Why you should focus on as few goals as possible
People do different things in order to achieve different results. Many of us usually make goals every now and then in order to achieve certain results. Even though aiming for certain results is a wonderful thing, you should avoid aiming for a lot of results at once. Doing so would affect the important goals you should be solely focusing on. Trying to achieve everything at the same time will probably result in low quality results for most of your goals. Aiming for fewer and more specific goals will result in better results and a higher level of achievement.
While having many good goals may sound attractive, you have to realize that having more than one goal at a time means you have to allocate your time, effort and resources to each goal. The more goals you have, the less attention you can give to each goal. When you have to focus on fewer goals, you can realize which goals are important and which goals can be pursued later. This concept applies to almost everything in life, whether the goal is related to something that is personal, a business plan, a social interaction or even blogging.
Having fewer goals can help all areas of life
If you have a lot of goals to pursue, space them out in order to allow yourself to focus on a few specific goals at a time. I have listed here a small outline for different categories of goals for which your focus at any given time should be on as fewer goals as possible in order to achieve maximum benefits from your efforts.
- Personal
For goals related to your life, personality or character, if you try to achieve a lot of things at once you will only disappoint yourself. Aim for realistic goals and do your best in achieving them before taking on other goals. It is your life and you are in control; go slowly when possible and go fast when feasible.
Wanting to change your diet, change your religion, change your attitude about social topics, achieve more happiness, reduce stress, quit smoking, dress differently and sleep differently all at the same time will only stress you out. Focus on the major and most important things, and other smaller and related things will happen on their own.
- Business
A business is successful when it gets the best of efforts put into it. Business deals are the same. You will probably not be successful in a business or enter good business deals if you try to aim for everything at the same time through a single effort. Realizing what is really important in a business will help you realize the things you should really aim for in a business deal and things you can leave out of a business deal for the time being.
For example, Feedburner started with taking care of feeds and partnered with FeedBlitz in order to manage RSS feeds via e-mail. FeedBlitz took care of RSS feeds via e-mail for sometime while Feedburner put their efforts only in the thing that was their main priority. Only when Feedburner was confident enough with achieving their original goal of having a solid RSS management system did it come out with its own RSS to e-mail service.
- Social
Try not to expect everything from your daily interaction with others. Aim for certain characteristics in people and certain goals. Other related goals will show up and develop over time on their own.
For example, looking for a girlfriend or a boyfriend who can be your significant other, spouse, business partner, best friend, family, closest adviser and more at the same time from the beginning will only make it harder for you to find someone who you may like. Focus on some specific qualities and goals, and other traits will soon start appearing on their own.
- Online
If you strive hard to have your blog achieve several goals at once, you run the risk of ruining your chances of achieving any blogging goal. It can be tempting to aim for a lot of things on the internet because of the simplicity of interacting via the internet. You should resist such temptation as expecting a lot of things from your blog means you have to put your effort into every goal you are hoping to accomplish. It is hard to focus on everything related to your blog at the same time.
Blogging goals can consist of many things including achieving high traffic, making money, creating communities, creating new contacts and creating new trends. All of such goals are achievable, but they can only be achieved when you put special effort into each one of those goals separately. Just as with personal goals, focus on only a few major blogging goals at a time, if not only one, and other smaller blogging goals will happen on their own.
Prioritize your efforts
Aim for some specific goals at a time before taking on new goals. Prioritize your efforts to realize which goals to focus on today and what to focus on some other day. Do not expect to achieve everything at the same time. Expecting everything to happen at once will probably disappoint you in the long run. Achieving things take time, so you have to plan out your efforts and timing.
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( February 20th, 2007 at 9:43 am )
I agree with this - and I find it good to divide my goals up in to long term and short term. I generally have a kind of rolling five year plan that mutates every six months as I either achieve things, or my priorities change. It works for me!
( February 21st, 2007 at 6:51 am )
Ally, nice to see you again and thanks for sharing that tip [to divide goals into longer and shorter term goals]. 5-year plans sound ambitious! You are probably a very patient person. Nice to know it works for you; I may have to try something now that is longer-time framed too. [Wow, it rhymes, no?]
