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2014 Quarterly Goals Update: How Far Along Are You?

At the beginning of the year I denounced New Year’s Resolutions and embraced goal setting. After reflecting on 2013 and embracing 2014, I came up with a handful of goals to meet. I put them on public display for my own accountability, but also for those that are having trouble making their own goals.

This post is as much for you as it is for me. This is meant to be a reminder for you to stick to your goals as I’m doing. If you’ve strayed, go back to what you promised yourself at the beginning of the year. If you’re moving right along, please let me know, I’d love to hear about your progress!

Volunteer Once Per Month

Katie and I have always known that we have more blessings than we know what to do with. But what we didn’t always do was pass our blessings on to others. In 2014 we wanted to give back. We decided to volunteer at least once per month.

I’ve committed to volunteering with the Alzheimer’s Association. I do this each week and I’m now the Marketing Chairperson for the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, hence the “Join my Team” button on my sidebar. I would love it if you joined my team (if you are local and can walk with us) or if you donated. Anything helps, we’re looking to raise $5,000 by September 20th!

The last Saturday of each month, one of Katie’s former clients runs something called Saturday on Meeting. She has gathered a number of people together and we feed the homeless here in downtown Charleston.

It’s extremely rewarding, yet very humbling at the same time. I would encourage each of you to find something YOU care about and dedicate some time to it. Everyone can give money, that’s not what I’m talking about. Take some time and give back, you will not regret it.

So far so good on this goal, we’re giving back at least once each month.

Learn to Speed Read

I have always been the slightest bit jealous of people who could rip through thousand page books in a weekend. Hence the reason for chasing this one down. I wanted to learn this by March 1st, giving myself two full months at the beginning of the year.

The most helpful article I read was from Mr. Tim Ferris on (duh) speed reading and how to improve your Words Per Minute (WPM). I studied these tactics, applied them, and did indeed improve my WPM score from under 300 to 481 Words Per Minute.

“Speed Reading” per se, it’s exactly what I imagined. It takes intense concentration and you feel like you are sitting down for work when you open a book. A normally relaxing hobby can easily turn into a chore if you’re not careful. I use the techniques I learned when I read, but I only push them hard when I am trying to practice. If I push them hard all the time, I cannot retain all of what I am reading and it feels like work.

I imagined speed reading as something like a switch you could turn on and off. I was way off the mark here. I’m glad I learned it, but it takes a lot of practice to really speed up your reading and keep it up.

It turns out I’m not the only one looking into speed reading. One of my readers/sister-in-law (thank you Kendria!) sent me this article about a new speed reading app that looks VERY promising and super cool. I’ll be following this company over the coming months as they prepare to launch!

As for my goal of learning to speed read – CHECK!

Build a TV Stand

I am going to replace all of the “cookie-cutter” furniture in my living room with hand-made pieces that I build. My coffee table was finished in 2012, and my TV stand is next on the list.

I gave myself until May 1st to complete this, so I’ve still got about a month. Fortunately, I already acquired an old pallet so the project is underway. I see some bumps in the road ahead, but this is going to be a fun, creative ordeal that I am really looking forward to finishing in my spare time.

This is one of my favorite goals because it forces me to use my hands and it engages my creative side. I have to solve problems and build a piece of art, not something I do regularly. We all need some of this creativity in our lives.

What have you done for your creative self lately?

Write an eBook

One of my life-long goals is to publish a book. In order to publish a physical book I need some practice writing (hence the blog) and publishing. So the next logical step is to publish an eBook on a topic I know and understand.

If I charge anything for the book, it will be a nominal fee. Or it might be a trade for someone’s email address so I can stay in touch with them.

Writing, I’m good with. But taking on a book is a much longer process, long form is a different game than short form like I practice here on the blog. I’m also not a huge fan of editing, as many of you know.

I gave myself until June 1st so I still have some time to complete this too. It’s been mostly brainstorming and scribbling on paper. You’ll hear more about it in the coming months. If you have some ideas or thoughts on what YOU would like to read, feel free to go to the suggestion box and drop me a note, I always love to hear from readers!

