Goal Setting: Personal Introduction and My Initial Set (August 2021)

For a frame of reference, I am a little new to goal setting so my process has truly been an evolution. I am like everyone of course in regard to having aspirations, some particular milestone I wanted to reach or a particular achievement but I don’t think I ever put real thought into it. I don’t think I am alone here either. Unfortunately, goal setting is the way to increase the likelihood that you achieve what you want (to a degree of course). Now, as I put more thought into the things I am doing and the things that I would like to do, I am thinking more with the end in mind. What does “success” in this category look like? How do I know I did this task well? What do I want the next three months to look like? Who am I trying to be?

I pretty much started, rather haphazardly, about a year ago. I had a lot of time during lock-down to think and an extra notebook which I had bought some months before but never used. I don’t know why but I started three lists of goals. One for about four months away, another for one year and another for three years. I had the most written down in the four month range, slightly less for the one year and hardly any written down for three years (I will get to the “long term” a bit later). I went as far to sort of elaborate on some of the goals and even incorporate some things I learned from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg like looking at the inflection points that might incur during my morning routine. I kept the ball rolling a bit but I wasn’t very active in my journal. During my first “reflection” after the “short term” period I noticed that I had reached a few of the goals, some I missed and others were a bit too farfetched. Fair enough. I made some more reflections over the course of the year but they typically involved critiquing myself or pointing out pitfalls. By the time of the one year goals I had set it was pretty much a similar story to the short term goals. I exceeded expectations of some of them, others were close and no I didn’t reach a C1 level in French while keeping up with my Chinese studies.

When I look at it now, I believe the issue was in the fact that I didn’t identify what success looked like, I didn’t break the goals down into how (make a plan in other words), and I didn’t keep their achievement as something pertinent in my mind. I will use my Chinese studies as an example for the change I am making going forward. What does success look like for me? Passing HSK 4 (at least) by January and feel an ease in communication in my life (since I currently live in China). How? Inputting all HSK 4 vocabulary into Anki by the end of September and using HSK prep APP daily. What will keep this goal pertinent? Using the Productive APP and reflecting in my journal. Of course the “how” is a bit simplified and there are other facets I intend to explore while on the path to this exam and increased fluency. Such as an effort to absorb more real world material like movies (preferably old Kung Fu ones). I also began to journal basically every day which also helps me frame goals and gives me a good outlet to really put thought into them.

Since it has been over a year since I first decide to make some goals, however crude they were, I have naturally took some time to refine the process, put more thought into it and set new ones. I first created a mind map which branched out into various parts of myself. They could be summed up as Financial, Social, Interests, Health and Career. These all had various branches and dimensions to them but it felt really good to put all the things I cared about basically in one giant map on my notebook page. Once I had these down and could visualize them better, I put thought into which I could set goals for, what I wanted success to look like and ideas about how I could do it. For many of them setting something clear and definitive was a bit difficult, unrealistic or impossible so I only focused on what could be more tangible. All in all, I want this to be an evolving process for myself that I can continue to improve year after year as well as share them here to help hold myself accountable to them. As a test I will share my short term goals which the deadline is by mid January (accounting for the end of my contract and testing times).

Here they are:

Save $10,000

Pass HSK 4

Complete my “About Time” Mixtape and perform in Shanghai

Maintain daily streaks in the Productive APP*

*This one is a bit loaded and won’t be easy as you can see below

Here you can see that I am already on a 3 day streak which my goal is to maintain.