goals are someplace in the middle, along with objectives, targets, plans, hopes and dreams.

Incidentally, before we get to far down this road, I have to say that one of the reasons I’m pursuing this is that I despise all this goal-setting crap I’ve been taught all my life, especially the “go-getter” trite phrases like “a goal you don’t write down is just a wish” or “set your goals high and don’t stop till you get there” and other such drivel.  I think – no, I am sure – that the vast majority of goal-setting motivational self-help (mostly well-intentioned) garbage has done as much to confuse and depress and distract people from what they should be doing as anything the world has ever known.  I just want that out there on the record.  The outwardly perky, inwardly desperate platitude-spouter is a proverb, and a sad commentary on how we’ve lost sight of what a truly happy life consists of.

Na.  Enough of that.  We forge on.  I have an example of what I mean about the uselessness of traditional definitions of goals.

My father doesn’t set goals.  Only two things he can remember that he wanted to do when he was a kid were sail on the Queen Mary and live in Virginia (he’s from Utah).  Check and check.  But this is a man that went from the late South High in Salt Lake, a kid whose father was a bus driver, and ended up with degrees from Columbia and Stanford and the University of Washington, a Masters in Education, and a distinguished and well-respected career on the right wing in Washington D.C.  He has seven children.  He’s still married to the same woman after 43 years.  He’s led dance bands, taught at colleges, toured the world making speeches, was once targeted by a well-known terrorist for assassination.  He did this without setting goals?  Really?

So this demands the question: what is a goal, anyway?  If it isn’t what all these books and motivational speakers tell you it is, then what is it?  Glad you asked.

Here’s my working definition: it’s something you want bad enough to change what you’re doing, or who you are, to get it.

That’s pretty broad.  I understand that.  I also understand that this violates the SMART concept of goal-setting (goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Rhapsodic and Time-Bound.  Okay, not rhapsodic, but you know what I mean).  But by the SMART definition my father never had a goal to perform Cox and Box, or play Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, or compete in the National Crossword Puzzle Championships, but I know he wanted to do those things and wanted to badly enough that he expended significant effort to make them happen (and he did them all).  That makes them goals, as far as I’m concerned.

I also know that this specifically excludes your specific, written New Year’s Resolution to make a million dollars this year.  I know, you really wanted to.  But what did you do to change so that you could become a person that could make that kind of money?  Anything?  I mean, anything real?  If you’re like me, you didn’t.  Just because you wrote it down doesn’t make it a goal.  And just because you didn’t write it down, if you nevertheless changed what you were doing so you could get it, then I think that’s evidence that it’s a goal.

This is slightly off the topic of how to SET goals, and what you do with yourself if you don’t reach them, but I think we have to take this step backward before we can make progress.  My general bent is not to proceed until I know that I’m going the right way, but in this case I’ve been moving forward and trying to do my best, understanding that I’m going to get better tools and more understanding as time goes on (you could help, incidentally, with comments).

As evidence I note a couple of things that I did the last two days to reach a goal of mine, that I would not have done had I not set the goal with a specific number (I’m talking here about production, mortgage loan production).  I might still have got the loans I inked, but I might not have, too.  Now I have them, because I set a goal that I would have a certain production this week.  That is just about the only reason I did what I did.

Experiences like this convince me that goals are important.  They make me better.  And I think they make me better even when they play into my character flaw of beating myself up when I don’t achieve them.

[Incidentally, this definition of a goal also removes my difficulty about God and whether He sets goals or not.  God doesn't change.  Therefore He has no need of goals.  Jesus Christ changed, but he never changed in His essential nature, that is, He was always doing His best at everything, and always doing what He was supposed to do.  He never needed to improve; He was perfect.  We, however, are imperfect, and we are frequently playing Free Cell when we are supposed to be calling clients.  We have need of goals.]

I still don’t really know how to set them well, or how much energy to invest in them, or all that.  And I’m still asking for your comments and suggestions.

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