What does, growing a mustache in November, quitting booze in July or a February addiction fasting have in common with eating McDonald’s everyday for 30 days? MONTH – LONG – CHALLENGE they all are. 30 days of committing to something. It could be diet related – eating less junk food (or more). It could be cognitively related – read more books. It could even be mustache related. It doesn’t matter. What matters here is that you’re setting yourself some sort of monthly target; a goal…
Goals are awesome! Committing to a goal and then achieving it means you’re winning at life, you’re being successful; success can be defined simply as: the accomplishment of a desired goal. Having lots of goals and continually achieving them will inevitably fill your life with more success. And who doesn’t want to be more successful? The conundrum here is coming up with goals that are right for you. We all have different aspirations and motivations, your goals are going to be different than my goals and your ability to achieve your goals is going to differ to mine.
The 30 day challenges as mentioned before, fundamentally, are just somebody else’s monthly goal that’s been popularized. This is why February Fast, Dry July and Movember have spectacular fail rates. It’s not really YOUR goal, you’ve just jumped on a populist bandwagon. Don’t be fooled by the perpetrators of these, or other, monthly programs – whilst seemingly altruistic in nature, yearning for a charitable donation, they are essentially run to fulfill somebody else’s desired ambition (goal). You need to set your goals for YOURSELF and you need to set SMARTER goals. WTF are SMARTER goals you ask? They are goals that are;
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time Bound
Specific
Your goal needs to be clear and unambiguous. Being vague won’t work here. Your goal should answer the following questions;
- What: What exactly is it I want to accomplish?
- Why: The reason/purpose/benefits of accomplishing this goal?
- Who: Who will be involved with the goal?
- Where: The location(s) the goal will take place.
- Which: Stipulations/requirements or constraints of the goal?
Measurable
What gets measured, gets managed. If you have no criteria to measure your progress, how will you know if you’ve successfully achieved your goal? Your goal needs to be measurable and it needs to answer at least one of the following questions;
- How will I know when the goal has been accomplished?
- By how many?
- By how much?
Achievable
My goal is to live on the moon. Yeah right… There is absolutely no chance of me ever going to live on the moon. Your goal needs to be REALISTIC and ATTAINABLE. You can make your goal easy to achieve if you want to go for the cheap win. Or you could go a stretch goal and go far beyond what you thought you’d realistically achieve. Best to make yourself 3 achievable targets to encourage your ambition; the absolute minimum you want to achieve to determine your success, what you really really want and stretch, an achievement far beyond what you thought you were capable of.
Relevant
Is your goal relevant in the grand scheme of things? Is it even worthwhile? Your goal needs to be compatible and congruent with what you’re actually trying to achieve.
Time Bound
The most important part of goal setting. This is why there is so much failure at reaching goals. You MUST give your goal a DEADLINE. Committing to a deadline helps focus efforts on completing the goal on or before the due date. Giving your goal a deadline creates that motivating sense of urgency. A time-bound goal will answer the question WHEN will your goal be achieved.
My mad motivation much month of May mofo
I’ve set MYSELF goals in 3 areas of MY life for May, my 3F’s
Fitness, Food, Fabrication
Fitness
Because traveling, I haven’t been serious at fitness training since July last year when I was practicing Muay Thai in Phuket. Last month I joined a gym in Doha. I’ve been impressed with my results so far – added 5kg while dropping 3% body fat (whey protein, creatine, BCAA & l-carnitine assisted 🙂 I’m already in a pretty tight training regime at the moment, 6 days a week with sessions consistently lasting between 60 – 120 minutes. The fitness routine goal has been reached. Therefore, this months goal is to start hitting some PB’s;
“By the end of May I will squat 140kg for 1 rep unassisted”
“By the end of May I will bench press 100kg for 1 rep unassisted”
(1/3 month progress)
(Squat – 120kg)
(Bench Press – 80kg)
Food
Because traveling, I seldom cook for myself. Pretty much every meal I eat is either a takeaway, fast food or restaurant concoction. I’m a sucker for street food, always compelled to take the delicious convenient option. I want to change that. So my goal this May is;
“Everyday in May cook at least one meal for myself “
(1/3 month progress)
(Cooking breakfast everyday – toast 🙂 )
(Cooking lunch everyday – chicken, rice, veges 🙂 )
Fabrication
After finishing my India travel story I was motivated to write about my China travel story (work in progress sneak preview here). I was averaging writing at least 1000 words per day in the second half of April, I wanted to continue this output for May. Writing 1000 words per day isn’t easy. I use a special website (750words) to help me keep on track with my word count. The remaining 250 words could be made up of emails/social media posts etc. I also wanted to continue with consistently adding blog posts to this website like I was doing in April. So May:
“In May I will write at least 1000 words everyday”
“By the end of May I will have uploaded 8 blog posts to this site”
“By the end of May I will have finished writing about my China travel stories”
(1/3 month progress)
(Realizing I’m sacrificing quality for quantity, not relevance demotivates 🙁 )
(12 days into May and only 1 blog post 🙁 )
How about you? Have you ever publicly declared your months goals like I have here?
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