Three steps to achieve your goal: goal setting, path design, and capability planning

How to set goals in the workplace and plan a reasonable route to achieve them? The author of this article introduces several small suggestions on workplace planning and goal achievement, points out several blind spots that are easily overlooked in goal setting, and helps you better set and achieve goals in the workplace. I hope it will be helpful to you.

I haven't updated for a long time. I want to ask how everyone is doing. Today I want to share with you the topic of "Goal Achievement". I hope it will inspire you.

Although the epidemic has ended overall and the lockdown was lifted last year, the impact of the epidemic has not ended. Last year, I was locked down in Beicai for nearly half a year. Some of the clients I had originally negotiated with were also unable to survive under the impact of the epidemic. Major companies are also working hard to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Even in 2023, it has not returned to the past as expected, and it has not been thriving all the way.

What I saw was a bunch of people who were unemployed, some of whom continued to look for jobs, while others took this opportunity to try freelance work.

As someone who has been freelancing for nearly 4 years, I have witnessed the ups and downs of many people in my circle of friends.

Some people are full of confidence at the beginning, but end up leaving heartbroken and sad in the end.

Some people repositioned themselves, returned to the workplace, and found their goals.

Most people are struggling and at a loss and have no choice but to lie down.

It is impossible to roll it up, and it is impossible to lie flat. This is the current situation of most of us.

But no matter whether we are "rolling" or "lying down", we are all eager to break through and start again.

Now that we have to start again, what should we do? What problems do we need to solve?

1. Set a worthwhile goal
2. Simple executable path
3. Make sure you have enough capacity to reach

1. Establish valuable goal planning

A voyage without a destination is just a wandering, it cannot take you anywhere far away. A wrong map cannot lead you to treasure.

If I ask everyone a question: What is your goal?

Maybe you will give me many answers: such as earning tens of thousands a month, getting a promotion and a raise, or doing a popular and screen-sweeping event.

So if I continue to ask: What have you done to achieve this goal?

Maybe you can't answer this question, or you haven't even thought about it carefully.

We pay much more attention to our current situation than to the future. We can neither figure out the focus of the moment nor where to go.

This is also the main reason why we are trapped in the busyness and mediocrity of our current life and struggle in trivialities and entanglements.

Since setting goals is so important, is there anything we should pay attention to?

1. The achievement of your goal depends on whether you find the right value point (you can’t find the treasure you want in the garbage dump)

When we set our goal to earn 50,000 yuan a month, the normal thought process would be, how can I be worth 50,000 yuan?

This kind of thinking will easily lead us to an extreme, and a goal-oriented flattering logic will appear in our hearts. It is similar to the mentality of "I am not good enough, so I am not worthy of being loved" and "I have a poor foundation and do not deserve this goal." When we face criticism and ridicule, our mentality is very easy to collapse.

We really need to look at our goals objectively! If you only measure the future with the present, then with your current visibility, it is impossible to realize where the opportunity to earn 50,000 yuan a month is.

In this case, some sickles take this opportunity to tell you that you can make 50,000 yuan a month by doing this or that, and then summarize a lot of sideline channels that they have not even tried. Then, you become the target of harvesting.

We need to understand one thing: if you want to earn 50,000 yuan a month, who will pay for it? Who has the ability to pay? What are his needs?

I just returned to Xiamen at the end of last year and discussed a topic with my friends: If I return to Xiamen to look for a job and want to earn tens of thousands of yuan like I did in Shanghai, how should I choose?

My friend answered me: If you go to a small company with less than 20 people, it is almost impossible to earn tens of thousands of yuan a month. For a company of this size, the job level distribution must be very simple, basically a three-tier structure of grassroots employees + grassroots management + bosses and partners.

After the board of directors and partners take the lion's share, the remaining funds go to two places: one is to pay the salaries of grassroots employees, and the other is to maintain the operation of the company. So, if you are caught in the middle, is it possible to get this amount? Obviously not. Of course, if you accompany the company to grow and develop, there is this opportunity.

You are the first person responsible for your goal. What you need to do is to find the value points that can help you achieve your goal. Only there can you achieve your desired goal. For example, a position that can make you 50,000 yuan a month must be at least a director. In addition to the position, we also need to look at the industry. In some traditional industries, even the general manager’s annual salary is difficult to exceed 400,000 yuan, which is still 200,000 yuan away from a monthly income of 50,000 yuan.

So if we want to achieve a monthly income of 50,000, we need to lock in industries, companies, and positions that can provide this money, and then plot our own path to achieve it.

Only when the overall probability is high enough and the opportunity is big enough can our goal be achieved. This is what I want to share with you.

2. The premise of being able to make a choice is to have a good option (both chocolate-flavored shit and shit-flavored chocolate are unpalatable)

My good friend Mian Mian once said: The premise of decision-making is to create enough good options. Heaven and hell, or a bowl with cracks and a bowl with missing corners, are not choices. In my eyes, this is a choice between chocolate-flavored shit and shit-flavored chocolate.

There are two jobs in front of you, one pays 6,000 yuan and the other pays 8,000 yuan. Maybe the extra 2,000 yuan means that your quality of life will be improved to a certain extent, but it does not help your goals at all, so it is not a choice.

Of course, you might ask what if there are no other options? Either you have the ability to create new options, or you choose one that you can accept reluctantly.

But we accept it temporarily in order to buy time for cultivation; we still have to head towards our goal in the end.

In simple terms, if you are currently in a position that you don’t like so much, and you cannot switch to the position you want for the time being, what you need to do is to lock in your goal, actively cultivate related abilities, and wait for the opportunity to come, so that you can seize it in time. Maybe the goal is sometimes far away, and we also need to go through a turn to get back to the main line.

