You Have to Have a Goal to Achieve a Goal

One January day about  thirteen years ago, I stepped on the scales in my bathroom, and I did not like the feedback I received. I was at the highest weight I had ever been in my life. My clothes were starting to get a bit tight, and I was feeling uncomfortable in them.

That day, I resolved to lose weight. I do not remember the exact timeline, but I do remember that before the week was over, I had written a goal weight, developed a weight loss plan, and started implementing it. Over the next few months, I got back to a weight that was both comfortable and healthy.

I managed to maintain the exercise and diet regimen that lead to that weight loss for awhile, and then I started to lose focus on my personal fitness. I was still sort of paying attention. I went through periods of being careful with my exercise and diet, but I did not consistently focus on achieving anything in that area of my life. I was coasting.

Again in January about three years ago, I stepped on the scales and realized that my weight had crept to three pounds over the weight that drove me to action ten years earler. I made a mental note of it, and made some effort to exercise more and to eat better more consistently. In mid-October of that year, I had lost a grand total of three pounds.

Then, I set a new goal. As soon as I set the goal, I created a plan and started following the plan. I once again found the discipline and focus I had shown in this area of my life ten years before.

In eight months of “thinking about losing weight,” I had lost three whopping pounds. In late November, four weeks after setting a definite goal, I lost 10 pounds, and, within a few months after that, I lost a total of 35 pounds to get back to my goal weight. With a definite goal in mind, in a little more than ten percent of the time I spent “thinking about it,” I achieved over three times the results. Finally, with a specific goal and achievement plan in place, I achieved over ten times the results in four months that I had achieved in the previous eight months.

Here are the leadership lessons from my experience:

• Thinking about doing something is not the same as setting a definite goal. You must set a specific goal for what you hope to do or the results you hope to achieve. Otherwise, you will coast along and “think about it” a great deal without taking consistent, focused action towards it.
• You have to share your goal with someone you trust. Very few of us are good at holding ourselves accountable, and accountability is a key ingredient of goal achievement. My wife also set a weight loss goal at that time. I knew her goal, and she knew mine. We helped each other, and we held each other accountable.
• You have to keep the goal in front of you. If you do not see it frequently, you will forget about it. I had my weight loss goal written in a place where I saw it every day.
• You have to track your progress – frequently. The specific time frame depends on how long it takes to see measurable progress, and the key concept is that you have to track it. If you do not track progress, you probably will not make any. In the case of losing weight, I logged my weight every week. Yes, I kept a running log of my weight each week.
• You have to take daily, specific actions. You have to take specific actions every day towards goal achievement. I had a daily eating plan to make sure I got a balanced diet and stayed on track with my weight loss goal.

Your Now Step: Almost everyone has something they have you been “thinking about doing” for some time. What is it for you? Before the week is out, take 30 minutes to find a way to reduce it to a specific, written goal. Within 24 hours of writing it down, find someone to share the goal with, develop an action plan, and start taking daily actions towards that goal.