Do you struggle with goal setting?

Business owners are always being told they need to set goals but the reality is that many just go with the flow, doing what they can and hoping for the best.

Helen Lindop recently had a revelation about goal setting that has transformed her business and her life.

In this Q&A from the Drive Ask the Expert session, she explains what changed and what benefits she experienced.

What are the main advantages of goal setting?

Helen Lindop I’ve saved so much time. I have far fewer blind alleys now. If something isn’t working I know quickly and adjust. I underestimated the mental effort of making decisions. It’s much easier now because if something takes me closer to the goal I do it, if not, I don’t.

Here’s me arguing with myself about the reasons I didn’t used to set goals and now I do. You might relate to a lot of these!

1. I’m a one-person business, I can respond to whatever comes in anyway.

Yes, but it’s going to save a lot of time and effort if I can replicate what I do, or at least parts of what I do. It’ll make my life easier and be more cost effective, too. And it’ll be much easier to get a team member to take it over when I’m ready.

2. I’d been trying for years and never stuck to them more than a few weeks.

Most goal setting systems seem to run for a whole year, which is far too long for me. When I found the 12 Week Year I realised this is a much better fit because it’s long enough to get stuff done but not so long that I can’t see the end of it.

3. I had a young family, so I frequently had to drop my plans to deal with a sick child etc. What was the point in having detailed plans?

One of the big problems I had with most goal setting programmes, is that they don’t acknowledge how messy life can be. That made me not bother with them at all for many years. But I started to treat my goals as more of a compass to point me in the right direction rather than a stick to beat myself with. If you have a compass it’s not a big problem to stay on track, you just look at it regularly and adjust if you wander off. And even if some days it’s two steps forward and one back, at least you’re going in the right direction instead of in circles!

4. Part of the reason I became my own boss was to not have to do this stuff.

I think this is often overlooked by many experts – for many of us the whole point of going self-employed was to get away from boring stuff like this! Obviously, you can’t fly completely by the seat of your pants, but I think we need to at least acknowledge goal setting doesn’t always sit well with an entrepreneurial streak and find a way around it, rather than go straight into the hard-core YOU MUST SET GOALS EVERY JANUARY FOR THE WHOLE YEAR approach. 😀

5. The main goal of running a business is to sell as much stuff as you can, did I really need another set of goals?

Yes, but there are many, many ways of selling as much stuff as you can and that goal is FAR too broad. The goal is about how you sell as much stuff as you can as well as building the infrastructure to do it well.

6. It was one more thing on my scarily long to do list.

I used to think setting goals was one more thing for the to do list when in fact it reduced my to do list. I was trying to do everything at once and not doing anything well. By setting a goal I was deciding what was most important I could put many items on the backburner and make progress on the things that were important right now. Some of the ‘backburnered’ things got crossed of the list completely. I found out that goal setting was often about saying no to stuff.

7. I was pretty jaded with the whole coaching/personal development scene, if I’m honest.

I think a lot of the personal development ‘industry’ isn’t working very well and I could no longer filter out the useful stuff from the junk. But it is worth panning for a gold nugget or two, keeping things simple, and finding something that works for you.

Q&A 

Q. How do you stay focused?

A. Apparently, there never used to be a plural form of “priority”. Choose one thing to do first and when that’s done, choose the next one. Don’t list every single thing you want and need to do, or try to do it all at once.

I had another breakthrough when I realised I had two types of goals ‘business as usual’ goals (e.g. bookkeeping – had to be done by a certain date, but wasn’t strategic) and strategic, growth-based goals. The business as usual stuff tends to get done anyway because you eventually have clients or HMRC etc breathing down your neck if you don’t  🤣. The strategic stuff is where I procrastinate, talk myself out of it and generally go around in circles unless I have a plan to keep me in line.

Goal setting and perfectionism

Q.  I find it difficult to set goals because the perfectionist mindset is ‘what if I can’t achieve it?’ I am working on ‘good enough’ but it does mean I struggle to set goals, not knowing what I can achieve. Hope that makes sense.

A. Don’t even think about perfect. Just work out one thing you want to have done in the next 3 months and write down the series of steps you need to take to get there. Add a few milestones e.g. what do you need have done by August to fit it all in by September? Then every week check the list and see what needs doing that week. Tick off when done.

By doing the things on the list you’ll realise your plan isn’t quite right anyway, because some things you don’t know until you try them, or you need to take a morning off to get your car MOT’d etc. So adjust the list. No perfection required. 🙂

I found the compass analogy helped me a lot with that. A goal guides you and keeps you going in the right direction. Rather than being something you shoot for and either hit or miss.

Managing the day to day actions

Q. How do you make your goals part of your day-to-day? What do you do to “not forget about them until you realise you’ve forgotten about them”? 🙂

A. I break my them down into tasks (some weeks it all goes wrong, but that’s just life!) and put them in Asana (a project management tool) and add a due date. Every day I look at the calendar in Asana and see what needs doing. Then I check them off when they are done.

Q. Was it a case of building a new habit (checking Asana) that made the biggest difference Helen?

A. No, the goals came first. You have to start with what you’re aiming at then do the software thing after. Otherwise the software just makes it worse. 😂

If you’d like to know more about goal setting or using Asana to manage tasks, Helen is happy to answer questions. Connect with her on LinkedIn or at www.HelenLindop.com