26 weeks gone in 2022 so far, and another 26 left on the calendar. On a scale of 1 – 10 (where “10” is “cruising through the year and absolutely crushing all your goals”, and “1” being “Goals? What are those?”), how well are you faring with your goals for the year?
Hold on… Don’t be in a haste to answer the question. Give it some thought and try to honestly assess your progress so far.
Okay, do you have your answer?… No?… C’mon, it shouldn’t be that hard:)
Got it? Awesome! Archive your rating for now. We’ll come back to that later…
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The Universe Is Not Always Our Ally
On the first day of the month, I published a LinkedIn post where I hinted on my mid-year reflections on the progress I made in the first half of the year. I had revisited my plans for the year, and the results were not quite what I had hoped for.
It was a little disappointing that I didn’t achieve the things I anticipated, but rather than feeling dispirited, I resolved to approach it more pragmatically. I decided to focus on my input instead of the output, and I’ll explain why.
Usually, when we set our goals for the year (also applies to quarterly or monthly goals), we make our projections believing everything would align in our favour.
However, if you have any experience in goal-setting, you would know that such utopian circumstances do not exist. It’s quite often the opposite. This phenomenon is best expressed in what is known as Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” In other words, if there’s a potential for things to not play out as planned, they’ll most likely not.
It’s Not Entirely Up To Us
Success in achieving our goals, or the lack thereof, isn’t entirely dependent on us —a lot of other factors come to bear on our quest for productivity, and eventually affect our results.
The mental shift in paying attention to the part of the equation under my control (my actions in pursuit of my goals), as opposed to using the desired outcomes as a yardstick for measurement, helped me objectively access how well I’m doing without the bias of external factors beyond my control.
In doing so, I realized that given the prevailing circumstances under which I had to operate, I didn’t do so badly. Of course, I probably could have done some things differently and some others better than I did, but it became apparent that the deficiency in my desired results is not an accurate representation of the level of my input.
Viewing our goals from this perspective is a more efficient way to assess our stance, as it helps us figure out what we’re doing right and what we’re not. When we give emphasis to the journey over the destination, we are able to identify the bottlenecks in our system of operation and troubleshoot adequately.
Focusing on systems (or actions) over goals also saves us the emotional stress of feeling like “underachievers”, when in fact we might be doing our best in the presence of other external factors that influence our pursuits.
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Back To The Drawing Board
Okay… remember the rating you gave yourself earlier on?
Now, in light of the paradigm of reviewing our progress based on how well we fared with our actions instead of the goals themselves, re-evaluate the last six months and rate yourself again.
Chances are that the new score is higher than the first one:)
You probably found out that you’re doing better than you thought. If so, keep up the momentum. If not, it’s okay to return to the drawing board, move things around, and regroup for the next phase of the year.
Lastly, be flexible with your goals. Consider your plans as a map. If you’re taking a route to a certain destination and discover a roadblock down the road, it’s okay to change direction and remap your course, but don’t quit the journey.
Selah.