Awesomeness: Chapter 1: Weekly Goals

The first chapter of my book on productivity and, well being awesome

Did you know I wrote a book? Do you care? Be honest.

OK, maybe you don't, but I think the book is quite good, although I'm admittedly rather biased. It's titled Awesomeness: An Amateur Potpourri of a How-To Guide. And you can buy the whole thing for just $9.99 or $2.99 on Kindle. I mean, c'mon. With all the inflation these days, that's basically free.

Anyways, I have decided to share the first chapter here for free. The first section of the book is on productivity. And this is, again in my humble opinion, the best way to start.

You can find the full book here.

You can find part 2: Single tasking, here.

Weekly Goals

Human beings are a goal oriented species. There is just something about having concrete, specific goals that staves off procrastination. And the shorter the time span the better. Weekly goals or something close to that (maybe even daily) are the best. Slacker-productivity expert Timothy Ferris notes this in in hugely popular book The Four Hour Workweek saying,

“I’m not a big believer in long-term planning and far-off goals… The variables change too much and in-the-future distance becomes and excuse for postponing action.”[1]

Don’t get me wrong, yearly goals are fine, I have those too and so should you. But think about how many New Years Resolutions are actually followed through on. Meh, forget thinking about it, I’ll just tell you. According to a study by the University of Scranton, a thoroughly pathetic 8 percent of New Year’s resolutions are actually achieved.[2]

The problem is that when you have 365 days to accomplish something, it’s a lot easier to simply say “well, I’ll take today off and take care of this in one of the other 364 days.” One day then turns into two, two into three, etc.6

So what I do is list out my weekly goals on a white board over my bed. I put things like “finish book,” “learn new song on guitar,” “finish gathering documents for refinance,” and off I go. Then I cross each item off as I get them done and at the end of the week I tally up my score. Then the next week, I try to beat my last score. It’s basically a little game I play that takes advantage of our naturally competitive instincts to actually be very productive.

And it’s not just me; there is empirical evidence to support this. A study from Dominican University comparing those who wrote down their goals versus those that just thought about them concluded,

“The positive effect of written goals was supported: Those who wrote their goals accomplished significantly more than those who did not write their goals. [6.44 to 4.28]”[3]

And while the study didn’t say anything about having such goals prominently displayed, it’s well known that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I am quite certain that having your goals staring you in the face every morning, noon and night on a whiteboard (or something like that) across from your bed drives the point home all the more.

It should also be noted that the study found those who shared their goals and gave progress reports to a friend for support (or competition) were even more effective. Goals are useless if there’s no method of accountability. Goals without accountability are just wishes. The whiteboard across from your bed acts as a form of accountability from yourself. Bringing a friend or family member into the equation adds another element of accountability.

And therein lies the crux of the matter. Goals become attainable when we structure our lives to be accountable to them. This is why short term goals (perhaps in the service of a longer term goal) are so much more effective than long term goals; because we don’t have time to put them off and thereby are held more accountable. The same goes for prominently displaying them and getting someone else involved.

Hold yourself accountable to your goals ladies and gentlemen.

The full book can be found here.

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[1] Timothy Ferris, The 4-Hour Workweek, Crown Publishers, Copyright 2007, Pg. 59

[2] University of Scranton, Journal of Clinical Psychology, New Years Resolution Statistics, January 26th, 2015

[3] Goals Research Study, Dominican University, Pg. 3, September 2009