The Anatomy of a Goal That Will Force You to Take Action
Outcome goals are for dreamers. Outcome goals like becoming a millionaire or making an Olympic team look good on paper and are fun to talk about. However, the goal of a goal is not to look good on paper and have fun talking about it. The goal of a goal is to drive action.
Outcome goals are vague when it comes to action. What’s the first, second, and third action one must take on the path to an outcome goal? Unquestionably, there are probably more than a 1000 different ways one could go about achieving any given outcome. When knowing what to do next is this vague, measuring progress is also vague.
Because of this, I prefer process goals over outcome goals. Process goals are those routines and habits one needs to achieve an outcome goal.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to have outcome goals to dream about and serve as motivation. Outcome goals are great tools for helping provide direction, or what I like to call a goal compass. So it can be beneficial to have outcome goals in addition to process goals. However, outcome goals in a vacuum are fairly worthless. As a result, once you set your compass with an outcome goal, the method and means to get to the destination becomes the most important part of the goal setting process. This method and means is defining the process goals.
What’s more, the anatomy of a good process goals is a combination of the following three characteristics:
- Repeatable: a process you can do as a routine either daily, weekly, or something in between
- Measurable: a process that you can track with precise numbers that lead to a visual representation of progress over time.
- Systematic: a process that intertwines with an overall system of proven processes that create synergy.