How To Avoid Setting Goals That Are Doomed From The Start

Image courtesy of Martin Kingsley

It’s hard enough setting a goal and following it through to completion. But when that goal conflicts with other important things in your life, it’s nearly impossible.

Whether we like it or not we are creatures with priorities. We naturally put one need over another. And if we set a goal that will eventually conflict with something in our lives that is of more importance to us, we will just be wasting our time.

A lot of ideas seem great in the beginning. Let’s say you decide that you want to spend more time with your family. Maybe your job keeps you from having consistent hours and you always feel that it hinders you from being able to plan time with your loved ones. So you decide to start looking into other ways of making money that will allow for more flexibility and better hours. Sounds great, right?

So now let’s say you decided on a direction. This direction requires that you spend most of your ‘off time’ hours working on building the ‘better job’. Early on you realize that it is going to take years of dedication and many of your precious ‘free time’ hours to even come close to getting where you need to be. But the idea of spending more time with your family keeps you focused and pushing forward.

After six months you notice that your progress is less than you expected at this point. You family keeps complaining that you they never see you anymore and they just want it to be like was before you set out on this venture. You keep telling them, as well as yourself, that you are doing this for every one’s own good. But your motivation is dwindling as you become less and less convinced that you are on the right path.

What’s wrong with this situation?

Is it a bad thing to try and ‘upgrade’ your job in an attempt to have more time with your family? Absolutely not! Is there anything wrong with putting in some extra hours and making a few sacrifices for the better good of the future? Many times this is essential to living the life that you and your family desire. So why are things going so poorly?

For us to meet a goal we have to lay out the best, most efficient path for us to follow as we pursue it. If the path we’ve laid is filled with obstacles that are stronger than our drive (higher priorities for example) than we will eventually fail. The problem with the above scenario was that the person was doing the exact opposite of what they wanted to accomplish, while they were pursuing the goal. In other words, the more this person tried to allow for time with their family, the less time they spent with their family. This goal was doomed from the start. The obstacle of a neglected family was too great to overcome. So what is a person to do in a situation life this?

I am a big promoter of positive change. I see a situation like this and will be the first to encourage the person to make the changes necessary to get out of the time consuming job so they can live the life that they desire. But you need to first lay out the path to the goal and look for these obstacles. If you find some, try to make the necessary adjustments that will allow for an eventual arrival to your desired goal.

In this case, this person should have found a way to involve their family. Make it so they feel apart of the process. Have it set up so there is required interaction as you pursue your goal. This may not be the quality time that you and your family desire, but if you all know that you are working together to change this, your chances of success are much greater than if you were to go it alone.

So next time you go to set a goal, don’t just look at the beginning and the end. Chart the path in the middle. Look for obstacles along the way and make sure they won’t be too great to overcome. If they are, than try to determine a path around them. This may sometimes mean that it takes longer to reach a goal than originally planned, but this is always better than not reaching your goals at all. I find that many failed attempts are not the result of lack of trying, but instead the lack of planning.

“Set priorities for your goals. A major part of successful living lies in the ability to put first things first. Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.” Author Unknown.