Sub-Goal Oriented

You’ve heard the idea of being goal-oriented. It helps to have a goal, because it focuses your intentions, and removes your natural barriers to progress.

So let’s explore that a bit.

Maybe your goal is to build an app.
Maybe your goal is to get better at a new skill.
Or maybe your goal is to improve your relationships.

Ah. That last one becomes less… attainable? It gets harder to formulate a goal when it comes to relationships, doesn’t it?

It’s as if the idea of being goal-oriented attracts goal-sized pursuits, and excludes fuzzy, mushy, idealistic pursuits.

But maybe it’s that we learned the wrong thing about goals.

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When you work toward a goal, you can plan forwards and use the imperative verb tense. “I will do”. You can also plan backwards, and use the future perfect tense with a past participle. “I will have done”.

It’s not just a trick that forces you to order your steps in the right order. It also forces you to describe the parts of your goal that matter. It changes the way you think.

“Before the end of the year, I will have… built an app, gotten better at a skill, improved my relationships.”

You can feel the tension this creates. This forces you to think backwards. But it also forces you to integrate these together, somehow. You feel the need to stitch them together.

The trick is that you have to explode these future achievements into sub-goals.

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Let’s look at all the ways you can build an app.

I’ll have built the app myself.
I’ll have hired others to have the app built for me.
I’ll have trained myself on all of the sub-skills needed and built an app for someone else for pay.
I’ll have created an environment with the right conditions where building an app is inevitable.
I’ll have created a practice of writing apps of smaller to bigger sizes.

See how we can go abstract and write more leadership-sounding approaches to building the app? “Created an environment.” “Created a practice.” That last one is a keeper.

Let’s apply this to relationships.

I’ll have improved my relationships.
I’ll have improved my listening skills.
I’ll have created an environment of listening and of truth-sharing.
I’ll have grown as a person so I can be a better contributor to the relationship.

Breaking apart your view of your actual contributions, finding the sub-goal that better fits, that’s the way to integrating your goals so they no longer compete, but instead build one another up.

Before the end of the year, I’ll have…

Grown as a person so I can be a better contributor to my relationships and better able to achieve bigger goals.
Improved my listening skills in particular, which might help me find app ideas from the empathy skills I’ll have earned.
Created an environment where everyone around me is in a good spot so I can be supported in building this other project.
Created a practice where I build apps from the small to the big, for others as a freelancer and for myself.

It takes an exploded view of your goals to be able to formulate more nuanced, more well-anchored goals. It’s worth the effort, and the people around you will have noticed.

Skip straight to writing sub-goals, then stitch them together planning backwards.