The power of meaningful goals
We are getting close to the end of the year and a lot of people are already looking at 2023 and are getting ready to start something new. They plan on exercising more, writing a book, spending more time with family and friends, etc. This list is pretty much endless.
“Motivation is what gets you started.
Habit is what keeps you going”
Huston, we have a problem!
What happens quite soon after is that a lot of people quit and wait for the next year to take another shot.
The problem with most of these things is that they are too generic. It’s like reading a horoscope. “You will finally be able to slow down and get rewarder for your hard work”. Everyone reading this will say: “It was about time!”. Not a single person will think: “This seems wrong. I have been slacking off the whole time. Why would anyone reward me?”.
Generic vs. Personal
Goals like: “I want to get in shape”, or “I want to write a book” are goals that could have been written by anyone while “I want to get in shape so I will be able to play with my kids instead of watch them from the couch” or “I want to write a kids book where my granddaughter will fight of a scary dragon” are a lot more personal.
“Goals that are deeply meaningful are very powerful in helping us persist and achieve”
There are numerous examples of how people pushed through hard times because what they wanted to achieve meant something to them.
J. K. Rowling was, famously, rejected by at least 12 different publishers before someone accepted to publish Harry Potter.
Colonel Sanders pitched is, now famous, chicken recipe to well over a 1000 people hoping someone would pick it up and sell it. Not until he decided to go the route of having franchises did his chicken recipes gain traction.
Sir James Dyson was determined to invent a vacuum cleaner which doesn’t need a bag that causes it to lose suction. After more than 5000 prototypes he finally found the right one but no one in the UK wanted to produce it. He had to go to Japan, win design awards, file for US patents and ultimately start producing them in his own company that his idea took off.
All of these stories have one thing in common, After being rejected once, they regrouped, made adjustments and tried again. If that didn’t work, adjust some more and eventually they made it. What they wanted to achieve was far more important than the setbacks they experienced.
Where are you, my goal?
To get to the point where a goal is truly yours, you will have to put your goal through the paces with a simple trick.
Set your goal. Why? Answer why. Why? Answer again. Why? If you can answer again, you have your meaningful goal.
When I started Clubs Craft, I wanted to build a simple sports club management service.
Why?
Because I found it stupid that the club, I was a member of, managed their entire operation with a notebook, an Excel spreadsheet and WhatsApp groups.
Why?
Because we can spend a lot more time doing meaningful stuff in the club than to copy things from paper to computer.
Why?
Because time spent doing mundane and repetitive tasks eats up a lot of time during a year and they would be better spent with members of the club or with our families.
There it is!
I am building Clubs Craft because I believe that there are hundreds, and thousands of hours spent every day by owners of small and medium sized clubs just to keep the club running instead of getting bigger and better.
Now that we are halfway through November and I am 11 months into this project, I can confidently say that I am looking forward to 2023 when we are going to launch this sucker into the world and help out as many people as we can. Was it always fun sitting in the office and writing code that I didn’t know if anyone would care (and to some extent I still don’t know now)? Of course not! But I really wanted to make a difference and help out clubs be more efficient.
If I can turn this into a business with a steady income that would be amazing and I already know the next steps if that happens (I’ll dive about this maybe at some other time :).
Next time we will talk about setting even bigger goals which don’t really have a direction but serve as a north star that guides you along the way.
Until then,
Stay healthy
