Personal Development;Life Enhancement;Achievement
goal achievement
Stopwatch Today – Hourglass Soon
Jun 30th
“Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.”
~Henry Austin Dobson
Just before I wrote this blog entry, I had been working on reviewing my goals for the year. As I write this, the 6 month mark is passing and I am heading into the second half of the year. How have I done so far this year on achieving my most critical goals? Frankly, not very well yet! It’s a good thing that I still have 6 months to get them done!
As part of the goal review process, I was thinking about new skills or habits that I had started to use this year – skills and habits that helped me to achieve more and have more fun along the way. The biggest beneficial new habit, other than lifting weights at 5am, is the use of a stopwatch! I’ll get into exactly how this ‘using a stopwatch’ has helped me later, but now I must go make a quick revision to my book in process and add some information about this very subject!
Till next time…Jack
“Time is the fire in which we burn.” ~Delmore Schwartz
How Far Should You Plan Your Life?
Feb 24th
“If you don’t have a plan for yourself, you’ll be part of someone else’s”. ~American proverb
Last time I talked about my new laptop running Windows 7. I’ve been using it many hours a day for a couple of weeks now and I still love it. Windows 7 is a great improvement over Vista, so much so that I am going to convert two of my other computers to run Windows 7. And the new Sony Vaio “F” series? I have never had a computer boot up and settle down so quickly and the hd screen and blu-ray player are just great!
How Far Should You Plan Your Life?
How far should you plan your life? In my opinion: as far you’d like to be alive living it! In more practical terms, I encourage my clients to have motivating and exciting goals that go out at least 10 years. In 10 years you can accomplish virtually anything – as long as you use those 10 years wisely.
Planning and goal setting go hand in hand. I set goals that excite me and then I put together the best plan that I can, to make that goal happen. Does that mean that goal setting and planning happen at the same time? Generally speaking – no. For most people, and most businesses, the process of setting goals and the process of making plans to achieve those goals should be very separate. For companies beyond a certain size, goal setting and creating workable plans to achieve those goals may even be best done by different groups of people. I’ll talk more about this separation of creation and planning in larger companies in another post.
Do You Have 10 Years of Exciting Goals?
If yes – great! Congratulations! Now go set some great and motivating goals 15 years out and soon we will talk about the process of creating plans to make these goals part of your everyday reality.
You don’t have any goals that go out 10 years or more? Then here is some homework. Remembering that you can accomplish virtually anything in 10 years, and being completely unconcerned (at this time) about what it will take to make these goals a reality; set at least 3 goals that stretch out at least 10 years. If you need a little help, consider these questions:
If you were certain that you could accomplish it, in the next 10 years,
- Where would you like to be living?
- How much money would you like to have saved?
- What would you be doing for a living?
Next time I’ll talk more about 10 year goals – big goals – and a great attitude for creating these goals. (And soon I’ll give you a simple technique to put yourself in a great mental frame for setting exciting, compelling and authentic goals.).
Till next time faithful reader…Jack
“Wishing consumes as much energy as planning”. ~American proverb
The Birth of an Executive Coach
Feb 9th
“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Birth of an Executive Coach
Last time I finished talking about my decision to self-publish my first book even though I had traditional publishing offers on the table. This time I’m going to talk about some of the actual content of my upcoming book – a book about goals and achievement.
I was born as an Executive Coach in May 1989, although I did not know that this was my destiny at the time. Like most newborns, I did not have a clue what was going on and it would take me a number of years to make sense of the world around me.
In May of 89, I left my well-paid job in Retail Mega-Box management, well-paid but otherwise boring and totally unsatisfying, and went into Executive Search (headhunting) and the temporary employment business. I had only trivial experience in either of these businesses. I had been called by headhunters a few times, looking to move me from one Mega-Box to another. These headhunters didn’t seem too bright and they seemed to make a great deal of money. (Interesting combination. I certainly wanted to make a great deal of money and at times I was a veritable idiot. I filed this information away for further analysis.)
In the world of temporary employment, I had worked extensively at numerous temporary agencies in Southern California after I graduated from college. Eventually I found my first career position and stopped working temporary assignments. While working, I had gained some great information though – there was a great deal of money to be made in the temporary business and they, the owners that I had met, didn’t seem all that bright either.
What does this have to do with my first book on goals? I’m getting there, I promise!
Death as a Counselor
In December of 1985 my father died of leukemia. He was relatively young, 61 years old, when he died. Vibrant and healthy for most of his life, in 18 months he was stripped of virtually everything – his physical vitality, his freedom of movement, his privacy and eventually his life – in 18 short months he lost all of these.
I visited him almost every other day for most of this time. My blood was helping to keep him alive and we saw more of each other in this short time than we really had in years. He talked often of the things that he was going to do if he got out of the hospital. He was going to travel again. He was going to go see the pyramids. He had a long list of things that he wanted to do and experience. He died without having done any of these – he died with most of his dreams unlived.
His death affected me deeply. I was 26 years old when he died and I swore that I was going to do my best to retire before I was 40 years old and I was going to live my dreams – for both of us.
Goals were the Starting Place
I did manage to retire before I was 40. This early retirement only lasted about 10 years, no one had told me how much money could be spent if you had full time to devote to the process of spending, but my next early retirement is coming up fast. And this time, well, I have a much higher number in mind for my retirement! Come back next time and learn more about how goals were the starting place for me then and the drivers for me now.
Till next time faithful reader…Jack
“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” ~ Sir Edmund Hillary