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During the height of the New Year’s resolution season, I explained that I don’t think traditional goal setting is the most effective way to get where you want to go in life. In my view, traditional goal setting is like using a map to plan your route, and never heading off that route. This can work really well when the road to your destination is straightforward and you don’t have many choices of how to get there.

The problem is that life doesn’t usually work like this. We rarely encounter roads that are free from detours and traffic jams. At certain points, it may be more efficient to detour from your planned route. Maybe you’d find it interesting to take your time on secondary roads rather than speeding by on the Interstate. You may have an opportunity to take a short cut, or you may even decide that you don’t want to go to that destination anymore.

This is why I advocate using a compass, instead of a map. By knowing the general direction you want to go in but not the exact route, you have more flexibility to take those faster or more interesting routes. You may consciously decide to veer off course a little bit, but you’re not lost and you can head back in your desired direction at any time.

Okay, enough with the analogies…

How Does This “Compass” Thing Actually Work?

In a word… theme. Instead of creating painstakingly planned out goals with specific actions, measurable results and hard deadlines, choose one word or short phrase that embodies the theme of what you want to accomplish. As I explained, in relation to my blogging for 2008, I want to focus on Adding Value to people interested in personal and organizational change. There are many ways to do this, but there are also many ways to dink around and not accomplish much of anything as a blogger! Fortunately, because I have my compass point set to “Adding Value” I can ask myself the guiding question, “Does this blogging related activity add value for my audience?” I have done this frequently during the past three months.

Now, to be honest, not everything I’ve done has added value. Sometimes when I asked my guiding question the honest answer was, “No, but it’s fun!” That’s fine with me, so I kept at those things. The good thing is, having the compass to guide me keeps me from getting too far off course. The result is that I’ve done a lot of things that are both fun AND add value, but I didn’t know I was going to do all of these things on January 1. For example, I discovered Utterz and started recording podcasts a few weeks ago. This format makes my site accessible to a wider audience and provides variety to my regular readers. I also had the opportunity to participate in the March 2008 Bloghology group Ebook, which gave me the opportunity to interact with other bloggers and spread my message to a wider audience.

What are the Results? 

Oh, you want numbers? You want proof that this stuff actually works?! Well, okay.

According to Google Analytics, from October 1 through December 31, 2007 this site had 3,202 visits. This number nearly tripled to 8,714 visits from January 1 through March 31, 2008. Somebody (actually a lot of somebodies) took some time out of their lives to pop by humble blog. That’s pretty good growth and I’m happy with it. What makes me even happier is that the traffic came from lots of sources and was spread around to lots of posts.

Here are my top 5 most read posts:

1. Having Goals Will Make You Blind!
2. What Is Adaptive Capacity?
3. How to Do Scenario Planning
4. 7 Things to NOT Do If You Have Seasonal Affective Disorder
5. My 4 Hour Workweek: I Get My VAs For Free (actually the whole series did really well)

I also got a good amount of traffic through my forum and blog commenting participation. For example, I got over 500 visitors from Zen Habits, a blog that I comment on frequently. This shows me that I’m adding value in those communities and drawing visitors to my own blog community. That makes me happy

I hope this post has persuaded you to give the Compass method of goal setting a try in your life. Just start with a small area where you want to accomplish something in the near future and see what happens. And as always, if you’ve had experiences with this method, please share them in the comments.

Photo by… Oh dear, I don’t remember where I got this one. If this photo is yours, please email maria (at) neverthesamerivertwice (dot) com and I will give you due credit!

In 2008, what will your path look like?

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This is the time of year when we all sit around and think about ways that we can torture ourselves over the next twelve months in the hope that our suffering, guilt, pain and knee injuries can somehow leave us better in December than we are today. The impetus for this cycle usually begins with a New Year’s Resolution, but it could also be called a Goal. In this post, I’ll argue that traditional goals aren’t the only path to a happy and rewarding life.

S.M.A.R.T. is No Way to Go Through Life, Son
All the traditional advice about self improvement and goal setting teaches that we should set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound (S.M.A.R.T.) to be optimally successful. In this line a thinking, it’s bad to have a resolution to be more physically fit this year. A great resolution would be, “I want to complete a 5K running race in under 25 minutes by June this year.”

This is all well and good for things that are simple in concept and easy to quantify, but I think this way of formulating goals really misses out on a key point: Humans aren’t good at figuring out what specific actions will make them happy.

I’m sure if you think about it hard enough, you can come up with the name of a person that you know who set very specific goals, worked toward them relentlessly, achieved those goals, and is completely and utterly miserable because of it. In my experience, there’s one in every family (Hi, cuz)

It seems to me that we are pretty good at figuring out what Feels Good, but not at identifying the actions that will get us to those feelings. When we become hell-bent on their being One Best Way to achieve our goals, we become blind to other paths and choices that may be more efficient, pleasurable or accessible.

That’s why we need to be more nimble in our planning.

The Compass Approach
Being nimble is the whole idea behind the Compass, Not a Map approach to life planning. By choosing a direction to travel in, but not a specific path to take, you leave many options open and have the ability to adapt as circumstances shift around you.

For example, you may decide that you want to become an expert in Information Technology. At this point in time, one programming language may be preeminent in your chosen field, but we all know that code comes and goes. As you work in the direction of your dream, you can choose the specific tools and routes that are best suited to the moment without locking yourself into one confined area.

By using the Compass Approach, you keep your eyes open to the world and are better able to accept opportunities as they come. You are also able to recognize when a slight shift in direction might actually be the crooked path that is faster than the straight line.

An Example From My Life
Just two days ago, I was writing about my image for the future year and a specific step that I want to take this month to get closer to that image. What I didn’t write about was several more steps that I charted out on a long car ride. Without even realizing it, I had locked myself into a pretty rigid schedule for the next month. All of the activities that I pre-selected were good and helpful, but they didn’t leave me any room to be nimble.

Well, another opportunity has presented itself and I’ve had to readjust my plans. This is a move that has the potential to move me along in the direction of adding more value to my blog, but it does so in a different way than I had envisioned. I don’t think it will affect my Sunday afternoon planning sessions, but it will probably interfere with some of the other activities I sketched out, so they will have to go if necessary.

Isn’t it great how life teaches us exactly what we need to learn?

Have you ever had the opportunity to learn to be nimble because life brought you new opportunities? Take a moment to share your story in the comments.

Photos courtesy of Bluedaisy and Weirdvis. As always, credit for Compass, Not a Map goes to Stephen Shapiro and his awesome book, Goal-Free Living.