Complete a Sprint Triathlon

This is another goal that is still on the horizon, but I have done some research and I’ll be signing up for one a sprint triathlon in either June or July. The county park near my house holds races there every summer and I’m looking forward to the warmer weather so I can begin training outside again!

Monetize the Blog

Although I gave myself until October 5th to make this a reality, I’ve technically already done it. I am what’s called an Amazon Affiliate. Meaning when I post links to Amazon.com for book recommendations, products, or just the homepage they keep track of that. If you purchase something while on Amazon, they give me credit and I earn a small commission for it.

Earlier in March, I received my first commission for $1.09! WOOHOO Goal (technically) accomplished!

The structure will change as the year goes on to improve clicks, but the affiliate program is the simplest way for me to make money. It’s also not a “get rich quick” type of activity.

Know that any of the links you see on my site are affiliate links and I will get paid if you follow them. Thanks for supporting my writing addiction!

Read 40 Books

I am going to read 40 books this year, more than I have in the past 2+ years combined! I’m off to a great start and I’ve ripped through 10 already: 6 physical books (above) and 4 audio books (below). This doesn’t count a couple of shorter eBooks and all the blog articles I keep up with.

I feel great about this, but I am learning that it takes a ton of commitment to be a dedicated reader. But now that am committed, I love it and can never go back!

Recommendations List:
1.) David and Goliath
2.) The Ultimate Sales Machine
3.) Leaders Eat Last
4.) The Rise of Superman

I’ll let you read the descriptions since this post is quite lengthy, but each of these are great reads that I would highly recommend each. The Ultimate Sales Machine is very technical so if you’re not into sales or marketing, it probably won’t be to your liking. It’s not that the others were bad, I just took the most from these and enjoyed them most.

One of the reasons I wanted to learn to speed read was so I could get through more books, faster. I’ve been able to do that, but it’s not just due to the speed reading techniques. It seems quite obvious, but in order to be a reader, you must commit time to it.

I spend 15-60 minutes each day reading. The two most important times are right when I wake up (devotional type reading) to get my brain warmed up, and right before I go to bed (biography of some sorts) to calm my mind. If I have time I’ll get a few pages in during the day to recharge.

Nothing replaces sitting down and committing to a piece of literature, not even speed reading. But that’s OK, I don’t mind it now. This goal won’t be accomplished for some time, but I’m well on my way!

If you are interested in any of these books, feel free to reach out to me or tweet me. And I’m always up for your recommendations to keep my “to-read” list growing!

Reading in itself has been a pleasure. The journey towards the goals are what makes this practice of setting them come alive. It’s great to check things off your list, I love that feeling. But when you pick the right things to go after, your journey itself can be the reward.

How are your goals for 2014 going?

What have you checked off?

What have you learned?

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I look forward to hearing from you, have a great rest of the week!

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Veins in Weird Places: The Importance of Celebrating Progress

Growing up watching football with my Dad, a lifetime football coach, all I ever wanted to do was be a football star. Football is a sport that requires mental toughness, physical strength, and speed. I was fortunate enough to have 2 of those to make for a decent ballplayer.

When I first started training for football by lifting weights, I was 15 years old. My parents wouldn’t let me start any younger than that. They thought it might stunt my growth in the long run. But when I was finally allowed to lift weights, it was on!

I loved lifting weights and being able to compare myself to my peers. I also began to notice a change in my body, I started to see progress. Celebrating progress drove me to want to work even harder in the weight room.

The Need to Meet our Needs

As a company, it’s easy to get into the routine of showing up, clocking in, eating lunch, clocking out, and hitting repeat. There’s no excitement, there’s no celebration, there’s no real drive to want to go to work. We just do it for a paycheck.

Some of the second highest needs we have, according to Maslow’s Hierarchy, are achievement and self esteem. Some of the top needs are creativity, spontaneity, and problem-solving. We long for each of these to be met after our basic physiological and safety needs have been taken care of.

