Now that week one’s out of the way!

So here goes. We’ve all been there – normally around or close to some milestone, seasonal or one off event. Whether a birthday, New Year’s Resolution or maybe even after the much loved annual 121s. The urge to set some goals right? Often coupled with some difficulty in achieving them. The liberating experience of sitting down with post-its, white board, or stickies firing off ideas from your mind at the speed of light akin to Bradley Cooper’s ‘Eddie Morra’ in ‘Limitless’ or Scarlet Johansson’s ‘Lucy’ in the film of the same name (Both great btw). Seemingly no boundaries exist between the cognitive act of willing your ideas into life. A perfect synchronicity, the brain’s Corpus Callosum fuses both hemispheres into pure ideation. That’s how it starts! Let’s call it phase one. Intentions. Or, alternatively you could vacillate and flit between different ideas without any clear focus, which probably happens more often than not – let’s be honest.

Pro tip: Incidentally with anything you want to achieve I highly recommend you phase it, divide and conquer!

Anyhow, so you’ve got a clutch of about one to two dozen things some of which you want to do, others that will never get done and others that will get slowly redacted over time. I would say if you’ve got more than 3 time to KISS a few goodbye (Keep It Simple Stupid). Perhaps you read in a magazine such and such was a good thing, it would be therapeutic, make you sharper, healthier or career building e.g. getting certifications, volunteering, learning a new language, martial arts. All of these are sound goals however whether you’ve got one, three or thirty three you need to start somewhere and if you’re trying something new you’ll need to recognise that you’re probably starting at the bottom rung. If you choose something you’re already competent at, you may even have some unlearning to do – this is ok too.

If you’ve got more than 3 goals though perhaps time to KISS a few goodbye (Keep It Simple Stupid)

An easily attainable goal may look good and tick a box however I would argue that there’s potentially less growth in that. Note, generally you want to have at least one ‘stretching’ goal. Divide your BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) by smaller self contained tasks that relate back to the goal. For every goal you set try and use the SMART method or something like it. It’s useful for the goal itself and breaking goals down into chunks. I also use this evolving goal checklists and ask the question “Is it”:

• Concrete/Clear/Terse/Definite/Definable?: If it takes a paragraph or more to summarise, it needs breaking down. Know why you want to do something – it can be harder than it sounds.
• Quantified/Chunkable?: If it cannot be reduced to a set of concrete actions, some more research is needed!
• Verifiable/Accountable?: If its unverifiable coupled with low accountability, the success rate will be lowered e.g. the online course still not started, the unused weights/gym membership, the guitar gathering dust and/or the DSLR paperweight.
• Timeboxed/Trackable?: There should be a clear idea of ‘when’ so you can make some assumptions, estimations and measure progress e.g. when you need to course correct or perhaps take a break if you’re ahead. You need ‘when’ in two removes. When can you allocate the time to execute tasks and also when do you expect to complete them.
• Integral?: If you have a work goal, best to relate it to your role and career progression. Keep it so personal based life goals don’t get subsumed with career goals. Avoid overlapping. To get ahead you may have to make some sacrifices but remember don’t burn out.
• Justified/Worthwhile/Related?: Time is a precious commodity & the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Time and resources at work are extremely precious – especially in this climate – for your company and you! Try combining your goals with the goals of the company, if you have OKRs even better to link into that. OKRs are something I’ll get into in another article.
• Reasoned/Accomplishable/Realistic/Viable?: Aim high but be realistic. Never aim too low.
• Authentic/Selfish?: Only focus on what you want to do for yourself but be prepared to compromise.
• Unified?: All subtasks should relate back to the goal and the goal should be something you care about.

I’ll elaborate a bit on why I think its best to separate out personal from career goals at work. Remember whatever your stance is, this is advice, not gospel. In my experience as a team member, manager and senior leader I’ve always kept things separate for obvious reasons. Personal goals, topics etc can be discussed at work in 121s but only in so far as its relatively general and one should not feel obliged to mix them, be comfortable. At work it’s fundamental to keep ‘context boundaries’ clear (as in all things not just DDD) and not blurred. You could try blending if you really want to, but the more ‘blending’ that occurs the less clear things become and the more difficult it is to context switch which can lead to burn out. Also anything not mission critical will be the first to get removed.

Your career goals ideally should be intrinsically related to you current job or the job you want to have. If your goal is too left-field from your current position and you want to achieve it during work personal development time you might have a few questions to answer and get a few raised eyebrows when justifying this. Not everywhere is the same but try and be commercially aware!

Be careful when dividing goals into tasks. You don’t want to go to granular for example, to use a 3d printing scenario: ‘setting up the 3d printer’ is a good task. Attaching the extruder nozzle to the frame would be too granular imho.

I read not so long ago in my career when I first started getting into management and mentoring others that there are four stages to becoming really proficient at something.

1. Unknown ignorance (Think Dunning Kruger effect, inflated sense of ability etc)
2. Known ignorance (Acknowledge you’re on a journey and have some work to do)
3. Known competence (You’ve got the skills, are good at what you do but could grow more)
4. Unknown competence (It’s second nature, fluid)

For simplicity I won’t expand too much on these above for the sake of expediency (check out reference link if you get time). But I will add to them. Once you’ve reached the fourth stage where do you go? For myself there are other stages.

• Competence depth (Read more about theory, books, practice and white papers)
• Competence taught (See how good you are at explaining or mentoring other people. Having knowledge is useful. Helping someone else’s growth is more satisfying and creates a contagious cycle of growth which is very useful).
• Competence tested Don’t be a quorum of one (go to hackathons, meetups, speaking events, share your ideas, connect & reconnect)
• Always pay heed to stage 2, enjoy what you do and keep up to date!

You can put your goals into a Miro Board, Spread Sheet or something similar. If I get time I’ll share mine.

Another tip: Don’t focus on more than one thing unless you are really really good at multi-tasking.

That’s a wrap. I hope to see some of you groovy people soon. Thanks!

• References:
  Four stage of competence: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/four-stages-competence-christopher-cox/
• SMART: https://www.glowbl.com/blog/en/the-smart-method-to-achieve-your-goals/

Useful Books (these are useful for learning about management. We’re all managers of ourselves after all):

• Developing the Leader Within You, John C Maxwell (link)
• Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Susan Jeffers (link)
• Domain Driven Design, Eric Evans (link)

Misc:

• Photo of miniature Squid Game, Front Man mask 3d printed & transformed on smart phone