257 Why Goals Alone Aren't Enough
Are your goals falling short? In this episode, I reveal why goal setting alone isn't enough and how you can bridge the gap with effective annual planning. Many people mistake goal setting for planning, but I'll show you why that's a recipe for disappointment. Drawing from my experiences with various goal-setting workshops, I’ll highlight the limitations of focusing solely on goals and explain how to create a realistic, actionable plan that aligns with the realities of your life.
In this episode, I cover:
- The misconception of goal setting and pitfalls of goal setting alone
- Combining your goals with realities
- Creating a realistic roadmap to achieve your goals
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Annual planning and goal setting are not the same thing. And if you have been taught that goal setting is actually creating your plans for the upcoming year, or even for any window of time, you have been taught wrong. Well, at the time that this episode is airing Q4 is fast approaching, believe it or not. And so pretty soon we're going to start hearing a lot of people talking about goal setting for the new year, or even potentially just goal setting for Q4. Now today I really want to take a deep dive in making sure you understand the difference between goal setting and planning.
[00:01:01] And I'm going to be talking about it from an annual perspective, because as we are starting to head into the end of 2024, you're going to start hearing a lot about what's getting our plans and our goals together for 2025. Now, unfortunately, goal setting annual goal setting is often taught and talked about in a way that confuses people and leads them to believe that goal setting for the upcoming year is actually creating a plan for the year.
[00:01:31] And I'm here to tell you they are not. The same thing. All right. And it's really important that you understand the difference and how these 2 activities goal setting and annual planning need to work together. If you are serious about actually wanting to make progress on your goals. So, 1st, let's talk about goal setting.
[00:01:54] Now, I have been to. I don't know, countless, countless flavors of goal setting workshops over the course of my life, my career. And I still invest in them because I'm always wanting to see, you know, how are other people talking about goal setting. And here is typically the structure that I see when people have a workshop or any kind of books all around goal setting.
[00:02:17] What they do, and I do a flavor of this myself when I'm talking just specifically about goal setting, is they want you to kind of put all limitations aside, right? Dream big. Think about what are the things that you want to achieve in the upcoming year. Right. So we really just start thinking about, all right, if, if anything were possible, sky's the limit.
[00:02:38] What are my goals for the year? Usually it involves some process of teaching you how to take a bigger goal and break it down into smaller bite sized manageable chunks. Right. So that we can start to see, okay, well, in order to get this goal done, here would be the first step. Here would be the second step.
[00:02:57] Now, unfortunately, this is where it usually ends. Meaning all you're really learning and spending time on is the what, what it is you want to do. And, you know, people are misled into thinking that because they've now been taught how to break it down into bite sized chunks that they're like, oh, okay, I've got the how.
[00:03:23] But 99 percent of the time, you don't have the how when you've just attended a goal setting workshop. And here's why what's happening is you're, you're thinking about all these plans, dreams, ideas, et cetera, in a vacuum, meaning you're not. Incorporating it and marrying it with the realities of, of your life.
[00:03:47] Meaning what is it that is already on your calendar for the upcoming year? What obligations do you already have? So while it feels like, Oh, I've got a plan for the year. I've got these goals that I'm going to work on. And I see I've got these little milestones in place on how to get there. Well, then what happens is.
[00:04:08] You know, January hits or whatever window you've done your goal setting for and the realities of your life kick in with the obligations that you already have with, you know, work conflicts, school conflicts, whatever they are. And all of a sudden, you know, months go by and you're like, I haven't, I haven't even hit that first milestone.
[00:04:30] It's because All you did was goal setting. You didn't do the actual planning on the how, the real tactical how. And this is what annual planning is all about. All right, annual planning is the how. So if you have been doing goal setting in the past, But you haven't gone the next step to do the actual tactical annual planning.
[00:05:00] Well, you're just setting yourself up for disaster or you might be setting yourself up for another window of time where you're like, well, you know, maybe next year will be different. Maybe next time will be better. So let's talk about annual planning and what the differences are with that from just kind of plain vanilla goal setting.
[00:05:20] Annual planning, when done the right way, combines the output of your goal setting workshop, right? Where now we've got, these are the things I really want to do. But then it combines it with your current realities and the more mundane want to's that you may have. Right? So, some examples here. Current realities could be if you've got kids at, you know, school aged kids.
[00:05:50] What's the reality of their school calendar? When do they have long stretches of time off with any jobs that you have? What are current cycles with your job? You know, I have, I have a number of friends that work as, you know, some flavor of accounting or CPA. Well, they need to plan for tax season, right?
[00:06:08] They're probably not going to have a lot of free time there. Do you have quarterly cycles with your job where, you know, there are certain weeks of the quarter where things are really, really intense? Do you have a, you know, are you currently homeschooling and are you certain rhythms there? Then on the more mundane kind of want tos, do you have smaller things that don't typically come up in goal setting workshops?
