Goal Setting and Getting Things Done
Here’s a bit of a diversion from the Ruby and Rails talk. Back in the day I took a couple of the LGAT courses that covered life skills, goal setting, etc. Other than taking a ton of money out of my bank account, they did teach me some fairly good skills and more importantly ways of thinking about things that I thought I’d share here. Note that just reading may not be as effective as taking a course and getting the feel of them in the exercises.
- Taking Responsibility
- “I hate my job”. “I don’t have enough time”. “That’s too early/late”. “I’m too tired to…” These are all excuses we use all the time. The concept of taking responsibility is pretty simple. Instead of making excuses, realize that if you hate your job, that’s because you are choosing to stay at it. If you don’t have enough time that might be because you choose to watch Lost and America’s Top Model in the evenings, and if it’s “too early” that’s because you are choosing to not get up that early.We all have rationalizations… we can’t quit our job because the economy is in the shitter, and we really like Lost, and we went out with our friends last night so we want more than 3 hours of sleep. Blah blah blah. There’s all sorts of rationalizations, but sometimes it just comes down to if you it was that bad, or if you wanted it enough, you’d do it. Until then, you have to take responsibility for your circumstances (or at least some of them).
- Goal Setting
- Setting “SMART” goals was a major part of these courses. This means that you need to set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Agreed On, Realistic and Time based. IE:Your goal has to be Specific, like “I will lose 10 pounds” not “I will lose weight.” Or “My next job will pay me more than $75,000 a year” not “I will get a raise in my next job”. Being vauge means your results will be vauge. Having something specific will give your brain something to lock into.Tied into this is Measurable. If you can’t measure it, or know where you are in relation to success or failure, it’s harder to achieve. So making a goal based on something you can measure is needed. If your goal is to get to Vancouver, you need to know where you are to know how far you have to go yet. So unmeasurable goals are the touchy feely ones that you can’t tell if you get them or not.If you can’t Agree upon the goals, or if there is any ambiguity about them with the people you’re making the agreements with, they’ll be harder to achieve, or be enforced.
If you’re not realistic and your goal isn’t Realistic, you’ll just be frustrated. “Make a billion dollars”, “run a 2 minute mile” or “become a playboy centerfold” is probably not attainable, and you’ll end up frustrated. Sometimes that means that smaller and more bite sized goals means you get more success and feel better about yourself.
If there’s not a Time limit on the goals, you won’t be able to know when you are done. I’m sure I could make a billion dollars given enough time, but saying “I will lose 10 pounds in the next month” instead of “I will lose 10 pounds”, because at the end of the month if you don’t weigh 10 pounds less, you’ll know that you didn’t achieve your goal. Giving yourself a time limit also gives you a kick in the ass if you see that finish line approaching.
I think that’s probably enough for now. I know it’s a bit outside of the normal TiR fare, but this sort of thing has been rolling around in my head recently a lot all in related to my own struggles to get stuff done and getting over the fear (not exactly the right word to be honest, more like “super delay and procrastination ability”) of new things like Rails.
If you can use any of this, great. Set yourself a goal to get something done code wise, even a small one, just to get the feel of it. Maybe “smart” goals aren’t your style, find something else that doe work.
Hopefully that info will help some of you out there. Check out LifeHack.org for lots more stuff like this. It’ll be back to the code stuff tomorrow, promise 
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