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If people are not laughing at your goals, your goals are too small.’

Azim Premji   

Today’s inspiration is derived from a beautiful quote by Azim Premji about goals and their influence on us. In particular, I would like to highlight the impact of small goals and their detrimental effect on us. You might recall that we very recently talked about Building your Dream for a passionate approach. It was not only about just romanticizing about the dream but breaking it down into achievable goals.  

This article takes a different stance in the view that it differentiates the To Do list vs Goals. As a part of management training, one of the first things taught to us was about goal setting. The rule of thumb is “Goals should neither be too small nor too large”. Let me elaborate that a bit further 

• If the goals are too small – they are very easy. As a result of this, you are only channeling or challenging a small part of someone’s potential 
• If the goals are too big, you are creating a belief that the goal is impossible. In other words, if something is not going to be successful – why bother trying?  

You can see why both these approaches can be detrimental to goal setting. In such a scenario, how does one balance between small goals vs motivational goals?  

Evaluating your goal 

It might sound simple, but the rule of thumb talks about BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goals. By definition, these goals should be large and to an extent outrageous too. We can come back and argue the realistic side slightly later.  

Stay with me for a moment please. The question to ask is  

• What do you want to achieve this year? And we don’t need to go into the details of what all you need to do to achieve it. That comes much later. At this point, the question is just about what you want to do.  
• Why? – This is one question which most people don’t ask you. After all, it is a personal story right. But I think this is one of the most important things. Your WHY Defines the motivation to achieve something. After all, this is the very reason you want to do something right. If the reasons are strong enough, there are plenty of ways you can get to the goal  
• Does this goal excite you? Does it give you enough motivation to get out of the bed and make some changes? It doesn’t need to be sacrifices but something that juices you up. Forget reality, forget practicality for the time being. Does this goal make you feel accomplished. 

Remember, all through this process, we are only talking about your BHAGs – Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Don’t settle down for anything less than that. If you are doing that, perhaps you are not being fair on yourself. Dream this goal first, build your dream – we can later split this out into achievable steps. The HOW comes later.  

If Goals are not big enough, are we being fair on ourselves?

Do these goals excite you and make you want to go beyond limitations? If not, do they qualify to be goals or just items in your To Do List?

The last thing we want is to do significantly less and be unfair to our capabilities. It is better to shoot at the stars and land at the moon!

Making Small Goals from your BHAGs 

Now, this indeed is a very important step. You’ve done the important piece of mapping out your goal and even evaluating it. If it is exciting and passionate enough, we can step into the world of breaking it down further.  

After all, magic only happens in movies right? I can’t dream of success in a day or two, I will need to work for it. And these small goals precisely help you get there.  

Splitting your goals

• You might have heard of the famous metric – SMART goals. Simply put these are : Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Bound.  
• Can you break down your large goal into a number of SMART Goals? Again, this is about the small goals and aligning them with the BHAGs. You can’t just stick a motivational poster in your room and assume things will work. We’ve got the fun job of making them work!  

One of the most important elements of this is having it time bound. If you have broken it down sufficiently, thought about it – you at-least have a plan of getting there. I am absolutely certain that plans will change mid way.  

Listening to Feedback 

This is where small goals are less important than the big ones. You can’t be tightly wound to your plans. We often talk about taking feedback from our circumstances.  

In the end, you just want to achieve the final goal. The path might change a few times. In fact, it is expected that the path changes. You just have to be agile enough to respond to the feedback and change. Be cautious however to separate the noise out from Feedback. After all, your actions are very important to define the change you need.  

You cannot sacrifice the BHAG just for a few dents or noises in your way.

It is of utmost importance to be able to separate the feedback from noise. Not all feedback is constructive which is where you will need to use your best judgement to make sense of the information around you.

The last thing you’d want to do is to be derailed into a different line of action which adversely impacts your goals

Vision Vs Small Goals 

I do appreciate the quote talks about size of a goal being small vs inspirational. We did cover this in the first point about BHAGs. I don’t want to be repeating a point to bore you out.  

The key differentiator for me is between identifying small goals from your BHAGs and making them work for you. Our time is very precious to be spending on things which are less important or impactful. Time is the greatest leveler. If there’s one resource equal amongst all of us – it is time.  

If we spend this time not motivating ourselves sufficiently, we are rather being very unfair on ourselves.  

With that in mind – do have a think – whether it is worth wasting your time on small goals which don’t get you anywhere or the small goals which lead you to the vision. After all, everything starts from that one grand vision, dream and desire to keep the motivation going.  

References:

Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons –

Quote Reference: Good Reads, Azim Premji Quotes