Goals: From zero to completion

It's a new month now.

And talking with others, the topic has come out.

"What are your goals for this month?"

Truth be told, I don't have any for now.

I came out of May being one of (if not the) best months so far.

Even when I don't have goals for this month (yet).

I know what I want and don't want to do.

One of those things is the type of goals.

Not goals related to what I want to accomplish but rather related to what I can do and can somehow control.

Here's an example of that.

"I want to make 20 friends this month."

This assumes that there are 20 people that have to accept being a friend to me for the goal to be hit.

Granted, with the internet it's pretty easy to find that amount.

But suppose is offline and I'm in a small valley.

"I want to make $5k this month."

Again, this presupposes many things that must happen for that goal to be hit.

This is what I call "objective goals".

Goals focused on an outcome. The most common out there.

And at the same time, they're the ones most commonly missed.

Now, there's another type I've been setting for myself.

They're called "process goals".

An example:

"I'm going to tweet at least once every day."

You can even see that the formulation is different.

I don't focus on a specific outcome but on what's within my control.

I can control whether I show up every day or not.

Or the messages I send to people.

If they reply or not, that's not something I can control and so I don't worry about it.

So yeah, that's a small but powerful distinction when it comes to setting (and hitting) goals.