Twenty Something Sense

I was out of town last week for work in New York and I decided to stay the weekend in Manhattan to catch up with family.  While wondering through the rain on Sunday in SOHO, a Lululemon (yoga company) bag dangling from the handle of a stroller caught my eye.  It was a small black bag that had a bunch of one sentence goals plastered to all sides of it:

“I will have my MBA completed by June, 2013″
“I will climb Kilimanjaro by January, 2011″
“I will get promoted to event manager by March, 2012″
“I will surf every day of the year by May, 2015″

I found this bag very inspirational and it got me back to thinking about how important goal setting is.  If you don’t have any future goals, you are wondering aimlessly today with nowhere to be.  Why do you go to work every day?  Why are you applying to get your MBA?  What are your long-term goals?

It’s important to always be striding for something bigger than the current task or item at hand.  However, setting long-term goals like the ones described above can be difficult, so let’s start with setting short-term goals for now and we can revisit long-term goals in a later post.

Today, tomorrow, or this weekend, find a quiet place where you can be by yourself and do some deep thinking.  Where do you want to be on January 1st, 2010?  Think about both personal and professional goals and be sure that all of the goals you outline are measurable.  I’d suggest having at least three goals and no more than six or seven.  Most importantly you need to actually WRITE THEM DOWN and keep your goals somewhere you can reference them throughout the year.

I blogged about  my five goals for this year back in March and at least once a week I reflect back on my set of goals for the year and make sure I am on target to meet all of them.  I promise you that doing the same will yield you much greater purpose in your day to day life because now everything you do will be in some way helping you reach that ultimate goal.