Instead, ask yourself: at a specific time in the future (say 31 December 2009), what should have happened by then to make you feel you’ve been successful?

My friend – for example – wanted to be rich. So, obviously, one year from now he should have spent less money than he has earned over the course of that year. Same thing for the years afterwards. In time, he’ll become rich.

Turns out he hates the idea of a frugal life, or working harder or be more ambitious to make more money. He abandoned his goal to be rich because he doesn’t like what should happen to become successful.

The best way to find your goals is to understand – or even investigate – what should happen to realize each and every idea you have. Here’s a list of some of my ideas that I could set as goals:

• Live on an isolated island with a beautiful house and many beautiful girls wearing bikinis (or nothing at all).
• Fly helicopters.
• Live with my wife somewhere in Central Asia.
• Live in the United States.
• Travel through the United States.
• Travel along the entire coastline of the UK.
• Do a fast lap on the Nurburgring in the ring taxi (warning: video).
• Get a bachelor degree in psychology.

Notice that none of them are work related. I probably will never accomplish any of these things on my list. But I could achieve maybe one or two of them. If I set them as a goal.

Once I consider setting a specific goal I would need to understand what should happen to become successful. These are called success factors to the goal planning template.

By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.

I can’t imagine there is a simpler, more continuous service available on the web. People love tinyurl, it turns up everywhere in mails, forums and blog posts. People can use the tinyurl service and combine it any way they want. Tinyurl is anxiety-free.

Continuity is key to long-term success. We all depend on and expect continuity from third-parties for achieving our goals.

Others may expect continuity from you for their success. Do you know who they are? Are you familiar with their expectations? Do you know what success means for them?

How many more people would be willing to listen to you if you would tell them how you provide simple, anxiety-free continuity?

Your personal long-term success is affected by the continuity that you seek and provide to yourself. All those books and blogs that encourage you to envision success want to teach you something about continuity.

When it comes to achieving goals continuity is cumulative. You first get your basics right – like time management – and you build on top of that. After a while you act and feel like a different person.

Continuity makes life meaningful.

My personal goal setting experience

Goal setting is actually a fairly easy process. What’s harder is going from setting a goal to achieving that goal. I’m a person that usually has trouble with determining goals. I can’t choose, or sometimes I can’t really determine what’s important and what’s not. I’m a passionate person but sometimes I feel not passionate about things.

Here’s the reason: I have a tendency to not plan my life very well, so when something new pops up on my radar there’s some resistance to recognize its importance. When I would recognize the important tasks and obligations in my life I would at the same time admit I’ve let other important things slip by without paying sufficient attention.

All of this leads to a lot of anxiety and desperation. I can leave my bills unpaid, not empty my mailbox, promise my wife to take care of certain things and then not do them. Needless to say, when this happens it drives her crazy.

So I’ve decided to act and set myself some firm goals: plan to meet my obligations and achieve my personal goals is one of them, achieve some ambitious targets at work is another one.

How I organize myself to set and achieve goals

In the last couple of months I’ve started using the GTD system and used two simple additional tools: the goal planning template (warning: pdf) and the reflective diary tool template (warning: pdf). I use Google notebook to manage my GTD inbox/next actions/projects/someday-maybe lists in order to keep track of my intentions and obligations. This alone has taken away a lot of anxiety.

I’ve also started to use Google bookmarks (my del.icio.us account was overcrowded) and recently cleaned up my Google Reader account and started from scratch (with Google Reader I’ve managed to contain my bad surfing/wasting-time addiction).

In my experience I can’t set goals for myself and take them serious if I don’t use a system like GTD to keep track of my social obligations and personal ambitions. Actually, by using the simple GTD system I feel like it actually does the work for me. Whenever I’m at my desk or at home I just need to look at the relevant section in my GTD next actions list and I know what to do next. Some items still remain on my lists without action from my part but at least then I know what’s happening. I can then think on how to deal with my procrastination of those items.

In general, whenever I have some less flattering thoughts about myself I know it’s not anxiety and I can give myself the time and the space to think about them. It really makes a big difference for me.

Thanks to GTD setting and achieving goals has become much easier. I always keep about 10 printouts of the goal planning template (warning: PDF) at my desk so that whenever I feel like grabbing one I can write down the goal I want to achieve and the success factors that have to be established to achieve that goal. Next I write down the enabling factors that would lead to establishing the success factors I wrote down. Here‘s more details on how to use the goal planning template.

When I’ve determined the enabling factors and I’m sure I want to achieve this goal (other times I’m just dreaming) I copy them into my GTD projects list (under a specific section in that Google notebook) and GTD next actions list (see the GTD weekly review process). I file the filled-in template in my archive as a memorabilia and reminder.

The reflective diary tool template (warning: PDF) is the other cornerstone of my struggle to reconquer my mental self from my chaotic self. Have a look at the template (warning: PDF) to understand how it works (I don’t use the second page of the template, most probably because I don’t understand how to use it). To really evaluate you’ll need to print out the template (warning: PDF) and fill it in for yourself.

I use the reflective diary tool template when I feel there are things going on in my mind – or around me – that I haven’t fully understood or considered yet. I have about 10 printouts of this template on my desk at any given time so I can just grab one and let go of stuff that’s cluttering my mind. I particularly find myself grabbing to it when I’m writing and I’m feeling my mind is wandering off too often.

Whenever I feel this is happening I stop what I’m doing, grab an empty template and just start filling in the boxes like there’s no tomorrow. Two minutes later my mind is typically in a more focused, more understanding mood. I typically find I’m no longer thought-surfing and can more easily focus on the things at hand (I can learn what’s at hand by looking at my GTD next actions list).

More often than not after using the reflective diary tool template I finding myself adding items to the GTD someday/maybe list. To me this is proof that I was thinking/dreaming about things I might want to do instead of focusing on the tasks at hand.

How I use goal setting to make others successful

At times I fill in the goal planning template with other people when I feel there’s lack of direction. I also regularly use 3D: Discover, Design, Do, especially in situations where I need to convince other people to participate or take action. 3D allows me to go from Vision over Clarity to Result.

I’ve created a template document (warning: pdf) where I’ve listed the 10 questions to be filled in. I typically use this template after having filled in the goal planning template, especially when I realize I’ll have to involve other people in my plans.

Convincing other people is an important part of my job. It’s usually not enough to just answer the 10 questions and feel good about myself, not if I want to get things done.

After I’ve identified who can help me (2. Who can help me get there?) I need to understand why they should care (3. Why should they care?). To answer this question I typically do two things: I determine a time frame in (1) and I ask the people I’ve identified in (2) this simple question:

“By <time frame>, what should have happened to make you feel you’ve been successful in <1. What do I want>?”

Their answer – their success factors – will help me understand whether they care – or should care – or not about what I want to achieve.

3D reminds me of the definition of leadership used by positive psychology (warning: video):

Encouraging a group of which one is member to get things done and at the same time maintain good relations within the group.

Be sure to watch the positive psychology video.