Everyone I know is out there putting their goals for 2009 down on paper (or more likely online on the blogs) and I thought I’d share my thoughts.
Now, the difference with me is you’re not going to get the instant gratification of knowing what my goals actually are. You are going to get my mindset on all my life choices, which I think is a heck of a lot more important.
Let me tell you why.
Everyone this time of year says “I’m gonna do something life changing this year” and lists a number of targets to hit (give up smoking, lose weight, pay off my mortgage, meet Brad Pitt etc). Then people get all disillusioned when they don’t achieve them by the date they set themselves.
To me that’s just setting yourself up to fail.
Don’t get me wrong, I do set dates and tasks for stuff all the time (hey, I’m a project manager, I even have Gantt Charts!). I just think that some things in life shouldn’t be forced and should come at a time when you’re ready to do them.
My way is rather simple. You don’t set the goals to a specific timeframe, you live life by just a couple of questions, and you apply the questions to all which you aim to do.
My two questions are:
1) Will this pay my mortgage and put food on my kids table?
2) Will this make me happy?
If the answer to these questions is ‘Yes’ then I will go ahead and do whatever it is, if the answer is ‘No’ then I wont bother wasting any energy or time on it, because it’s not worth it.
I spent a long time figuring this out, and it works for me.
Before I worked this out I had a life that I wasn’t enjoying one little bit. I worked a stupid amount of hours in a corporate world, came home and was so stressed that I really wasn’t a nice guy. My wife was very understanding as she’d worked in stressed places before, but you can’t really explain to a 4 year old or a 2 year old that you just wanna chill out and not read them a bedtime story.
Then something pretty tragic happened last Christmas which made me take a long hard look at my life. My brother Nick died of a heart attack. He was only 46 and he wasn’t that unhealthy, we just have a history of heart disease in the family (2 Grandfathers & my dad also died of heart attacks in late 40s early 50s).
After a few months of trying to carry on in my corporate world I just came to the conclusion that it simply wasn’t worth it. I want to still be around when my kids are growing up, and I don’t want the time I spend with them to be miserable because I’m stressed 24/7.
So I decided to do something about it, I came up with my 2 questions and I decided to move on.
Now moving on for me and moving on for everyone else is different, we all have different commitments and different responsibilities. I was always worrying about taking the risk of going self employed (or moving jobs for that matter) because it could all go wrong and I need to pay the bills, but in the end I decided that if I didn’t do it then I never would and I asked myself the 2 questions about my current job. It did pay the bills, it didn’t make me happy.
In the end I took the leap, and now I’m immensely happy and I can still pay the bills.
It could all go wrong tomorrow with the way the economy is, but that can happen in any company and not just to the self employed. In fact, one of my previous colleagues emailed me right before the holidays and told me they’ve been put on redundancy notice, so if I had stayed there I would be facing a New Year with no job.
I know that if it does go wrong I will still be happy and will still have my family and friends, and in the end that’s all that matters. Jobs come and go, as does recession and boom times.
In the end, I can always go and work on the bins. After all, I’ll still be happy and it will put food on my kids table.
So my message is simple, don’t beat yourself up if you don’t achieve your 2009 goals by whatever date. Do things which make you happy and put food on the table, you’ve only got 1 life don’t waste energy or time on stuff which doesn’t matter.
Here’s to a prosperous 2009 and whatever 2 questions you come up with!
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