In any company, there should be some clear cut goals, or maybe a vision, or even a mission statement. Something that is the driver of the business. If it’s a good one, it’s measurable. It doesn’t necessarily matter what that goal is, it matters that you have something for people to work towards.

Now take that boring, clock-in/clock-out example and infuse it with some spontaneous celebration of progress towards your company mission! At that point you are praising your team’s achievements. This should be accompanied by telling them how proud you are of their work, which builds their self-esteem. On the way to that celebration they more than likely had to solve problems and use their creative powers to get that job done.

Now that the team knows that they are doing good things because their achievements have been recognized, this builds their confidence and this will get them excited to accomplish that big goal.

Intrinsic Motivation

Sports are amazing developers for children and I know that when I have kids someday, I will encourage them to play sports of some kind. I learned how to interact socially with diverse groups of people, I learned to compete, and I learned what it was like to come together for a common goal.

I also learned what it was like to push myself and not rely solely on the competition of others to drive me to work hard. Early on I realized that not everyone held themselves to the standard I did.

Learning to delay gratification for something you really want is a lost art. Sport makes you come to grips with the fact that the work you put in today won’t be realized until the season starts. Which, in some cases, could be months away. And even then it’s not guaranteed.

So you learn to celebrate the little stuff. For a 15 year meat-head football player, it’s getting that first vein that pops out of your bicep.

Don’t Celebrate Your Day Job

Now some people might take this advice to the extreme. This is not permission to rip your shirt off after every sale or do a touchdown dance after every customer service case is closed.

Celebrating what you are expected to do is frivolous. And if you get used to hearing, “Great Job!” every time you do something right, you may not want to do anything unless you are rewarded.

It’s kinda like giving every kid a trophy, even if they didn’t win. The celebration of mediocrity is rampant in today’s culture and that’s one of the reasons we had the whole 99%’er ordeal happen in 2011.

Instead, celebrate the milestones of your work. When a salesperson closes her biggest sale, make a big deal out of it. When a customer service rep handles more cases in a day than anyone has, celebrate his achievement. Or when your company makes a big leap forward, stop to take a minute and celebrate that little win.

Staying on Track

In a positive work environment, it’s hard not to like what you do. One way to keep things positive is to always keep the company mission, vision, or major goal in front of everyone and show them progress. Working for a common goal brings people together.

If you have a goal to do $1,000,000 in revenue, make an announcement when you hit every $100,000 marker on the way to remind people how close you are getting. This will show them that their daily work is being realized, even if they cannot see it. If gratification is delayed too much, people may begin to lose hope.

Seeing that progress helps us stay focused on what we are trying to accomplish. Seeing that we are just one step closer with every milestone is the best way to stay focused on a big goal that isn’t going to be realized in the immediate short-term.

If not, we tend to forget why we are sacrificing so much. It can be quite disheartening for someone to set their sights high and be let down when they don’t realize their goal.

But if we are measuring and celebrating progress, we know how far we have come and we can enjoy the journey instead of creating a “make or break” atmosphere for our objectives. And when that pressure comes off, people will perform better every step of the way.

So whether it’s finding that first vein in your bicep or celebrating your first $100,000 in sales, be sure to look out for the milestones of the journey. Make that path exciting and your people will work as hard as ever to be sure it’s realized.

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How do you celebrate progress on the way to your goals?

Have a great week!

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The Most Effective Ways to Stick to Your Goals (3/3)

It’s no secret that I set goals and I’m big advocate of you doing so as well. I wrote a series on goal-setting and starting in November and I used my blog to create public accountability for my personal goals just last week.

It hadn’t occurred to me to talk about struggle of how to stick to your goals day-in and day-out, but that’s what I’m going to dive into today. Please take into account, this is what works best for me. You may need a little more or a little less, it depends on you. My objective today is to share what I do, how I do it, and to get you think about how you can accomplish your goals.

