Goal.  The word is one of the most commonly used words in the world. People love goals. Companies love goals. You love goals. It always starts well. You have dozen of goals in your mind. You want to be rich, happy, a good parent and many other things. Then, you have the motivation to start immediately. Next, nothing. You leave the room full of ideas, without making any change. In the last 12 months I have gathered a few techniques for goals setting. I have some ideas that I would like to share.

First Goals First

In my efforts to think about my life for the next few years, I started with my goals. Not all of my goals are related to business, some of them are related to my personal life and my family. Why are goals are so important to me? Because when I have my goals in front of me every day I can check with myself when a new opportunity comes in, whether this opportunity is related to my goals or not. Focus is a golden rule of thumb in my plan. It’s very important to start with a clear goal: “I want to lose 12lbs until the end of the year” is better than “I want to lose weight”. Be concise with your goals.

See the Bright Spots

By thinking about my goals, I’m trying to understand my passion or what I’m really good at. For example: I know that I’m not the operator, but I’m a great leader / thinker. Why is seeing the bright spots so important? Because your goals must be aligned with your strengths.  Want to start quick? Thing about the three things you are the best at.  Using this method, You can see what you are really good at, but also what you really need to improve this year (or the following years). Again, start with the basics. Make today a list of the three things you do best. Check the list after one week and see if what you wrote stays true. If yes, you’ve taken one step forward to find your strengths.

Connect All to Actions

You know your strengths and your goals, what you have to do now? Make it actionable. Many people fail at this step. I think that this step is the most important one. If you want to lose weight but you are not sure how, you are not going to lose weight. Period. Keep in mind that actions without deadlines are like trying to lose weight all your life. I have dozens of ideas to share about how to make a great switch. Reading the book Switch is a great start.

So what you can do today?

• Think about your strengths
• Think about your goals for this month, year, three years from now
• Split every goal into a list of actionable tasks
• Make it simple and clear

Amazon reviews are not reliable in my point of view, but many people are still taking them as a guarantee that a certain book is good. It’s funny to see many reviews conveniently posted on the same day / week, of that book’s launch date, suggesting that the reviewers are actually affiliates and inside marketers posing as book fans.

I would like to share my own tips now.

Kindle To The Rescue

As avid reader of books, I see my great Kindle device as a great platform to find the best books. Why? Because many books not only suck but also waste shelf space.  I’m using Kindle to weed out the sucky books and find the best titles.  How do I find one? The rule of thumb is very simple. If I finish the half of book in one shot, that is a great book to finish, because I couldn’t put it down. If I start reading it and get bored to death, stop quickly.  When I do find one, I order it in Amazon for reading it again in paper format.

Books = Value  ?

There are too many books on every topic to select from. 99% are worthless. Few of them bring a real value by sharing a life experience and giving a great value for the readers. Many books have been written by successful but egotistical people who brag about their own success rather than share their own life lessons. Many other books will tell you how to be successful entrepreneur by a non-entrepreneur (the author). Only a few books really bring an amazing value to the reader.

Rework

Over the last few days, I have been reading the book Rework.  I was wary in the first chapter like I am while reading any book, but then authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeir plucked amazing tips from obscurity and shared them with me, the reader, in a concise manner. The authors are very generous to share their own experience, and they have a lot. I really felt during reading the book, that somehow the authors were attentive to the market reactions from the first day of the company. Rework is a great example of the Customer Development concept by Steve Blank. If you’re not familiar with the innovative thinking of Steve Blank, make sure to bookmark my site–I will talk more about Steve Blank in future posts.

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