I promise to get back to more useful posts after the holidays but I thought I would share my thoughts on new years resolutions and goals in general.
Please note this is just my personal opinion on setting goals and what works for some will not work for others. We all have to learn how to motivate ourselves and stick to our goals in whatever way works for us.
You see, I think most people fail to reach their goals because they set them too high. What!? Your not supposed to say ‘ I want to eventually make $2000 a day profit'!? Well, that's fine but you have to remember there are a lot of steps in between where you might be now and your ultimate goal. That kind of thinking reminds me of the South Park episode ‘Gnomes' where the gnomes explain their plan for reaching financial riches by collecting underpants like this :
Phase 1: Collect Underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit
What works for me is setting smaller, easily attainable goals that seem almost easy to reach. It's fine to have a big goal in mind but you have to map out how you are going to get there.
I have seen a lot of affiliates get really excited about a new niche, technique, or system they bought and make this grand plan to launch 10 campaigns a day for a month. What usually happens is they might start off good for a couple days but then they get busy one day, make only a few campaigns the next, and all of a sudden they have ‘failed' at their goal and get discouraged.
I like to set smaller stepping stone goals that I know I can reach without a problem. It makes it easier because I keep having ‘success' at reaching my goals which motvates me to keep going.
To give an example, say I had a goal of launching 5 new PPV campaigns per day. Instead of starting with 5…I would want to make sure I could launch 1 a day successfully for a while. Now some some days I might not be able to launch even 1 campaign and that's ok. What I'm looking for is consistency so over the course of a week I would want to make sure I launched 7 campaigns.
I would want to do this (1 campaign per day) until I felt like it was really easy and routine. Only at that point would I set a goal of launching 2 campaigns per day. From there is just a ‘rinse and repeat' process.
I've always managed to lunch more campaigns over the course of a month this way than just arbitrarily saying ‘I'm going to do x amount of campaigns per day now”. If I do that, at the end of a month or two I always realize how many more campaigns I would have launched if I set a small, easy to achieve goal.
Anyway, that's my thoughts on setting goals. More PPV stuff after the New Year…
solid advice, setting goals that might seem “way too easy” is a great way to slowly build confidence towards reaching your long term goal(s)
I love that you incorporated South Park, and in a really meaningful way too.
People do set resolutions that are too high, because they don’t treat them like goals. Resolutions are often nothing more than good intentions and sweet thoughts. Goals have specifics behind them. They are not just an outcome but if done right, also the how.
I explain further, along with offering a free template for goal setting, on my blog post today: http://jamieflinchbaugh.com/2009/12/forget-the-new-years-resolution/
I really think that the successful approach to online work lies in planning and using a system in what we do. And clear focusing on as few tasks as possible.
“I’ll try PPV campaign today and I’ll read that ebook tomorrow and I’ll buy next method then…” – dead end, no focus, no persistent and systematic approach and dreams remain dreams as a result.
My resolution is simple – cut down as many online activities as possible, leaving only 1 or 2 of them,. and turning them into systems. The 99% of that is done – Gmail is cleared, sorted, filtered, and automated fully. I’m already spending 70-80% less time with my email.
Next big thing is done – my computer is cleaned of all the stuff unrelated to the current business – all old files, ebooks, movies, music, docs and programs deleted – the rest is sorted into easy-to access system.
These 2 things allowed me to concentrate on my current business like never before!
Great advice, David.
Ideas for thoughts for setting my goals 🙂
Nice new theme by the way!
I disagree. I set hard goals and I achieve them.
My goals for 2010 are simple and I will not be deterred. In 2010, I will go deeper, push harder, and not be afraid of getting dirty. I will not hesitate to force my fellow competitors into compromising positions, and I will drill away at them until they beg for mercy and I emerge, victorious.
In my opinion people don’t fail to meet the goals because they are too high. They fail to do the work required to meet the goal. Set the goal according to the time you are willing to put into achieve it.
This is not *always* the case, but close to always.