My run tonight was straight out of the twilight zone – my head was in it, but my legs couldn’t keep it together. I’m nursing some shin pain even as a type, two hours after my run! (Ice will be involved as soon as I’m done posting, never fear).
A quick detour into dinner-ville before I talk about goals:
Red quinoa cakes (made the same way I made these quinoa cakes, but with the addition of lentil sprouts)
…topped with chickpea stew (yep, much like this chickpea stew), and accompanied by a tasty avocado yogurt sauce.
The sauce couldn’t be much easier, but it added a rich, refreshing note to the otherwise all-too-familiar meal.
Avocado Yogurt “Secret” Sauce
Ingredients:
- 1 part avocado (or guacamole; I used the leftover bits of pre-made guacamole, and in fact mixed this right in the Whole Foods container)
- 2 parts yogurt (I used Nancy’s plain nonfat yogurt)
- Salt to taste (or be like me and use truffle salt!!)
Procedure:
- Combine ingredients.
- Serve.
And, believe it or not, I made the stew this morning before work! I sautéed the peppers and eggplant, added the leftover cooked chickpeas and tomatoes, seasoned, heated, and left the flavors to blend while I toiled with my new BFF: SharePoint. I definitely could not eat like this after work if I didn’t get a head start by pre-cooking time-consuming staples like beans and grains on the weekends.
Goals
I like goals. I’d love to tell you how to set goals, but there are plenty of sites out there that can describe different methods of setting goals. (Maybe I will write my own guide sometime, but that is another post.)
What I like most about goals is not meeting them.
Seriously.
I have a lot of goals:
- rolling 5 and 10 year plans
- a set of about 10 goals for the year (like resolutions, just not called that)
- monthly and weekly goals for my life at home
- fitness goals
- work goals (project-based, review-based, career-based)
- an overall “epitaph” goal
- financial goals
…and the list could go on. But, instead, I’m focusing on what to do with goals once you’ve set them – and once you’ve met them (or not).
“Magic” (long-term) Goals
Some goals are like magic – you write them down, forget them, and come back to them in a few years to discover that you’ve accomplished even more than you thought you would. I’ve found this is mostly true of goals with at least a one-year horizon; anything shorter and you don’t “forget” your goal sufficiently to allow yourself to make it happen. I was really proud of myself when I saved my first $3000…until I looked at my 5-year plan and saw that I had written that in two years prior, though I was broke and struggling at the time since my job had just run out of funding.
Short-Term Goals
Other goals – shorter goals, more concrete goals – need a bit more help. (These are my specialty – and what I have specialized in at work for a long while – so the long-term goals will be getting the short end of the stick in this post.) These are the goals that you write down and keep posted where you can see them, or that you repeat to yourself every day when you wake up (or sit down at your desk, or lace up your sneakers). I use a daily and weekly tracking system for my fitness goals, recording workouts every day and fitness progress (key measurements, for example) each week. I know that I would still make progress if I didn’t keep close track, but I would not know how best to adjust my workouts to get the results I want in the shortest amount of time.
These shorter goals are also the ones you’re more likely to blow. I might set a goal to take 2 minutes of my slow training pace in a week, which would be fine to do at my fitness level. But if I try all week and can’t do it, I’ve created a great opportunity for myself: I get to learn why I didn’t meet my goal, which will help me find a weakness in my fitness plan.
Failure is Still Success
Failing to meet a goal is a win-win situation, really. If I meet my goal – great, I’ve accomplished something I want to do. If I don’t meet my goal, I’ve caught a bug in my system and I can take care of it before it affects my progress more or becomes a larger problem. (I think it’s vital to think like this if you’re going to set goals; if you can’t practice this kind of self-compassion and positive thinking, goals will likely do you more harm than good – they’ll become signposts of failure, rather than stepping stones into the future that you want.)
