How to Accomplish Goals with Less Frustration

I don't know about you, but I decided I wasn't "good enough" relatively early in life.

I thought I didn't know how to accomplish goals.

So I started reading self help books when I was in college.

Unfortunately, they didn't always help me feel better about myself.

You know...the "write your goals down and look at them every day" kind of thing.

The thing was I didn't know anything about how to deal with my lack of confidence, skill, and everything else.

Which for me, unfortunately, was a problem at the time...

But learning how to accomplish goals by writing them down and keeping track of your progress isn't a bad idea.

The key is to have activity goals that will give you the desired result...

It doesn't matter if you do a good job with an activity goal. The point of the goal is to do the activity a certain number of times or for a specific period of time.

You are guaranteed to get better at anything if you practice enough...

Some goals require a lot more practice than others of course, so it's a good idea to know how much time it might require...

For example, a goal like learning to speak French fluently is going to take more than a few hundred hours of practice.

But learning to make chicken and dumplings from scratch won't take that long...

Basically all goals are a matter of learning a skill...

If it were a skill you had already mastered, you probably wouldn't need to set a goal...

It's only the skills that we haven't mastered that we create goals around.

If I keep track of an activity goal that I know will give me what I want in the end...and I continue to practice that activity goal on a regular basis...

I'll accomplish my goal.

In fact, I don't call them goals. I call them "projects".

Most of mine are long term like...

learning a foreign language (or three)... but I do have short term ones sometimes.

I also have mini projects like watching season two of "Bewitched" in German or...

Reading a book about Alsatian Wine in French.

As long as my every day activities are bringing me closer to my "goal" or "main project"...

Everything is good.

I also have deadlines, but they are more like milestones.

For example, I know that I will understand German much better after I spend 1000 hours listening and/or speaking it...

And in 10,000 hours I'll probably be fluent in German.

Something else that helps is that I look for ways to enjoy my projects.

I could get a chart of French or German verbs and review them everyday until I have memorized them.

But I wouldn't enjoy it, so I don't do it.

Reading interesting books and watching TV shows that I like is more fun to me...

So I do that.

Especially with long term goals and projects, it's important to have fun with it.

With my short term projects, I look for ways to make them less painful (if they are imposed by other people).

For example, I hate cleaning the house.

It must be done unfortunately...

So I spent the better part of a year experimenting with how I can remove some of the pain and add in more fun.

If you're wondering...

I didn't succeed with the first experiment, but I have found ways to do it.

Sometimes I have short term goals with imposed deadlines, so I give myself the amount of time I need every day to be ready on time.

At first, this was not so easy to estimate.

So, I started out giving myself double the time that I thought until I learned to estimate more accurately.

And I rarely impose deadlines on myself.

When I start giving myself deadlines, I like to check and see...

Am I doing it because I'm afraid something will or won't happen?

That's usually a good recipe for pain and, at least for me, it's not how to accomplish goals.

From experience, I know that when I impose a deadline on myself out of a need or a fear...

I'll work really hard for a short while until I run out of steam.

And be disappointed with myself and the results (and maybe other people) and give up until I am motivated by fear again.

I have rarely gotten much done that way.

And I have learned that...

Even fifteen minutes a day every day will accomplish much more than the fake deadline fear stress and emergency technique ever will for me.

And it feels way better too!

How to accomplish goals is so much easier this way.

And while we're on the subject of How to Accomplish Goals...

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Looking forward to hearing from you...

Suzanne

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