49: Let's set some Goals

Grit and Growth Gamechangers, Grateful for the Grind 🙏

Just the first thing. We're not talking about the second thing. I wrote about motivational madness last week. We’ll skip all the other G words and focus on the one that works: Goals.

Hit a personal goal last week. Signed up for a ride longer than I’d ever done. Talked a friend into doing it with me. Found some friends to push me and hype me up. Dumped rain the day of the ride, so we did it ourselves a few weeks later with the sun on our face and a breeze at our back. Ok it was actually a wind, and it was in our face. Cruised through the first half, grinded through the second, the finish was glorious. Ate a stack of pizzas and slept like the dead.

Goals are magical. Visualization committed in writing. Imagine what you want to do, to be. Focus on that goal, revisit that goal, measure how close you’re getting, be amazed when you get there and then CELEBRATE!

An NFL coach once set out a goal to for his team to reach the playoffs. The team did it - they made the playoffs but then lost badly in the next round. They were done; they had hit the goal. Think about what’s the right goal.

You also need to know when you reach your goal or if you’re heading in the right direction with the right velocity. SMART is all about making sure goals are measurable. Maybe you wont get there at first or you’re not even on the right trajectory and that’s ok - if you know what’s slowing you down, you can adjust.

Microsoft is obsessive about goals. It’s an annual planning ritual, even before one fiscal year is done to figure out and set goals for the next FY. Then go off and have good summer, come back and you’re already behind! That first quarter is about ramping up and writing the playbook, the next two quarters are about refining based on progress and then that 4th quarter - Q4 is always a grind but also where all the work of the prior quarters accrue, and the gains are big. Repeat.

Go BIG. Stretch goals. We called them BHAGs. Big Hairy Audacious Goals.

Every successful business has a set of measures unique to their industry, unique to their objectives. Make your own annual ritual, set some goals. Look at how you’re doing at least quarterly and then eat too much pizza and sleep like the dead.

best, Andrew

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ICYMI, last week’s article was a banger!