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This one is a very great question, and this is the thing I hope I can share with others. It’s not the only way to set goals, but it’s just an additive perspective.

Planning My Goals

What do I want to do?
I figure it out what it is I want to do, this one seems easy enough, but I think a lot of people leave this vague. People often say, I want to be healthy. What does that mean? For me, I wanted to start losing weight. I wanted to play basketball since I enjoy it and played it so much as a teen and young adult, but I kept getting hurt.

So I switched to running in order to help me get in shape for basketball. So the what became I want to run in order to get in better shape. In that process, I began to understand, the physical portion was only about 20%, believe it or not. The other 80% was diet.

So I adjusted my diet, I tried all diet types, the one that provided me the best benefit was keto, but not atkins, healthy keto.

Planning to Accomplish
The next step in the process is figuring out when you will perform tasks that will help you accomplish your new goal. Currently, I am working as an Automation Engineer, but I want to earn my PMP certificate. I spend about 4 hours during my work week at the least studying my coursera.

My weekend goal is to spend 5 hours on Saturday, and Sunday for a total of 10. I set a goal that if I do not complete my training by the end of September, I would give my wife and daughter $40. I created a contract, something directly out of James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

Begin with the End in Mind
This quote is directly from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I learned about this recently, but I coined a different phrase myself because when I was younger, I would always day dream about what I wanted/needed to accomplish. I call this the mental montage. I see it first then I attempt to achieve it.

How can you know where you are going if you don’t visualize it first? Imagine yourself on a beach, or getting your certificate, or even in this case, I look forward to being able to add the certificate and the title after my name on Linkedin, I wish I could write it in now, but I want to earn it first.

Make Attaining the Goal Easy
Set time away, or maybe even overlap the task with something you like doing to make it simple. This is also something that is stated in Atomic Habits, but it was also something that I did without even understanding this concept. It’s like when I know I am going to the gym, I would stop by the store to get a snack. The snack was my reward for playing hoop that day.

I did this recently for finishing the SF marathon half. I bought little debbies as a reward for completing the race. These little things make it very easy to accomplish, but also very hard to fail, for me at least. Also, understand that you may not always reach your goals, but in the process of you attempting, you will have new information for your next attempt that will make it much easier to succeed.

Don’t be afraid to fail, be afraid to never try. Hearing people say, I could have done this, and I could have done that, it just eats at me. Learn from others mistakes, don’t live in regert. 😝