This link has been bookmarked by 45 people . It was first bookmarked on 28 Sep 2006, by a77ila.
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05 Dec 07
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18 Sep 07
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I felt sluggish and unmotivated to do anything because my goals were too precious to actually make progress on.
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ense of relief from removing goals that I didn't want to do, but merely wanted to want to do
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The sign of an achievable goal is that it wants to be worked on immediately.
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tips for making achievable goals
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12 Jun 07
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02 Jan 07
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01 Jan 07
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1. Entertain a mix of ambitious and silly goals. Goals should vary from ambitious (write a book, be financially independent) to silly (consider getting a pet fox, bet $100 on a rock paper scissors match) to novelty-seeking (try a new restaurant every week, go to the opera) to personal (fall madly in love, lose 10 pounds) to world-improving (convert to green energy, give 10% to charity) to educational (learn Italian, read a book a week). Marking off a few silly or easier goals is a good way to build confidence and momentum for larger more ambitious goals. When you've recently gotten rid of your television and spoken in front of a crowd of fifty, it becomes a hundred times easier to pitch your book idea to a publisher, or call someone about a lease on a space for your new business.
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3. Review your list weekly. I review my list every Friday afternoon, forcing myself to add, edit, reword, or remove at least a few goals. Keep it organic and alive. Clear the clutter of goals that are stagnating--having a stagnant or guilt-inducing goal on your list will stink up the whole room if you're not careful. You'll find that just by looking at your list every week that you'll come up with the real reason some of them are there and slowly zero in on the achievable, rewarding, nugget in even the most ambitious and impossible-seeming goals.
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Write a novel. > Improve my writing skills. (Do I want to take a writing course? Do I want to read lots of writing books?) > Write a first draft. (Do I want to sit down and write for an hour every day? Do I want to join NaNoWriMo?)
You might truly want to do something, but if you don't truly want to do the work, then it's a lost cause. If you want to do every step that leads to your ultimate, possibly unachievable goal, then it's worth adding to your list.
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Make a good number of goals... but not too many. Somewhere between twenty and, say, forty-three. Don't try to go to one hundred or else you'll get more caught up in juggling and organizing your list than actually doing them. Don't have fewer than five or else you might get caught with all super ambitious goals. Add goals that are vague dreams that you can't quite articulate yet... let them sit there for a couple weeks as you figure out a more precise goal that it's a placeholder for.
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Also bear in mind G. K. Chesterton's maxim: "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
You may need to be willing to play parts of the Moonlight Sonata on a slightly out of tune upright piano for a few years until you get that chance to sit down in front of the Steinway. I'm not suggesting that you need to modify or diminish your dreams in any way - big dreams are essential.
But I've discovered that being willing to do something badly is, for me, a necessary first step on the path to doing it well. Being willing to fail, and persisting anyway has opened up worlds of possibility... and it has been great fun.
639 days ago I decided I wanted to learn to draw. I didn't draw at all, but I wanted to. People told me that the way to learn to draw was to draw every day, so that's what I did, and then posted the drawings to my blog - every day. And tomorrow night is the opening of a solo show of my work in an alternative space - a goal I would have thought utterly unrealistic two years ago.
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24 Oct 06
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12 Oct 06
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07 Oct 06
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05 Oct 06
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29 Sep 06
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28 Sep 06
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When a bunch of friends first came up with the idea for 43 Things, we each created our own "List of things to do before I die." The goals on my first draft list included bold - and sometimes pretentious - things like "play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on a grand piano," "have a house on the beach," "shave my head," "learn to make a perfect martini," "witness childbirth," and "have my life flash before my eyes." Though I did shave my head (not worth it), my list was almost entirely stagnant for months. I felt sluggish and unmotivated to do anything because my goals were too precious to actually make progress on.
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