There are all kinds of reasons I might not meet a goal, but a few minutes of thinking and looking back at any training logs or other “data” usually clears things right up. My analysis goes something like this:
- How close did I come to meeting my goal? If I came very close, what kept me from hitting my target? Should I call it “good enough”?
- Were there any unusual circumstances that kept me from meeting my goal (friends in town, new project at work, sick, finances, etc.)?
- Was my goal something I really cared about and prioritized? If not, is it a goal worth keeping?
- Was my goal reasonable, or did I try to do too much too soon?
Depending on how that line of questioning goes, I will either scrap the goal altogether, try the same thing again, or change the goal to make it better suited to me. I get to learn what I’m capable of, see what I really care about, and tailor my life and plans more precisely to what I want to be, do, see, and have.
Does it get any better than that? 
All of this from failing! (But I warn you: this is real failure, not the kind of failure that never gets off the couch.)
Caution: Goals Ahead
Just like their close cousin the To-Do list, goals can be overwhelming. Even though my list of goal categories is long, I don’t set more than 3 short-term goals at a time in any category. After all, short term goals should be met sooner rather than later, right? Here’s how I keep my short-term lists short and sweet:
- Set a firm limit on the number of goals that you’ll consider at any point in time.
- Write down all of your goals, hopes, dreams, etc., then sift out the three that seem most intriguing, easiest, most important, etc.
- If that doesn’t work, try the rule of 1/3 +1: Take away 2/3 of your goals, then add one back in. Repeat until you’ve got no more than 5 goals left.
- Sleep on it – come back to your long list a day or three after you’ve written it and see what still sounds good.
- Worst case scenario: put the goals in a hat and draw three. You can always come back to the rest.
- Be honest and realistic!
- Don’t set a goal to run a 2:30 marathon in three months if you haven’t run in years. If a 2:30 marathon is your goal, recognized it as a long-term goal – then break it into smaller steps (start by building up to a 3 mile run, find a training program, choose a race, join a training group, get fitted for shoes, etc.)
- Don’t set a goal to drink wheatgrass every day if you hate it! Your goals should bring out your best and motivate you to improve – don’t get seduced by fads or things you feel like you “should do”. (However, those “should do” things can be great starting points – for instance, if the daily wheatgrass shots you’d hate would be your answer to having more energy or eating more vegetables, make a goal about eating more vegetables, getting more sleep, or trying another energy-booster.)
- Don’t set a short-term goal to do yoga for 3 hours a day if you work full-time and have a long commute. If you’re only home and awake for 3 hours after work each night, chances are you won’t be able to spend them all doing yoga. If 3 hours of daily yoga practice is really important to you, you can likely find a way to make it happen – just not immediately. In the meantime, you could set a short-term goal to practice for a more sustainable amount of time each day.
- Keep Simple Records
- There are a ton of great goal-tracking websites and methodologies, but you don’t need to go overboard with your tracking system. A simple “X” on the calendar each day that you meet your goal works pretty darn well.
- Update your progress no matter what – don’t fall behind in your tracking, even if you’re not progressing toward your goal. (You will not come back and fill it in later. I promise.)
- Don’t stress if you aren’t on track!
- Go back and read the part about failure = success again! Unmet goals are great opportunities to learn about yourself, even if all you learn is that you made an unrealistic goal. (I’ve made plenty.)
- If you can’t even get started on your goal, move on to analysis. Why aren’t you starting – is it too hard? Are you trying to start at the end when you should be starting at the beginning? Do you need help or more information to get started? Did you think you wanted to build that awesome model dinosaur you saw online, order the kit, and realize you’d rather look at the cool thing on that blog than make it yourself? All of these are good things to learn, and good prompts for new, better goals.
The path to success is paved with these small failures, at least my short-ish path to the moderate successes I’ve had so far. Failing means you tried, right?
My strategies for long-term goals are different, but I will have to get back to those another day…if I write much longer, I’ll fail to meet my “get at least 7 hours of sleep so I’m not a zombie” goal
