The Goal settings of an addled mind

I always feel it´s a bit daunting to create formal goals, big life-changing goals which in some cases could even affect my salaries at work.

I have been working with teams for many years, setting down short and long-term goals, working as an executive coach, coaching individuals on reaching their goals. Should be a piece of cake for me then, right?

riiiight!

being a highly dysfunctional, functioning attention deficit disorder (ADHD) person I never go from A to B. I constantly discover new and enticing sidestreets which means that I typically start at A, jump to Z, and then do random loops until I happen to meet upon B. Creative and fun but not very organized and the outcome can be rather random.

My solution? Self-knowledge, visualization of goals, and a follow-through method with a dollop of discipline.

ps. Humor is also recommended in instances when I fail spectacularly.

1. Self-Knowledge

Personal Goals have to be just that, personal and relevant and I have found it very useful to create goals by doing some pre-work first, both regarding my values as well as feelings.

My Values

What is the core of me? What do I stand for? What´s important to me? When my values are broken, it instantly feels like something deep within me has gone wrong, it´s almost physical (for me it relates to breaking my bones).

Creativity - Love - Continous Improvements - Transparency

There are various ways to find out your values, it´s good to meet up with an executive coach but there are also various online/offline tools. I love using my cards and have found out that although my goals never change radically between years, I change and mature, life happens, and there might be some life-changing events that affect my core values.

Emotional Introspection

For me, it can be challenging to look back and face complex and difficult emotions but if I´m not honest to myself, the goals will reflect exactly that.

Having reflected on the feelings of the past, it´s easy for me to turn it around and figure out what kind of feelings I need in my near future.

What are the feelings I would use to describe the past months?

What are the feelings that I want to characterize the upcoming ones?

I like using cards (sorry these are in Icelandic) that describe different types of feelings, making it visual but it can also be something as simple as writing it on paper/document or finding an online tool.

2. The Visualization/Creation of the Goals

OK, we are here at last! time to bring out the big guns and create the goals with the assistance of the pre-work I did.

My values (Creativity-Love-Continous Improvements-Transparency) are the natural starting point and in the back of my mind, I focus on the feelings I want in my life. In this instance I wanted my goals to reflect happiness, excitement, connection, pride, and courage.

I like keeping things very visual, using tools like Miro allows me the freedom to be a bit creative and playful, move things around, and group.

For my addled mind, I really like having the goals detailed, relevant (both for my personal and work-life), small, attainable and it should be easy for me to tell if I have achieved the goals or not. I also wanted to keep it lively i.e. have progress on the goals throughout the year (instant gratification) instead of just closing 1-2 goals at the end of the year.

3. Followthrough

It´s one thing to set down goals but then it´s the question of how to keep up the momentum and actually complete them. Revisiting the goals on regular basis is recommended and I decided to split up the goals even further so for the goal of blogging 1x a month I actually created 12 tickets (actions) in a Kanban board, one for each blog post.

4. Adjust and Adapt

Having started working on my goals I soon found out that some needed adjusting. This is where the iterative way of working kicks in. There is no way that I want to continue doing something if I find out, after having started on the journey, that it does not bring me value. I regularly need to take stock and adjust my goals. I like to use the visualization of a sailboat, I might have set off in towards a certain location but when I realize there are cliffs on the horizon, I need to change course to prevent a dastardly crash.

One of my initial goals was to blog internally at work on Confluence 1x a month. Having posted my first blog I felt that I got very little response, Confluence is mostly used for product documentation in my department and is only open for a small number of people in the company. It made me realize that although transparency was the main value I set out to support the blogging, there were some shadow values lurking in the background. My values of Love and Continuous feedback demanded that I shared my thoughts with a larger group of people, I wanted my blogs to be attainable, useful, and even valuable. I also wanted to get feedback and learn more about myself and others through the process of continuous interaction with like-minded people. When I started to do a bit of research I soon found out that many blog hosting sites have a certain format and even ads blinking in your face while you are reading and it made me realized I wanted to be in control of my own Creativity, I furthermore wanted to decide on the design and use only my own pictures and words to express myself. Setting all this up took up more time if I had just continued blogging at the inhouse Confluence page but at the same time, the goal became more valuable to me this way.

5. Did I reach all my goals?

The goals I created in this example were for a whole year, which is a long time period for goals. The longer the time frame, the higher risk of not reaching the initial goals. As discussed in 4. Adjust and Adapt I might have to adjust my goals along the way. Furthermore, a lot of life happens in a year and things out of my control might affect my goal priorities and/or the time I have to focus on them. This does not mean that everything is ruined and I am an utter failure. Remember to show self-care and understanding.

For the milestones and goals you reach, celebrate! 🧡