Last December or early January this year, I bet most of us have this “2017 resolutions, targets and goals to achieve”. Well, it has been more or less 6 months since most of us vowed our 2017 resolutions, targets and goals to achieve this year. Question is, how far are you from achieving your resolutions, targets and goals? Have you done something for them? Have you even started something to your resolutions, targets and goals?
If you haven’t done something or even worse you haven’t started anything yet, then do and start something today. It still another 5 months till 2017 is over, otherwise you’ll end-up carrying forward the same list again from 2017 to 2018 and most likely the same thing will happen on 2018, no movement and they will get carried out to 2019. And the cycle continues on and on, until one day you realize you have wasted so much time and never really moving from where you are today.
Too far ahead, too abstract.
One of the most biggest issues and drawbacks of having resolutions, targets and goals list is most of them is either way too far ahead (so we don’t know where to start) or too abstract (so even we can’t imagine how to get there eventually). And either one of the two, make most of us trying to avoid them as much as we can, keep putting them at the end of our list and choose to close our eyes, telling ourselves, I still have tomorrow, next month, next year which in the end make us to be super lazy to start something related to those goals and rather put us in defense mode (well it seems to be difficult and I have next month / next year / next decade to start it) and start procrastinating. Sound familiar?
Breakdown to smaller goals.
Simple example and parable: say you want to have a vacation in Tokyo, Japan. You are physically now in Singapore. In this case, your goal is to reach Tokyo, Japan. To go to Japan and have a nice vacation there, you can’t just jump from Singapore to Japan. While they are close on the map, but geographically they are about 6-7 flight-hour difference. So what should you do?
First, book and buy airplane ticket.
Second, book a hotel room for your stay during your vacation.
Third, apply an entry Visa (in case needed).
Fourth, start packing your things and don’t forget to bring your passport.
Fifth, on the D-day of your airplane ticket booking date, go to airport, make sure not to be late.
Sixth, clear the immigration and wait to board the plane.
Seventh, enjoy the flight, get enough rest so you have enough energy to spend when you finally reach Tokyo, Japan.
Eighth, moments after you arrived at Tokyo airport, clear the immigration, get your stuffs. Make sure nothing is left behind.
Ninth, take either public transport/private transport to reach your hotel and voila, you reach Tokyo, Japan for your vacation.
From this simple example, hopefully you see something. For everyone’s benefit, I’ll tell here: you need to break down your targets/resolutions/goals into smaller tasks or goals, then make each of them your checkpoints or milestones so that they (targets/resolutions/goals) become clearer and closer each time you pass each milestones. And the most important thing by breaking down into smaller tasks or goals is that you have the sense of achievements. By achieving something, we, human, tend to feel propelled to even achieve more.
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Start taking action. Today. Now.
After breaking down goals into smaller goals, the next most important thing is to make yourself start taking action, because even you managed to breakdown your big goals into smaller one, without taking action, they are just no more than a list.
Myself, My Goals and My Progress.
If today I’m looking back at my early January 2017 post, welcoming year 2017 and listing out my goals, out of 7 goals I have for 2017, although none of them are reaching the final goals, but I’m progressing.
Here are they and their progress:
- As an individual: to go green to myself by staying healthy, eat and drink healthier food and beverages, do more exercise. Progress as of today: I drink Kopi O Kosong or Siew Dai, I’m staying healthy (and get paid for it) by doing Uber delivery at weekend when my wife and I don’t really have something to do during weekend.
- As an employee and manager: to automate as many work tasks and to enhance the work framework to be more efficient and sustainable. Progress as of today: I created templates (requirement document, technical spec document, test cases, and many more) to help myself and my team. Nowadays, starting a new project or a new test phase is a lot easier, thanks to the templates.
- As a future entrepreneur: to start getting passive income from my self hosted blog. Progress as of today: I haven’t got any passive income from my blog, however I do keep posting my own original contents (like this article) as regularly as possible, record whatever I have experienced in my life which hopefully could help and solve other people issues and in the end hoping to get more readers. To check the contents, simply go to jilaxzone.com
- As an investor: to start investing in something new and different to diversify my income stream. Progress as of today: Not much here, apart from investing on my own blog – writing as many as possible my own experiences on it, I have finally registered an investing account. Hopefully before end of 2017 I can make my first investment. I still need to learn so many things about financial instruments and their terms, so that I just don’t blindly investing something which may not bring good returns for me.
- As a modern non-nomadic person: Move to my own house. Progress as of today: My wife and I have started looking for one and have calculated and decided our budget. Hopefully by the end of the year, we can get it.
- As a husband: to spend more time with my wife and get a kid. Progress as of today: Still need more improvements here. Laptop and gadgets are my number one enemy. I still spend more time with gadgets rather than spend time with my wife. Not good!
- As a human being: to be more humble, trying to be stress-free, less anger. Progress as of today: Still need more improvements here as well. Due to my working place condition and peers, most of the time I still feel anger and cocky when engage with them. I will definitely try to get better to control my emotions and feelings before saying or doing something that may hurt someone and worst-my own image.
What about you?
Now it’s your turn. What about you? How far are you from achieving your yearly 2017 goals? Are you on track? Give your comments and thoughts below.
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