Your Personal Journey

Goals are personal, and everyone has aspirations for different things in their lives. That being said, the path to accomplishing your personal goals is a personal journey. It has to be something you are passionate about and you have to want it. There will be sacrifice and there will be times when it’s much easier to give up. But if it’s truly worth that pain and anguish, the taste of victory when you cross it off your list will be one of the sweetest things you’ve tasted in your life.

If you do not feel alive when you talk about accomplishing your goals, they may not be that important to you. If you don’t get a little bit nervous when you tell someone about them, you probably aren’t setting the bar high enough for yourself. If these feelings don’t ring a bell, take a look at these two posts about goal setting to help get this journey started in the right direction.

What organizational skills do you need to reach goals?

With any goals I set, I think about them in terms of ‘the big picture’ first and then I work my way down to the details. We all have grandiose pictures of ourselves on top of mountains with ice forming on our faces screaming at the world below, “I DID IT!” But very rarely do we think about the baby steps it takes to get to that summit.

After a specific goal is set with a deadline, I begin to work backwards. Let’s take my goal of finishing a marathon for example. I was injured in the weeks leading up to the event and by the time I was healthy enough to start training, I only had 8 weeks to prepare. With the help of my girlfriend and my brother, I was able to put together a training schedule that tied up 12-15 hours of every week leading up to the race.

This is extreme for most goals in terms of time, but the important thing is that I had a plan. I had a plan that required me to work towards that goal just a little bit each day. When we set our goals, if we only plan on ‘getting around to them’ once a week or once a month, we don’t really want to get them done. On the other hand, if we put a little bit of effort towards them each day (like running/cross-training/stretching each day) a couple things happen.

We are constantly reminded of them and they stay in front of us like a carrot
We are less likely to give up on them because we have dedicated something ‘every day’ to them, instead of 1/2 a lazy Sunday

How do you stay motivated? Especially for long-term goals?

I have talked about public accountability before, but I can’t stress it enough for me. I don’t like to let the people around me down and I do not lie to people. So when something comes out of my mouth am going to stick by it. But maybe you don’t operate like that, maybe you don’t want the world to know. Just tell a few people that you know will keep you accountable.

Maybe it’s a parent or a best friend or someone you know won’t let you get away with cheating, that will call you out. I have lots of friends like that and I actively seek them out when I’m looking to take on something huge, it helps when they’re there to encourage me and not let me give up. If you don’t know anyone, contact me and I’ll keep you accountable. I know how powerful it is to have someone push you and I’m more than willing to help!

Motivation is also intrinsic. But, we all need reminders of why we started. I love the Expo Marker on the mirror trick, other people will use visuals as well. My friend Markus used to write something motivational on his ceiling so when he laid in bed he’d see it and know that he couldn’t just lay there any be lazy. Some people that are aiming to lose weight put their worst picture or their starting picture on the refrigerator so they see it each time they go to eat. Whatever your visual is, find one. Then take it and put it in a place where you know you cannot avoid it:

your car
your refrigerator
your bathroom mirror
your lock screen on your phone
your desktop/laptop background

And then the hardest part comes – DO NOT COMPROMISE! Remind yourself of why you started. Remind yourself how inspired you felt when you wrote that goal down. Remind yourself of how bad you felt when you wanted to turn things around. Remind yourself of how good it felt the last time you accomplished a goal.

Find that intrinsic motivation and dig deep. Anything worth accomplishing is not going to be easy, you’ll have to develop some mental strength, but you can do it! The more you push through, the more confidence you build and it’s a snowball effect. Keep setting goals and pushing on to the next big thing.

How do you maintain balance without a goal taking over your life?

This part is tough, especially for those of us that are ambitious achievers and those of us that are competitive, we don’t like to put other things ahead of our goals. I’m all of those, so I know how difficult it can be. First off, set your priorities before you take the journey towards these goals. Try to think about what you’re willing to sacrifice (food, a movie night, etc.) and what you aren’t willing to sacrifice (time with family, your health, etc.) Know that your goals don’t define you, that they’re only part of you. An accomplished goal won’t make or break you, but the journey will help shape your character.

