One of the boundaries you want to set up for your life is setting goals. Goals are growth mechanisms. Everyone has dreams. We can dream about all kinds of different things. I had dreams as a child of falling out of an airplane. That's not a goal of mine. I also had a dream of my mom and grandmother leaving me at Montgomery Wards, retro, but the gentleman that actually worked at Sears would help me find them. That was a recurring dream that I had for years. Those are dreams. Those aren't goals. Goals are targets that you want to hit to make yourself better. You should have goals and you should have some accountability partners whether they're loved ones, friends, a Facebook group, coaching group or colleagues. You need to be held accountable.
It works for me because I don't want to go to them and say, "I didn't hit my goal because I didn't do anything about it." If I don't hit a target, there's going to be reasons behind it but I don't want those to become excuses. Circumstances can arise and things can happen but you want to set goals that you can reach. You also don't want them to be easy goals. For example, I have a goal of brushing my teeth today. I'm going to do that. I like my teeth and I want to be able to keep them. But the challenge is to have goals that really help you grow and grow to the person you want to be. You need to figure that out. And if you haven't figured it out by now, what you want to do when you grow up. One, I don't want to grow up. I'm perpetually 12. It's fun. Come on. Let's be realistic here. When you're in the leadership role, you have to grow up from time to time. I know. Spoiler alert. Sorry about that.
At the end of the day, you want to make sure that you are growing as a person and that you are learning new things because the world is changing. The world is changing constantly. I was actually at a conference recently and we talked about a quarter, 25% of the jobs that exist today may not exist in 2030. That means in 12 years a quarter of the jobs, one out of four jobs that exist won't in 2030 just because those jobs are no longer around. You have to constantly grow and improve. That's something you should be focusing on annually. You should review those things on a quarterly basis. Monthly might be a little much unless you're just starting something. You want to make sure you're seeing some momentum. That's fine. But you want to look at your goals on a quarterly basis and do annual planning.
Now, don't do annual planning on December 31st. Don't do annual planning on January 1st, especially if you went out the night of December 31st. That's not a plan. That's a plan for a disaster. Plan what next year is going to look like in October. Now that means if you come up with something that you think you'd really want to do next year and it's June or July, write it down. Put a notepad somewhere or use Evernote or whatever note capturing device you use. When you review your goals for the next year in October, then that can be at the top of the list and you can see if that's actually still something you want to do.
Is there anything you'd like to see change in your life this year or next?
See you tomorrow.