What images comes to mind when you hear the phrase “strength in numbers”?
Maybe a school of bait fish trying to play the numbers game and avoid being eaten by a predator? Or how about a battle between two sides, hoping for the advantage over their adversary? A “power play” in hockey?
Generally speaking, when there are two sides involved with something, there is definitely a “strength in numbers”, but I’m going to pull a fast one on you and ask you this:
How does the phrase “strength in numbers” come into play when there’s only one side involved? How can it help you?
“Strength in THE Numbers”
Here’s how it can help you.
Whenever you want to set a goal for yourself, it’s always best to set a quantitative goal – with numbers! It may seem obvious to you, but it surprises me how many people don’t grasp the power behind actually setting quantitative goals.
A number can motivate a person because a number has a defined meaning that cannot be changed or misinterpreted. It is what is it. Also, by defining our goals as much as possible (with numbers), we can determine a clearer path to get there.
A blurred goal can only blur ones path to get “there”.
Here’s an example of a goal that I know a lot of my readers have:
I want to have a successful blog.
That’s a great goal to have, but unfortunately it’s also terrible.
Why?
Because what does “successful” really mean? How will you know when you get there? If you leave it at that, chances are you will never feel like you’ve succeeded, no matter what, which doesn’t bode well for our self-esteem.
Here are some other “terrible” goals:
- I want to lose weight.
- I want to save more money.
- I want to have more clients.
- I want a large email list.
Again, please don’t misinterpret my use of the word “terrible” with these goals. I only say they are so because they are not quantified.
Beyond the Numbers
There’s another crucial element to goal setting that we should also never fail to include:
A specific time.
A quantifiable goal is great, but without any set time or date to go along with it, it becomes very easy for us to “put it off” or make excuses that “we’re getting there”, although it may be at an undesired snail’s pace.
Like a number, a date and/or time cannot be messed around with. It is exactly what it is, so it further defines our goals, and therefore our actions towards those goals.
Lastly, try to stay away from a general time frame to complete your goal, i.e. “in a year”, or “in a couple of months.” Your goals should be as specific as possible. That way, you’ll understand not only what needs to be done, but also when.
Just a Number?
Recently, when people ask me, “Pat, what’s your goal for SPI?”, I’ve been responding with, “10,000 RSS Subscribers by the end of the year.”
Usually, I get a follow up question asking, “Why 10,000? It’s just a number.”
And the truth is that it really is just a number. It has no true significance to the blog, which will be no different than when it had 9,999 subscribers.
However, even though it’s just a number, I hope you can understand why it’s important that this number exists. It actually gives me many things that I can use:
- It gives me something EXACT to work towards. It’ definitely motivating, especially when I see the subscriber count tick closer and closer to the goal.
- I can break it down into smaller goals or “installments” that lead up to 10k. For example, I can say that this leaves me 6 months to earn about 3600 subscribers. That’s 1800 in 3 months, or 600 per month.
- After breaking it down into smaller goals, I can actually figure out what actions to take to get there. It’s a lot easier to think about how to get 600 subscribers then it is to get 3600.
- If for some reason I’m not “on schedule” based on how I’m progressing on the smaller goals, I can make adjustments as necessary to make sure I stay on track.
- After I reach this goal, I can make a new quantifiable goal to ensure the continued growth of the blog.
Not So Terrible Goals
Now, let’s bring back our “terrible” goals from earlier and see how they look now:
- I want to lose 20 lbs. by July 15th, 2010.
- I want to save $150 a month for 3 years.
- I want to have 5 new clients in 30 days.
- I want an email list of 15,000 subscribers by March 24, 2011.
Looks good to me!
Now that you’ve read this post, what’s one of your goals? It can be about anything you care to share.
Cheers everyone!
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{ 42 comments (Click Here to Leave a Comment Below) }
Hi Pat,
Unmeasurable goals are always not attainable. Having a number to it just make the goal much more fun to achieve as we can see ourselves moving towards it.
I had set a goal of achieving 2000 subscribers for the year of 2010 and I’m halfway there. Got to work hard at it.
Cheers,
Vincent
I’ve been preaching this one to whoever will listen! It really makes a huge difference. Looks like you are going to polish off 10,000 by summer’s end, what are you going to do the rest of the year! Podcast?!
Totally agree if you’re going to set goals they must be quantifiable otherwise there’s almost no point setting them. I too have similar goals for various parts of my business, and find that even if they don’t mean much for your overall business in the shorterm – it gives you something to work towards and is a great motivator.
~James Dyson
Could’nt agree more. Without quantifiable goals, how would you know whern you have achived your goal…
Nice Post Pat. Totally agree with you. What if you going to set Unmeasurable goals, then you will be end without achieving anything
.
Thanks for sharing this great Post.
Nice post Pat about goal-setting. We should be specific with our goals, and having a numbers would definitely help us more to work on our goals. Instead of just saying, “I want to earn extra money online”, we can say “I want to earn an extra $1k a month within the next 3 months”. That way, we will be able to identify how we can achieve that goal. And by having numbers in our goals, we can make an action plan to follow, like, $1k a month is $33.33 a day, these are the things I’m gonna do to make $33.33 a day.
