Here’s a better way to Set Goals
Here’s a better way to Set Goals
Goals are vital to business and life. Are you setting them correctly?
In his book, Elevate: Push Beyond Your Limits and Unlock Success in Yourself and Others, (Ignite Reads, 2019), CEO and entrepreneur Robert Glazer provides a blueprint to help readers build their capacity, achieve their goals and inspire others to do the same. In this edited excerpt, Glazer explains how to build intellectual capacity and set more fulfilling goals.
Intellectual capacity is about improving your ability to think, learn, plan, and execute with discipline. It is closely correlated with the area of your brain called the frontal lobe, which acts as the control panel for most executive functions.
Think of intellectual capacity as your personal processor or operating system that can be continuously upgraded to perform the same tasks more efficiently than before. The greater your intellectual capacity, the more you can achieve with the same or less expenditure of energy. This element of capacity building offers the greatest opportunity for immediate gains, but it also requires the most discipline.
Setting Short and Long Term Goals
Achievement is the high-level attainment of goals, a concept I prefer over the more common term “success,” which is far more subjective. For example, consider the “successful” business executive whose spouse is close to leaving him or whose kids don’t talk to him. Most would not consider such a person successful. Achievement, on the other hand, requires having clarity about what is most important and making decisions accordingly.
Goal setting is the best way to get on the path towards what you want most. I once believed I was great at setting goals. I would set a bunch of one-year goals and hit them regularly. However, because I wasn’t aligning these short-term goals with my long-term goals, I wasn’t moving in a meaningful or specific direction.
Long term goals should be derived from your core values and/or your core purpose. A way to audit goals is to make sure you really understand the purpose for each. You don’t need to derive purpose from goals; instead your goals are what help you serve your purpose and values