( February 21st, 2007 at 6:28 pm )
It is truth that you speak, I know it only too well. I am getting lost in all my to do’s, and, while I am managing, I merely squeaking by… good post… I love your blog in general…
( February 22nd, 2007 at 11:37 am )
Thanks for the comment Lynda. About “getting lost” among so many things, it’s so true! I am happy that you are at least managing to get through, if that’s what you meant by “squeaking by”; most people simply give up because of all the headaches involved when it comes to pursuing goals. I like your writing also. It seems to be very passionate!
Thanks again for sharing your situation Lynda. I hope to see you round the site more since your comment can clarify things further.
( March 9th, 2007 at 2:31 am )
For me, I must really try to follow your advices here. I am the type of person who, in my mind, already has set up goals and mentally already visioned the final result on the walk home from work. The problem is that I find it very difficult to follow up my progress on the goals. Any advice?
( March 9th, 2007 at 10:19 am )
MagnusJ, thanks for stopping by and leaving the comment. I really appreciate it.
I think that’s a good thing, to have goals setup in your thoughts on a regular basis. I am assuming you mean to ask how one can check their progress regarding certain goals, correct? Regarding following up progress on the goals, if I understand your question correctly, there are two ways among many others to find out if your progress is headed in the right direction or not.
You can look at the end result you have in mind with your goal and see if you are headed in that direction. Simply headed in the right direction can be progress, and so can the speed at which you are headed in the right direction. For example, if your goal for the day is to enable RSS feeds on your site in such a way that you get at least 1 RSS subscriber by the end of the day, you can check throughout the day the number of people who are visiting your RSS subscription page or the number of people who are clicking the RSS feed link.
You can also look at your current efforts to see if they are producing any fruit. For example, if you start writing two posts a day and want to increase your daily number comments from 20 to 40, noticing an increase in the number of different people reading your blog after you start writing twice daily is progress. Now you have to figure out how to turn those extra people, who most probably started coming to your site because of the extra daily post, into commentors in order to reach your goal.
Different things and results combine to give the desired results, and if you notice progress in anything as a result of your efforts, I think you are headed in the right track and should keep refocusing your efforts, based on any improvements or even problems you see, in order to get what you are hoping for. How can you run into problems? Say you write two posts daily and that resulted in the number of people reading your blog to go down over a 2 week time period. That means it will become hard to get more comments the way you intended to, and you have to keep trying and see why people are not reading your blog that much and how it could be directly or indirectly related to you writing more than one post a day.
Does that help MagnusJ? I hope I understand your question correctly. Please let me know if you had something else on your mind or if the above helps in any way. Thank you, and I hope to see you around more.
( March 13th, 2007 at 9:24 am )
Hi Bes.
Thanks for your in depth reply, I really appreciate it.
You have some relly good advice. When I search my mind I start to realize that the main problem is simply that I have not enough time on my hands to fullfil my goals.
I have the will, the knowledge, and the “tools” to realize them. But, as this blog title suggests, its probably a matter of prioritize and focus on a few, most important goals.
Thanks.
/Magnus
( March 13th, 2007 at 12:13 pm )
Magnus, thanks for commenting back. I appreciate it.
Hmmm, you bring up a good point about not having enough time to do things. If you have a lot of goals, maybe you can keep all your goals if you really want, but pursue only a few at a time. You can even select goals randomly, simply to get started. If you have the will, the knowledge and “the tools”, then you already have more than what many people have for their goals.
I myself have so many things in mind for this site alone, it seems that I will not be able to do most of them because of not having enough time. I also wonder which things to do and which ones to ignore forever or for now.
Maybe you can combine a few things to save time: you can eat while on the computer, write about posts in your head or on paper while watching a video or driving when you are the passenger, wake up 10 minutes earlier than usual to write something when you get ready 10 minutes in advance, or maybe you can even sleep 10 minutes later than usual to write things out on a paper. Writing things on a paper can really help type them through a keyboard faster, as you would have already done a lot of thinking through what you wrote on the paper.
Your main blog is very good, and I am surprised you come up with technical posts so quickly! If, for example, you are thinking of having different goals for each of the blogs on your site, I think you can alternate the goals: like have a goal for something specific or a specific blog section of your site for 3 days, and then move on to the next section. Posting in each section can be a goal: you can post to one section every 2 days, and then post in another. Alternating goals or even the same goal through different things or for different purposes can help.
I hope that helps in some way Magnus. If you wish, you can share some of your goals [unless they are top secret, which is awesome!
] and we can see how somethings can be done. Thanks again; I really appreciate you sharing your opinion and thoughts on this. looking forward to hearing from you more.