4 New Ways to Set Goals: From Anti-Goals to Micro Goals

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You know what it’s like with New Year’s resolutions. Come the new year, we have the best of intentions, but a few weeks in our enthusiasm begins to wane. We choose to do other things with our time and promise we’ll do better next week, next month… or next year.

There is an abundance of advice out there surrounding goal setting. Much of it centres around acronyms like ‘FAST,’ ‘SMART,’ or even ‘OKRs.’

‘SMART’ goals not working for you? Perhaps it’s time for a change. Set anti-goals and micro-goals instead.

Today, we’ll take you through other ways you can go about setting goals that may prove more efficacious, despite being unconventional.

Let’s get into it.

Anti-Goals and How to Set Them

This involves imagining the worst-case scenario, then setting yourself rules you must follow to avoid it. For example, if you wish to avoid long days that are chock full of meetings, one of your anti-goals might be to never schedule a meeting to solve an issue that can be addressed via email or through a quick ll.

The point of anti-goals is to force us to ask ourselves how our actions help create undesirable situations. It works because it makes you tie anti-goals to aspects of your life.

Follow these three steps to create anti-goals and make them work for you. This one is for work-related anti-goals, but you could do this for any other area of your life.

• Create two columns on a piece of blank paper.
• List between 3 and 10 things you’re dissatisfied with in the workplace on the left.
• Use the right-hand column to create an anti-goal for each of the things you’ve written on the right. These can take the form of solutions.

We can use these anti-goals to escape from a life we don’t want and build one that we do. Later we’ll explore how we can use themes to keep us on track. For now, let’s uncover the power of micro-goals.

Use the Power of Micro-Goals

We may have put considerable effort into setting ourselves achievable goals that we can measure. It doesn’t change the fact that they can still seem unattainable at times. That’s where micro-goals come in.

Let’s say you have the ambition to write a 60,000-word novel. You might have the time, imagination, and even the industry and commitment to write it. Nevertheless, it can feel daunting. Luckily, there’s a way to make it seem less scary. Make a micro-goal for yourself that says, write 100 words every day. Suddenly, the task will seem much more doable.

Instead of creating large, over-arching goals and leaving it at that, try coming up with tiny ones that will advance you towards bigger ones. Make your micro-goals tiny steps towards achieving what you want. They should not take over 15-minutes to complete, make them 5-minute tasks where you can. Then all you need to do is repeat them daily and soon enough you will be much further along the road to achieving your goals.

The simplicity of this method often engenders suspicion. Shouldn’t you have to suffer and strive at least a little? Can it really be that easy? Yes, it can.

Here’s why.

Micro-goals help you begin – Often we have no idea how or where to start when we embark on a new project. Micro goals make it crystal clear what you need to do to advance towards your goal, so it’s easy to start.

They help you form a habit – Successfully and repeatedly finishing a specific task will help make doing so a habit. Therefore, you won’t have to rely on motivation to complete the task after a time.

They are process-oriented – When you break down goals into the smallest possible tasks you must do to reach them, your focus shifts from a theoretical aim to concrete actions you can undertake immediately to make progress.

Micro goals can help you exceed your expectations – It will still be a struggle to complete micro-goals at times. On the other hand, there will be days when the micro-goal will feel like a starting point, and you’ll end up doing much more. Don’t expect that you will do more than what is set out by your micro-goal though, otherwise your list of micro-goals will become overwhelming.

We can make continuous improvement by completing micro-goals – You will likely improve by increments if you continue to complete your micro-goals, provided you do so day in, day out.

It’s time to discover the power of theme.

Go for a Theme Over Goals

We all know that having too many goals can leave us feeling stretched and feeling that our attention is divided between too many things. What can we do about it? Select a theme we can focus on for the year ahead. If you want to learn more, for instance, it might be something as simple as reading.

Make it as broad as you like, the idea is to get a trend started, in this case reading more, and to keep it going in the right direction. Being exact doesn’t matter with this approach.

Choosing a yearly theme can:

• Help you view your work and actions through the lens of that theme.
• Help narrow your area of focus.
• Allow space for reflection and time for an annual review which might make it obvious what you need to do, or what changes you need to make in your life to achieve what you wish.

Your theme need not be related to work at all.

Say your chosen theme is The Year of Fun. After all, if you read our post on marvellous mind hacks, you’ll see that putting fun first is one way you can get results fast. Let’s imagine how your behaviour might change if fun was your theme. Here are three examples.

• You might choose to read novels or histories in your downtime instead of trying to learn more about your business.
• Put friends first, and prioritise making time with your family and friends instead of devoting every spare moment to your work.
• Put forward ideas at work for projects you’d like working on.

So, come up with a yearly theme you’re excited about, begin the year with that as your focus and see how you go. Reflect at the end of the year and decide if that theme helped you move towards creating the life you want for yourself.

Next, we come to the most radical goal-setting approach of them all.

Do Not Set Goals at All

Having clear steps set out in front of us in the form of goals and micro goals can cause us to procrastinate. Check out our post on habits and procrastination for more. You can find what makes you happier and brings you satisfaction simply by going with the flow.

Not setting goals can be freeing. Instead of obsessing over goals, we can spend our time fulfilling our passions, creating unforgettable memories, and living our best lives.

Wrapping Up

Regardless of how you decide to set goals, we hope that these newer, more unconventional ways of doing so have given you some inspiration. You don’t need to be dispirited if much-touted methods like ‘SMART’ goals are not helpful, just try creating anti-goals or see if micro-goals can help you build the life you want.

The bravest amongst you might try and go without setting goals for a while to see how it impacts your life. Who knows? You might find dispensing with goals lets you focus on building a better life.

Enjoyed reading this piece? Check out this post on the Ivy Lee productivity system to discover how to keep yourself on track and get more done.