3. Repeatedly setting the same goal (the same method and path will not lead you to your goal)

When setting goals, we have a very common mistake - setting the same goal repeatedly. If you didn't complete it last month, set it again next month. If you didn't complete it last year, set it again this year. Unless you have a genetic mutation, repeating the path will only lead to the same result. This situation needs to be changed when reviewing.

Some people may say, I think there is nothing wrong with my path to achievement, it’s just that my execution ability has not kept up.

What I want to say here is:

Whatever state you are in now, you will most likely be in the same state in the future. There is almost no sudden change, and we will not update the version all at once to become the self who achieves the goal. Most of the time, it happens unconsciously and quietly. Only when you look back will you find that you have changed a lot, and this is the truth.

I believe that overall change comes from small changes, rather than being achieved all at once. We need to focus on small details and gradually promote change. Therefore, when setting goals, we need to consider ourselves as variables. At the same time, the realization of goals is also a slow process. The accumulation of qualitative changes is inseparable from quantitative changes.

2. Set a simple executable path

1. Too complex a path is difficult to execute

At the beginning of the year, I mentioned in the member group that I should set new year keywords for myself. So I listed the following eight keywords for myself.

After I finished the list, I found that there were so many things to do around the keywords that I couldn't tell the priorities. When there were too many threads, I was faced with the dilemma of where to start and when to start. Anxiety made me close the webpage and force myself to calm down.

After a few days of calming down, I finally got over my anxiety and found a solution: think about things that are strongly related to the output results and the achievement of goals. If you can only choose 3 things to give the highest priority, what would they be?

I understand it according to the formula: GMV=traffic*conversion rate*average order value.

• The work related to traffic and conversion is: content input and content output
• The job related to the transaction is: My service/product

That is to say, I don’t just take action around the previous keywords, but I turn my work into projects. Just doing these three projects well can have a greater impact on my goals.

Maybe you will have doubts when you see this table. Does everything mentioned in the table have to be done every day?

Actually not, because I can’t be that efficient or have that much energy. But everything I do has a positive meaning for the next thing, so the whole module is being promoted. Even if I can’t achieve the goal I set, I will be infinitely close.

In my friend A Zhao’s live broadcast room, he said something that left a deep impression on me: The antonym of success is not failure, but inaction.

It is particularly important to make the path simple and executable. If the path is particularly complex, it means that we will have a lot of focus and a lot of areas that need to be evaluated, so you will have less time to act, and if the execution is not in place, you will inevitably not get any results.

2. From big moves to small things

In the past, when I was planning, I would break down the logic of a task and then complete each milestone in a concentrated period of time. This was both complicated and difficult to execute.

So I no longer plan things to have certain results by a certain time point. Instead, I break down the goals and necessary actions, and no longer focus on the goals, but only on whether I am executing them effectively.

My understanding is that how you spend a day, a week, or a year will determine your results. So don't think too far ahead, just quietly do a single-day time model or a weekly time model. Let achieving your goals happen in your daily life, instead of putting too many shackles on yourself.

We have a weaker control over long-term plans, but a stronger control over short-term plans. Once you have a clear direction, the focus is on effective execution. We need to put our efforts in the right places. Don't always think about "iteration" plans during execution. Do one thing at a time and do it beautifully, and you will be closer to your goal.

3. Ability to achieve goals

1. Assess yourself accurately/avoid working too hard on unimportant things

Even if we have a clear path to achieve our goals, we still need to have sufficient capabilities to ensure that our goals are achieved. In the process of working backwards from our goals, we need to accurately assess the capabilities we need to have.

Is 60 points enough, or do we need to reach 80 or 90 points? We need a roughly clear standard. If you require yourself to achieve 100 points in every ability, you will not only be very tired, but also give up easily. Everything revolves around the goal.

So how do you measure it? The simple way to judge is to see whether you have clear execution steps and execution standards for this ability or just a vague feeling. Only by figuring this out can I know where I need to improve.

We need to realize that energy and concentration are consumables and should be used wisely. Don't put too much effort into unimportant things.

2. Consider yourself as a human variable

After we set the goal, you have broken down the path, which is theoretically achievable. But you also need to take yourself into account as a "human" variable.

What does it mean?

In theory, I can plan what I want to do every day, but in reality, I may encounter many things. Sometimes I want to give up, sometimes I am in a bad mood, and sometimes I get sick. These are all very likely to happen. Even machines sometimes crash due to overload and heat, not to mention us as humans.

We need to make some time and space to take these into consideration and make the entire plan more "flexible".

Don't think of yourself as a machine, but think of yourself as a human being.

Even if we leave ourselves some time and space, we still need to use quantitative management to help ourselves adjust. You can record your own completion status to see what state you are in during a cycle. If you can understand your own rules later and make adjustments based on these rules, I believe it will be easier to achieve your goals.

3. Take advantage of the “spur of the moment”

When you need to do too much mental preparation when doing something, it means that it is likely that you will find it difficult to complete these things well.

But we also have moments of "inspiration" when we are more willing to try many things, so taking action at this time consumes less willpower. By seizing this moment, we can do some small experiments and gain some small experience to store future abilities, which may come into play when you do something later.

Some of the things I did on a whim before also paved the way for some of the things I designed in the member group, and some of the results were actually quite good. So I think this is very important and should not be easily ignored.

Author: Zhizhong

Source: WeChat official account: "Shixian Operation (ID: yyshixian)"