How to write your 2020 goals?
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How do we write down some goals that we actually follow?
How not to fail again?
How to actually bring change to our lives before life changes us?
It’s easy to write down new resolutions.
Quit smoking.
Lose 10 kg.
Join a new company.
Learn mandarin.
I could write new resolutions everyday for the whole year and see nothing happens.
What is actually hard is to follow them, it requires a strong commitment and a real desire to follow these objectives.
Are you the kind of person who tries to stay fit all year but doesn’t really succeed?
And when there is a big event where you need to be fit, let’s say the summer holidays, you suddenly drop 3/4 kg in three weeks.
It’s like all of a sudden, it’s not hard anymore.
How do we move from “I can’t make it” to “I did it”?
Today, you will write down goals that truly matter to you and that you will accomplish!
As I said in my last 2019 email, we shouldn’t have more than 3 priorities.
If you have more, then you don’t have any.
I didn’t invent this, but it really helped me a lot when I discovered this quote.
Now, should we have 3 professional priorities or 3 life priorities?
To me, anything that belongs to your life should be taken into account.
You can’t focus on three professional priorities, but also be the dad of the year, lose 10 pounds and move to another country.
You need to balance everything in your life.
You need a limited number of priorities, and you need to include every aspect of your life in it.
It means that you may have less space for your professional life.
It means that you will consider 3 things that matter to you more than everything else.
Work should be a part of it, but some years, it might be secondary.
Now, think about 2020 and write down 3 things that you really want to accomplish.
Maybe losing 10 kg is not as much of a priority as joining a self-driving car company. It’s up to you.
Limit yourself to these 3 maximum priorities.
I repeat it but it is really important if you actually want to succeed.
If you have too much, you will fail.
Another thing, when writing down your goals, try to make them measurable with numbers.
Don’t lose weight, lose 5 kg in 6 months.
Step by step, we will construct the success process.
For that, we need a concrete objective that we can measure.
The same applies for every theme, don’t get rich; make 100k before next December by selling software to x client.
Sometimes, you can’t do that.
If your goal is to join a company that works on flying cars, then you can’t really measure this unless you want to add criteria like salary or a limit date.
Quit smoking is an on/off process. The best you can do is adding a limit date.
Finally, your goals should be fixed and ambitious.
They shouldn’t change throughout the year unless some big event happens.
They shouldn’t be too ambitious, you probably won’t go from student to president of a Fortune 500 in a year.
Build something realistic that you see yourself doing in a year and that you will still work on 6 months from now.
Now, you have your goals.
Congratulations!
How do we accomplish them?
Isn’t 3 a little number?
If you wrote your goals correctly, they should be hard to solve in a day…
That is why you need minor goals!
Minor goals are your month to month progress.
They are short-term goals.
They are not other major goals you don’t have time to accomplish, they are steps for your major goals.
If you want to join a self-driving car company by the end of the year; you will need to:
- Get some skills
- Apply in a self-driving car company
- Get recruited
How to get some skills? For example
- Follow 3 online courses
- Build 5 self-driving car projects.
- Contribute to one open-source project.
- Read one article/day
I don’t have a big number of courses yet, so don’t wait for me and go follow other courses!
How do you apply in a company?
- Build a portfolio of your projects
- Build an online presence
That helps if you want to get visibility.
How do you get recruited?
- Sell your skills
This is not easy to do!
We now see that our big goal: Get inside a self-driving car company takes at least 7 steps to complete.
Step 1 and 2 could even be divided into 8 independent steps.
These 7 steps should be on your minor goals list.
This is not a to-do list!
They should take long enough so that you have 20 of them for the whole year; not 20 per week.
If you want to accomplish something big that doesn’t belong to your major goals, you can add it to the minor goals list.
Note that you may fail this since it’s not a priority but a nice-to-have.
You will change the list throughout the year, especially the minor goals list.
Your vision must stay the same.
When you accomplish one of them, don’t replace it with another.
Just work more on the 2 remaining goals.
Can you have less than 3 major goals?
Absolutely.
It’s about ambition. I think 3 is a good number though.
Today, write down your major and minor goals.
We will see about the rest in the future emails!
Jeremy
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