Second, give yourself a realistic time frame. This starts in the goal setting phase, but works into how we plan out our goals. If I were to run another marathon, I’d give myself more than 8 weeks to train because of how rushed and overwhelmed I felt while training for the last one. If I had 12 or 16 weeks, I wouldn’t have had to been so pressured to forgo as much as I did in the weeks leading up the race.

Finally, try to give yourself varying experiences for your goals. If you only set financial goals, you’ll become obsessed with money. If you only set physical goals, you’ll spend all your time at the gym and neglect your friends and family. Set different goals for different phases of your life and you’ll be happier and more eager to attack the next goals instead of burning out on work or the gym.

The idea for this post came from a good friend, Becca Cook, that gave me some great feedback the last time I talked about goals and goal setting. When I asked for feedback on what my readers would enjoy, she immediately asked me more about long-term goals. Thank you for the inspiration Becca, hope this helps you to accomplish some of those outstanding goals!

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I’m serious about the accountability thing, I will help push you! What are some of your goals? How can you apply some of these principles to your life or organization?

Thanks for reading, have a great day!

Follow Through – Goals Won’t Just Attain Themselves (2/3)

Wednesday was the beginning of our series on goals and I wrote of the importance of goals as well as how to come up with them. Today I want to elaborate on how to set them in stone, what to do with them once we’ve set them, and how to actually achieve them. The point of setting goals is to complete them, deciding them is first step. Fortunately, if we’ve already decided our goals, the hardest part is out of the way! Now it’s time to follow through.

Since deciding on what we want to accomplish is out of the way, we can now set our goals in stone. Up to this point we have goals that are pretty flimsy and need to be solidified. Everyone has heard of S.M.A.R.T. goals and it seems cliche but it’s true, our goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. If we’re not Specific and the goals aren’t Measurable, how do we know if we’ve ever achieved them? If they’re not Attainable or Relevant, than why bother working towards them in the first place? And if something is not Time-Bound, we can procrastinate forever and fool ourselves (and others) into believing we’ll get it done ‘someday.’

Bad Example: “I want to save money”
Good Example: “I am going to put away $250 each month into savings for a year”

My Goals are broken down into two categories: Things I want to accomplish by a certain date and things I want to accomplish every day. This is what works for me and this is how I have learned to form good habits. I have longer-term goals such as owning a home on the beach in my hometown by the time I’m 35 and finishing a marathon on December 14th, 2013. I also have daily goals to read, write, do a devotional, and call my Dad. I track these things so I don’t forget to do them on a whiteboard in my room. These serve as daily reminders of what I need to do each day to shape myself into who I need to be. I must do these things each day if I want to accomplish those life-long goals. The daily goals tie into the longer term goals and reinforce them, helping me take baby steps each day towards moving mountains. For example I write every day because I need to practice if I ever want to finish my book.

So up to this point we have set our minds on something and it’s more than likely been all thought. But what is the difference in thinking about something we want to accomplish and thinking about that taco we had for lunch yesterday? Not much… It is easy to have a thought, it is harder to clarify it in conversation, and it is even more difficult to write it out. So a goal is not a goal until is is written down. Writing a goal down A.) Helps clarify what that goal is B.) Serves as a reminder of what we committed ourselves to C.) Is the second step in our process.

Goals can be written down anywhere that is prevalent and they should be written out by hand, not typed. There are scientific studies behind this, but I won’t elaborate here, I just know I my goals are much more attainable when I write them versus typing them. We can write them on an index card and laminate it to carry around with us, we can post it on the refrigerator to see each day, or my personal favorite is to take an dry erase marker and write them on my bathroom mirror so I have to see them each day. This is my way of ‘looking my goals in the face’ each day.

Once a goal is set, a plan of action needs to be taken. For someone that wants to lose weight, the first thing to do is clear out the fridge of all the mayo, carbonated drinks, sugars, etc. and replace them with fruits and vegetables as soon as possible. For me it was to start the blog and commit to writing each day, setting time aside for the book each week. For the person that wants to save money it’s to start a budget immediately and take out that first $250 from the paycheck before any other expenses are covered. Our paychecks, just as our time spent at work, will expand to the allotment we give it.

