Don’t Bog Yourself Down with Too Many Goals
In the corporate world — and our culture more broadly — there’s always a push to do more, and do it quickly. The author recommends taking a step back, slowing down, and choosing one goal to focus on. She offers four steps for choosing the right one: 1) Make sure your goal is aligned with the strategic vision for your company. 2) Create a “goal timeline.” 3) Identify a “keystone goal.” 4) Force yourself to work towards the goal for a predetermined amount of time.
Most of us understand the peril of adopting too many goals at once, which makes it unlikely we’ll be able to make meaningful progress on any of them. But, recognizing that we have to prioritize, how can we determine which goal is the right one to focus on? Here are four steps to help you identify where your efforts will be most strategic, and how to maximize the chances they’ll bear fruit.
If you’re an employee (at any level), the first step in goal-setting is to ask your boss directly for their feedback: What do you think is the most important goal I can be working on this year? At a minimum, you’ll be focusing on what matters to them, which is useful when it comes to building political capital. And if your boss has solid judgment and a holistic view of company operations, they can often steer you to focus on initiatives that are strategically relevant and will gain you positive attention more broadly in the company.
If you’re the company leader, look at your multi-year strategy and work backwards. If your primary objective for the next three years is growing your B2B sales, your goal for this year should almost certainly advance that somehow — for instance, through building relationships with potential customers or pilot testing a new offering that would appeal to the B2B market.
If you’re choosing between equally compelling ways to achieve your long-term vision, the next step is putting them in chronological order to determine their optimal sequence. Think about your longer-term (say, three to five-year) plans and make a list of what you’ll need to have in place in order to accomplish them (skills, knowledge, connections, assets, etc.). For instance, I decided in 2013 that I wanted to learn about creating online courses. My goal that year wasn’t to create an actual course, however. That would have been rushing the process — as many do — and would have led to a less successful outcome. I realized that in order to launch a course effectively, I’d first need to:
Placed onto a timeline, my schedule of goals looked like this:
It took a full three years, but following a logical sequence of steps ensured that I built the knowledge and skills I needed in the right order, so I didn’t have to “double back” later. For instance, many online course creators build high-quality offerings, only to discover they have no one to sell them to. They have to go back and focus on audience building, while their material sits on a shelf and risks becoming out of date.
It’s often possible to identify one goal that, if accomplished, makes everything else easier or more attainable. For instance, writing for high-profile publications will help you generate more consulting business, but also more speaking opportunities and more book sales, because people will regularly be reminded of you and your ideas (and you’ll have the social proof from the brand affiliation). Thus, that may be a more efficient goal to focus on initially, rather than simply “grow my speaking business,” because it enables you to accomplish multiple “subsidiary goals” at once.
A common challenge among my high-level coaching clients is the concern — from watching successful colleagues with different strategies — that they’re not doing enough, or not doing the right things. (“Do I need a TikTok strategy?!”) Left unchecked, this can create a “churn and burn” phenomenon where you’re not taking action for long enough to show results, even though they would have come with a bit more time and focus. That’s why it’s essential to cultivate “willful myopia” and force yourself to focus on your goal for a set period of time. (I suggest at least six months.)
In the corporate world — and our culture more broadly — there’s always a push to do more, and do it quickly. But by taking a step back to evaluate your goals and determine which is most important to focus on right now, you can make targeted, demonstrable progress that facilitates your long-term ambitions.
Dorie Clark is a marketing strategist and professional speaker who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She is the author of Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out. You can receive her free Recognized Expert self-assessment.
Don’t Bog Yourself Down with Too Many Goals
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