To Goal or Not to Goal

“The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live on purpose.”

-Michel de Montaigne

“Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.”
-Fitzhugh Dodson

“If you're bored with life -- you don't get up every morning with a burning desire to do things -- you don't have enough goals.”
-Lou Holtz

 

As the new year approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about goals, and more specifically, whether or not I should set New Years Resolutions. 

 

On one hand, every professor I had in the Business School or any sales trainer that I’ve ever listened to, has emphasized the importance of goal setting.  Supposedly, when you write down your goals, you will automatically become a more successful and fulfilled person.  This is widely accepted as fact.  We’ve all heard about the Yale study where in 1953, researchers surveyed Yale's graduating seniors to determine how many of them had specific, written goals for their future. Of those they surveyed, only 3% had specific written goals. Twenty years later, researchers polled the members of the Class of 1953 again, and found that the 3% with goals had accumulated more personal financial wealth than the other 97% of the class combined! Then there is Edwin Locke, who is famous for his studies on Goal Setting Theory.  He found that 90% of the time having challenging goals led to higher performance than easy or no goals.  Obviously, there’s a lot of evidence supporting the “yea” side of whether or not I should set goals.

 

One the other hand, I am lazy.  Lazy enough that I don’t want to even spend the time or energy to come up with the goals, much less strive to achieve them.  I could always just try to ‘do my best’.  Unfortunately, in my life, I’ve found that if I just resolve to ‘do my best’, that won’t happen and at most I just do my 40% or 50% best.  It’s called “coasting” and it’s easy and I’ve done it my entire life...and I like it.

 

I know that a lot of people (formerly myself included) think that goals are a waste of time, but I think I'm going to go make some this time around.  For me, 2008 was a long year (more in later posts) and I think that I'm going to try to go into 2009 with a clean slate.  I mean, its not like it can hurt anything, right?

I'll update with my goals tomorrow.  

 

-Z

p.s.  Maybe I can get Kristen to let you know what her goals will be, too!  Yay!  Goal Setting Fun!