Unsticking Sticky Goals

Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago at 1:00 am. 0 comments

How many times have you set a goal that you thought was absolutely amazing, only to stall out half way towards completion? For example, you may have decided to increase the amount of RSS subscribers to your website by 1,000 in two months, but it’s been a month and a half and you’ve only got 700 subscribers. What do you do? You don’t want to abandon your goal, but you aren’t necessarily satisfied with your current results. You know in your heart you can do better!

Situations like these are what I like to call “sticky goals“. You literally become stuck somewhere on your path towards goal completion - it’s almost like your goal needs an energy drink! In a situation where you have a sticky goal that is in desperate need of some CPR, I use a technique that’s fairly simple: I brainstorm ideas that I know could completely exceed my goal.

Brainstorm more ideas for above and beyond goal completion

Notice my choice of words - “completely exceed my goal”, “above and beyond goal completion”. The solutions you come up to complete your goals are directly proportional to the questions you ask yourself on how to complete said goals. For example, suppose you ask yourself “How can I squeeze two extra minutes in my day?” You’d tell yourself how easy of a question it is - you could leave two minutes later to work, wake up two minutes earlier, take two minutes off of your daily shower, and so on. Now suppose you ask yourself “How can I add fifteen minutes in my day?” It’s a tricker question, but I’m sure you could think of some great solutions. Finally, imagine asking yourself “How could I add an hour in my day?” Whoops! Now you’re pushing your mental capacity. An hour is a lot of time - it just doesn’t come from nowhere. You’ll have to do some out-of-the-box thinking. What activities could you cut corners and free up some extra time with? What can you completely cut out of your daily schedule?

Goal brainstorming falls into the same category. Too often a person will have a goal where they need to do out-of-the-box thinking, but they ask themselves simple questions. They want to add an hour to their day, but they instead ask themselves “How can I squeeze two extra minutes in my mornings?” These people will get solutions, of course, but the answers won’t lead to the desired outcome they were hoping for. You see small thinking all of the time with bloggers. They want to know “How can I get 1,000 visitors to my website?” but they’ll ask themselves “How can I get 10 new visitors to see my product?” Ask small questions, get small answers. Ask big questions, get big answers.

You can use this type of thinking in a variety of settings:

• You want to increase something by X amount (subscribers, sales)
• You want to make a product go above and beyond expectations (designing a website)
• You want to present something that people will be floored with (a presentation)

Don’t ask yourself how to merely complete the goal - ask yourself what you could do to make the goal an absolute, outright success if you had to complete your goal at all costs. Sometimes the best answers are created by flamboyant thinking. Part of the reason your goal is stalling out might very well be because you aren’t thinking big enough!