I love some of the methodologies out there for achieving organizational goals, and I enjoy reading when an author has a different angle on the best ways to set and pursue them. I also love personal goal setting and at any one time I have a set of my own that I am working on. In the coming weeks I am going to share some of the guidelines I use, drawing on a wide variety of existing practices and my own experience – not that they are the be all and end all, and not that you should adopt them wholesale. It’s just that right now, they are what works best for me. They help me with my Monday morning mojo on a regular basis, so I thought you should know!
I have only four goal categories. More than that and I cannot focus on them every day. I find that everything is connected and if I do a good job of picking the four that are most important to me right now I have to get a lot of other things right in order to make progress. Here’s my four today:
- My physical self-care: I learned in my theater days that my body is my instrument. It is both how I apprehend the world and it is how I express myself. My body includes my movement, the tone of my voice, facial expressions, the whole kit and kaboodle. So, taking care of my body ensures I am alert, aware, sensitive to my world and expressive to the best of my ability.
- My relationship with my wife: she is my #1 partner in life. We depend on each other more than any other person in the world for everything. That means, to the best of my ability, I want to be connected and in sync with her, whatever is going on… inside the relationship or out in the world. My world is our world.
- My work in visionary leadership: this is my contribution to the world, how I make meaning. I used to do it as a performing artist. Today I bring my artistic sensibility forward to craft tools and help leaders be their best, highest self, complete with visioning and acting on their noble purposes. It’s what I do.
- My finances: they pretty much run everything. My resources make it possible for me to do everything else I do, from pay for my children’s education to developing new ways for leaders to succeed, from taking my wife out for dinner to traveling to Silicon Valley to meet innovators. My finances are my fuel for me and my family’s world, so I want to be on top of them and grow them as best I can.
What about everything that’s important and not covered above? For example, where are my children? They are tucked in their with my wife. My wife and I are the center of their world. When we are doing well, they are doing well. What about my spirituality? Well, that’s in there with my body as my instrument. I am a mystic – I have had some pretty amazing experience through a variety of activities including my vision quest, fasting, and other explorations, all brought to me through my instrument. And what about who I am going to vote for? It’s right there in visionary leadership. Since I know what a visionary looks like, this election is an easy one for me.
I hope there is something here you can put to use as you kick off your week! Have a great one. I am planning to get a lot done. More on what that means another time!
The most successful people don’t have super strong willpower when making decisions. Rather, they conserve their willpower by developing habits and routines, so they reduce the amount of stress in their lives.
– Roy Baumeister
