that I had just spent a year being really good at what I was already doing. However, I was still basically in the same place as I was a year before. I hadn't moved to my dream home, the IT environment I managed hadn't really changed, and I was no closer to dating a porn star. I was spinning my wheels.
The truth is that you will achieve more if you set goals. Studies have found that successful people set goals and work toward them. Recent studies have also found that most unsuccessful people think that if they don't do anything, opportunities will still present themselves. In other words, unsuccessful people hope to be lucky. Hard work beats luck. Friends have told me that chess is a game of luck: the more they practice, the luckier they get. Success is the same way.
However, I'm intrigued by evidence that setting a goal without working toward it is better than not setting goals at all. This makes sense when you think about it. If you haven't determined what your goals are, you can't spot the few opportunities that do cross your path by chance. Suppose your boss asks your team if anyone would like to help planning next year's budget. That sounds like a lot of work with no reward. I'd completely understand if you wanted to avoid it. However, if you had determined that one of your goals was to be promoted to team leader, you would see this as an opportunity to be involved in the long-range planning for the group. If your goal was to move into management, you might see this as an opportunity to see how the budget process works to better prepare you for management. Alternatively, if your goal is to stay technical and prevent any effort by others to promote you into management, this is also an opportunity: it's an opportunity to not accidentally raise your hand! (I've seen too many good technical people accidentally fall into management against their will.)
The techniques covered so far in this book are excellent for getting all those little things done and getting through your day, but what about the big things that take years to achieve?
Begin with the end in mind by asking the big questions:
What do I want my IT organization to be like two years from now?
What do I want to have accomplished in my career five years from now?
Where do I want to be socially and financially 10 years from now?
What do I want my life to be like when I retire?
The technique here is very simple. You're going to figure out your goals, prioritize them, then work out the steps that will help you reach those goals. Then, you'll turn those steps into to do items and sprinkle them throughout your calendar.
Maybe this is all coming too fast. You're drowning in an endless sea of time management troubles. That's OK. Skim this chapter now, and reread this chapter when you feel you've graduated from the basics.
The Secret Trick
The big secret is to write down your goals. When they are in your head, they aren't as fleshed out as you think they are. They are nebulous. They can't be evaluated, shared with others, or worked on.
The process of writing them down forces you to make them concrete. It's also a lot easier to prioritize a list that is written down.
Written goals can be shared with others. If you have a significant other, you can share your goals with him or her and discuss them. We forget that our loved ones aren't mindreaders. By sharing our goals, we get support and a reality check. We are more likely to achieve a goal if we have told others about it. There's something about telling someone our goals that motivates us to act on them.
It is easy to accidentally write vague goals. You can make a goal significantly more concrete by answering these questions in each goal statement:
Everyone forgets the when. It's easy to never begin if you don't set a deadline. In the chapter opening, I was careful to include a specific deadline for each goal.
It is also important that goals are measurable. The goals in the chapter opening were mostly measurable. 'Living comfortably' could be more specific: a retirement income of 70 percent my current income. Learning 'more' about Linux kernel internals isn't measurable. I can fix that by adding a milestone to be achieved, like writing a simple device driver.
Tip
There are other people you might want to consult when setting
