How To Ground Your Goals In Reality

It’s a new year (or any other time of the year) and you’ve set some ambitious goals. You think you’ve done a good job of making them ambitious but also achievable. But there’s no way of knowing until you’re well under way to achieve them. But what do you do if you find they aren’t as achievable as you thought? Or what do you do if you’re stuck as to where to start and instead, decide you’ll get on with work and figure it out as you go.

Of course, you can try SMART goals. These have the  aim of grounding and finessing the wording and parameters as much as possible, but this doesn’t really help with the steps or milestones to actually achieve the goal.

SMART is an approach to ensure goals are clear and realistic, but not an approach to make goals do-able

Once you’ve got your well-defined goal, what’s next? This guide is a 3 step process to making the pursuit of the goals realistic.

Prereq: Have a well defined goal
Step 1: List obstacles to the goal
Step 2: Reverse the obstacles into objectives
Step 3: Plan action ideas

Prereq: Have a well defined goal

As said above, we need to start with a goal that is well defined. SMART goals (or any other similar method) will help with this, if you’re not familiar the Wiki page is a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria

The key thing we need for this process is that the goal is written as a ‘Done Statement’. A Done Statement that defines what done looks like for example:

• – I have lost/gained 5kg
• – I have 3 new referral partners
• – My first product has shipped
• – I have a YouTube vlog with 5 videos

These are necessary as it makes it very simple to know when they are completed. It should be as simple as ticking the box as it is clear. Ideally someone else should be able to verify it.

Step 1: List obstacles to the goal

Create a list of all the things that will block you on your way to your goal. Also include in this list reasons the goal is hard or difficult. Usually 5 to 10 obstacles is a good list. Eg:

• – I don’t have the budget
• – I haven’t got the skills
• – I can’t get approval from a manager
• – We don’t know who to contact

By identifying the things that block us or challenge us to move forward we also identify exactly what we need to do to achieve our goal, we need to overcome these obstacles.

To quote a Roman Emperor from 200 years ago:

“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Marcus Aurelius

Step 2: Reverse the obstacles into objectives

For each obstacle, write what the obstacle will look like once it’s been overcome. 

The simplest way is to just reverse the obstacle and see how it reads, there are multiple ways we can reword things, ‘I don’t have the budget’ could be:

• – I have the budget
• – I don’t need budget
• – Someone else has provided the budget
• – Pick whatever makes the most sense to your situation.

Make sure to word these as ‘Done Statements’ like we did with the original Goal, this ensures they are easy and clear to know when they are done.

Step 3: Plan action ideas

We’ve left actions right to the end, this is important. When we jump to actions we don’t take the time to consider what we need the actions for and it becomes very easy to just ‘do’ and hope it works. If we put actions into the plan it becomes unclear and can just throw us off as we go, think about once you’ve done an action on a plan, did it get you closer to your goal, you feel like it might have but its hard to test and to know.

There are so many actions you can try, you might find some work, some don’t, or others suggest actions you hadn’t thought of as you get to the point of doing them. The objectives don’t really change as they are a list of what ‘must be true’ to get to our goal, but we don’t want to commit to actions until we attempt them.

For each objective list 3 to 5 action ideas that you think will be the best ways to achieve the objective. The context of the objective within the greater plan towards the goal gives great context to anyone you ask for help too. It’s easy for people to suggest actions without knowing the context. With your objective list you can ask people for advice on actions specific to the objective.

Eg: I have a list of potential business partners:

1. 1. Attend networking events
2. 2. Send emails to my current contacts
3. 3. Call previous business partners to ask for referrals
4. 4. Join relevant Facebook groups
5. 5. Put ads up about the business opportunity

As you can see some of these actions are better than others. The key with actions is that they are flexible. You need as many or as few as needed to achieve the objective. In the above example, the networking might be enough to achieve the objective, or you might do those five and need three more, we know we are done when the objective is achieved.

Case Example

Here’s a real life example from someone who has the goal of starting a YouTube channel for their hobby.

Goal

I have a YouTube channel for sharing my aviation videos

Step 1: List obstacles to the goal

I don’t have the camera equipment

I wouldn’t know how to plan the videos

I’m not good enough at editing videos

I don’t know how to grow a YouTube audience

I’m terrible at speaking on camera

Youtube might cancel me for saying something political

I’m not sure people would be interested

I don’t have the time to follow up on comments

Step 2: Reverse the obstacles into objectives

I don’t have the camera equipment	I have access to camera equipment
I wouldn’t know how to plan the videos	I have a plan for the videos
I’m not good enough at editing videos	I’m good enough at editing videos
I don’t know how to grow a YouTube audience	I understand how to start growing a YouTube audience
I’m terrible at speaking on camera	I’m comfortable speaking behind the camera
Youtube might cancel me for saying something political	My videos are inoffensive
I’m not sure people would be interested	I know who my audience is
I don’t have the time to follow up on comments	I have the time to follow up on comments

Step 3: Plan action ideas

I have access to camera equipment

• 1. I can rent the cameras
• 2. Buy cameras
• 3. Get someone I know with cameras to help with filming
• 4. Start with my iPhone

I’m good enough at editing videos

• 1. Follow YouTube channels on video editing
• 2. Do tutorials or online courses from video software companies
• 3. Ask my daughter to teach me how to edit
• 4. Play around with the software that come with my laptop