[00:06:31] Maybe, you know, trips that you're wanting to be taking on small projects around the house that you're wanting to get done. What are the realities of I've had women go through my programs before where they are, you know, they work on farms where they need to know the realities of what does the spring season look like?
[00:06:48] What does the fall season look like? Maybe you run a business as I do, where there are certain events that are very time intensive or require a lot of advanced planning. For example, maybe you make homemade crafts and you go and do a lot of sales in craft fairs in Q4. Well, what are the realities that that imposes upon you over the summer months to get prepped for that, right?
[00:07:15] That's what I mean we need to have a process of creating our annual plan that combines Wow, here are these goals, these dreams that I have for the year and here are the realities of my life for the upcoming year. Now, another way to think about this, and I, I like to use financial analogies a lot. So I think it helps really get that concrete in our heads.
[00:07:41] Let's say you were doing financial planning for the upcoming year and you had a goal of either getting out of debt. Yeah. Or maybe creating a savings account of something that you were saving for this trip that you wanted to be saving for. Well, you wouldn't be able to just say, I want to save 10, 000 for this trip without looking at the realities of how much money is coming in and what expenses do we have that are set in stone, such as maybe a mortgage or gas, electric, you know, phone, et cetera.
[00:08:13] You would need to understand that to be able to figure out exactly how much money can I save for the trip, right? That's what we're doing. When we do annual planning at the end of a good annual planning session, what you should have is a roadmap that you're going to be following over the course of the year that ensures.
[00:08:38] It's that you have realistic goals and shows you how you're going to get there right now. If I were to just do goal setting in a vacuum, I would come up with probably way too many goals that would be realistic for me to achieve in the upcoming year. This is why we take the output from goal setting and that is one of the inputs that goes into our annual planning.
[00:09:07] Now, this is strictly my opinion, but I believe that a lot of people, when they, when they talk about goal setting for the year, they get uncomfortable when we start talking about, okay, let's look at what's realistic here because they don't want you. Kind of limiting yourself with beliefs of what you can't do, and I support that 100%.
[00:09:35] And that's why when I teach annual planning, we actually start with some goal setting processes, because I want you to do that 1st. to keep any beliefs or thoughts that you may have on what isn't possible. We want to put those aside when we do our goal setting, but we do need to go back and visit those when we create our plan for the year to make sure that you are being set up for success.
[00:10:03] All right. So when annual planning is done the right way, again, at the end of it, you're going to have a roadmap for how you're going to navigate the year that includes. All of the goals that you have for yourself, but here's the best part. This road map is actually going to support you when things happen that create a change or create a detour right now.
[00:10:31] Notice I said when things happen, I didn't say if something happens, I firmly believe that everybody over the course of a year is going to have unplanned. Things they didn't know about pop up that are going to make you divert a little bit from your plan. All right. That's just the reality of life, but here's why the annual plan is still going to support you.
[00:10:57] Even if you need to make a detour. Now, I think a lot of us here use our phones for navigation, right? And let's say you have programmed in a destination. Maybe you're going on a really long road trip. I know for instance, in my life, I, I would travel up 95 quite a bit to visit friends and family up north.
[00:11:15] I would program in my destination and If you've ever traveled on I 95, you will relate to this. There is always accidents and things happening. Well, at the beginning of my trip, it would tell me, here's the plan that I have for you on how we're going to get there. But partway through my drive, maybe an accident hits, and suddenly my maps kick in and say, hey, guess what?
[00:11:36] We're going to go this way instead. Now, it's still going to get me to my final destination, but I might have to get there 20 minutes later, and I might have to take a detour that I didn't know about at the beginning of my trip. But if I didn't have the original plan to begin with, I wouldn't even know where the heck I was going and I would be making it up every single step as I went.
[00:12:02] All right, so this is why creating the annual plan supports you all year long, even if and when you need to make changes. Now, if you are starting to realize, hey, you know what, I think I've only been doing goal setting in a vacuum. And maybe I don't know how to create the actual roadmap. For my year that incorporates the realities of my life.
[00:12:25] Well, I have good news for you because at the time you are listening to this podcast is still an opportunity for you to grab a ticket to my annual planning live event. So in October, I am holding plan a Palooza. It's the only time all year long that I. teach exactly how to create an annual plan that is going to support you for all of 2025.
[00:12:49] And Planapalooza actually covers two live days with me. And yes, we record it all. And yes, you get all of the replays. You get the entire annual planning digital workbook and a bonus to our live Q and A session. Now, all of that alone is already worth It's ridiculous amount. But on top of it, I'm bringing in six guest experts this year that you will have access to their pre recorded training all in areas that are going to support you with your annual plan as well.
[00:13:22] So if you want to learn how to create an actual annual plan. And not just do goal setting for the upcoming year, head on over to megansomerill. com forward slash plan and grab your ticket for Planapalooza. And I cannot wait for you to see all of the life changing events that can happen when you get an actual plan in place and not just set goals.