The next part of the plan to meet our goals is accountability. Writing out the goals is the personal accountability part, but telling others is the public accountability part. In Goal Setting I gave an anecdote about the sales guys and asking them to set goals for themselves, this was my way of making them accountable to me. We would review their goals from the previous meeting to see what they had done to meet their goals, if they had met them, and what their next steps were. One in particular wrote that he aspired to having his own store some-day, and he was able to achieve that goal not 12 months after he wrote it down and we discussed what it would take to make that happen and I have never been so proud in my life. My way of public accountability is to send out this blog to as many places as I can find. All I needed was a few readers to text me or email me and say they liked what I had to say and to keep it up, and now I know I have people that are expecting me to write. THANK YOU!

I hope that the length of this post has made us fidgety to get working on our goals and that it has given a full spectrum of how to do it effectively. If not, please leave me a comment or get in touch with me for any clarification that you’d like to see on the blog. Thanks for reading, now put these words into action!

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Here is an amazing podcast on goals from the Entreleadership Team of the Dave Ramsey Network about goals that helped inspire me to write these.

Goal Setting (1/3)

One of the very first topics I wrote down in my idea roll for blogging was about goals. I have always been a huge believer in them and I have always implemented them in my life and work. Plus, every time that I hear about them I am inspired to revisit and renew my own goals for the coming weeks, months, and years.

The first step in the goal-making process is to dedicate some time to think about what it is we want. Is it a raise? Is it more time with family? Maybe it’s to finish reading that book we’ve been putting off, or to start getting fit again. Goals can be related to anything in our lives that we deem worthy, they do not just have to be work-related. I encourage people to have goals for different facets of life, it helps us to keep a balance. If all of our goals are work related we end up being workaholics and we neglect our personal or family lives.

When I managed a number of sales people in the furniture store I would have a goal review every 4-6 months with them. This was not a time for me to impose my thoughts, it was my time to listen to what they wanted to accomplish. The ones that didn’t have goals were forced to think about what they wanted and put it on paper, this opened a lot of eyes. The ones that had goals liked this exercise because it helped clarify what they wanted and gave them an opportunity to talk it through with someone. I would have them write down their goals on a sheet of paper (hand-written, not typed) then I would keep a copy and they would get the original as a reminder of what they had committed to. If we did not have that sit-down many of them would not have put any thought to their goals.

What is going to be the catalyst for us to write out our goals if we haven’t done so already?

What have we done recently to help our teams accomplish their goals?

We often hear or read about goals and think, “Yeah I know, goals are good,” and it goes in one ear and out the other. I want to encourage anyone reading this to stop what you’re doing and write down 3 things YOU want to accomplish. They can be short-term goals, they can be long-term goals, anything you want to do with your life. Todd Henry wrote The Accidental Creative and he closes out this book with a story by a South African man that asks a question about where to find the richest land on Earth. Some people said it was Wall Street, other said oil fields. But the answer to the man’s question was the graveyard. He proceeds to explain that there lies all of the unwritten books, the projects never finished, and the businesses never started of all the millions of people throughout history. He then goes on to explain a theory he has to ‘die empty’ without that unfinished work inside us.

What do we want to accomplish before our time runs out?

Take some time to think about what it is that you want to accomplish. Make time in the schedule with no distractions to think about it. Turn off the phone, leave the music out of it, and just think for a while. I love to stay moving so taking a walk with a notepad and a pen is the best thing for me. Don’t rush, give yourself at least 30 minutes if not more to think about what is important.

Goal setting is the first step, it gives us a clarity of direction. When a goal is set, we can ask ourselves if our daily actions are helping us get closer to our goals or taking us further away instead of just drifting along like so many others.

I will address how to follow through with our goals tomorrow, making them is just the beginning!