Q: Every new year I get inspired about seriously improving my work options, then I get discouraged, and then I get distracted. Is there a different way to approach goal setting that might actually create results by the time next year rolls around?
A: Yes, the technique I teach my clients I call the “Lazy Person’s Guide to Success.” The approach involves looking at the easiest, dumbest thing you can do today that gives you any traction on your goals.
Most of my clients paralyze themselves because they believe they must have grand goals. When my clients stare at these lofty goals like towering mountains lost in the mist, they get overwhelmed and freeze.
The lazy person’s guide means you stop worrying about impressing anyone else with ambitious aims. Instead you aim low and that is the right next step. We can scare ourselves and feel too inadequate for a lofty goal. We are less likely to be intimidated by doing something simple like online research.
Yes, making a list of dumb steps that you can do to move forward is nothing to brag about, but it will generate progress. A huge aspect of success is a willingness to add a half cup of water a day to the huge swimming pool career you’d like to swim in one day. In the long run you have created a huge reservoir of options.
So instead of peering off into some high misty hard to see mountaintop, look down at the ground in front of you. Ideas will come to you. An important easy step most people overlook is just gathering data.
What we don’t know can hurt us in career planning. Without data we make up obstacles that may not even be there. We fail to know what to do next. We also don’t ask enough questions of people who know more than we do.
The beauty and power of research is you have an excuse to get to know people who can start a new professional network. Most people who love what they do also love talking about what they do. Answering simple questions about their work is interesting to them.
Keep in mind that data is neither good nor bad. Data just puts us in touch with reality in a way that reality is our friend not our foe. If we are unwilling to do extensive research, we are setting up the conditions for failure through our ignorance.
Another critical skill is our willingness to try things to find out what works. Even if 99% of what we try fails, we keep learning. By the time we hit the 1% that works, that 1% achievement is generally founded upon the learning we did with all our failures.
Remember each step you take each day will not be transformative, but when you look back at the end of 2020, you’ll likely be quite satisfied at how far you’ve come!
The last word(s)
Q: My career has taken an unexpected turn at the start of the year and I find myself sad rather than excited. I know change should be expected, but is there a reason I feel sad?
A: Yes, all change involves loss of our former habits, schedules and sometimes even former identity. The capacity for graciously grieving the old paves the way for effectively embracing the new.
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(Daneen Skube, Ph.D., executive coach, trainer, therapist and speaker, also appears as the FOX Channel’s “Workplace Guru” each Monday morning. She’s the author of “Interpersonal Edge: Breakthrough Tools for Talking to Anyone, Anywhere, About Anything” (Hay House, 2006). You can contact Dr. Skube at www.interpersonaledge.com or 1420 NW Gilman Blvd., #2845, Issaquah, WA 98027. Sorry, no personal replies.)
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