Thanks.
This is definitely one of the keys to setting a good goal. I would also add that you shouldn’t be afraid to set quantifiable “stretch goals.” In other words, goals that you know (in the back of your head) are near impossible to reach, but they push you harder than your other goals do. Even better, if you can actually meet or exceed these goals, you feel like you’ve accomplished something incredible.
Pat,
People are definitely setting themselves up for failure if they don’t formulate real, tangible, quantifiable, goals BEFORE they even set out on a project. Even back in my nursing school days, care of patients required each student to formulate realistic, timely, and measurable goals….instead of “patient will get out of bed”, something like “Patient will get out of bed and ambulate at least 30 feet down the hallway” gives a more quantifable and measurable understanding of the patient’s success or goal obtainment. If the patient doesn’t ambulate 30 feet, then we can go back and say “well, why didn’t the patient ambulate 30 feet? What changes or additions or alterations to their plan of care can we make to help him/her obtain that goal?”
Totally agree. I also find that setting a date for the deadline is important to me as well. Having no deadline, I tend to be less motivated to accomplish that goal because I can just do it later. Having too short of a deadline like getting 1000 subscribers by the end of the week tends to stress me out and disappoints me when I fall well below my target number (especially when that number is 0 new subscribers). Like Goldilocks, I want to set a deadline that is just right.
Pat,
I know this is a bit off topic (lol…completely off topic…)….but, I’ve done things a bit out of the ‘norm’ from what they are probably typically done….
I created my products, but have yet to really set up a blog. I thought it may be a great time to do that….
Do you think it’s a bad idea to make a blog have content that is essentially directed at more than one niche?
Julie and I were thinking about essentially Co-branding our blog with that “SoldierNurse” logo/theme….but, I’m not sure if it would be a BAD idea to talk about both military AND Nursing…..
hm….like, for instance, your blog is exclusively in the make money/passive income niche….
Not 100% sure what to do…
AHH!!! I have all terrible goals!
I am always surprised at how simple and how valuable the information you mention on your blog is. Great Job yet again Pat!!
Here my updates to for my Goals:
I will do more Social Marketing at least 3 times per week.
I will do more article Marketing
I will get an average of at least 15 clicks on Adsense a day.
I will want to start averaging 300 visit per day.
I will Comment at least 5 times on more Video game Blogs at least 3 times a week.
I will Implement more and read a little less.
Hey Pat, I’m quite familiar with the importance of having qualitative goals. Sometimes I get lost in it all, but I do have a few defined goals and it’s best when you measure your progress against them.
Thanks for the reminder.
I love goal setting and help people achieve their desired outcomes! Many people use S.M.A.R.T goals, but I’ve found S.M.A.R.T.E.R goals to be a bit more helpful:
How To Establish S.M.A.R.T.E.R Goals
Goal: “the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end.”
S = Specific and Simple
M = Measurable and Meaningful to you
A = As if you have it now. Is it achievable?
All areas of your life (how does this goal effect other areas of your life)
R = Realistic and responsible – ecological – good for you, good for others, good for “world”
T = Timed and toward what you want as opposed to want you don’t want
E = Evaluate an Examine– keep a record of what you are doing, if it’s work great! If not, do something else
R = Revise and regroup – if what you are doing is not working you must revise and regroup and continue
Remember, say it the way you want it!
You get what you focus on, so focus on what you want!
Pat, great post as always. I love setting goals and have been very big on setting goals for the past couple years. I feel like they provide an amazing amount of direction in anything you do.
Thanks!
This post is so true…I have set specific goals (like I want to get my products into 80 points of sale by December 1, 2010), but my problem is that I haven’t written them down and posted them somewhere I can see them DAILY! Thanks for reminding me I need to do that today!!!
Hi Pat, I really like the way you hammer the idea of goal settings. Many people just teach it like water going through the back of a duck without serious thought.
Like Gregg said, we have to make our goal a S.M.A.R.T. version.
But one IMPORTANT thing point about the goal setting exercise, that is so crucial to make our goal to come true. That is affirming our goal. Some people believe in affirmations, and some people don’t.
I treat the affirmation as a way to program our mind and to set direction daily to take actions.
When we set a goal, it is VITAL to make it in present tense with positive emotions. It would be like this: I feel good making 10,000 RSS subscribers by the end of year 2010.
WHY?
At first, it does not make sense to make it in the present tense as by default a goal is something going to be happened in the future. But by describing a goal in present tense, it helps us to experience the feeling / being when the goal is reached.
This is REALLY powerful because our mind is a servo mechanism. When we give a target to it, our mind will come up with the new ideas to make it happen.
By setting the goal in FUTURE tense like ‘I will’ or ‘I want to’, we program our mind to treat this target always in the horizon that we feel like hardly reach. When we affirm this goal, we keep programming our mind the goal is still in the horizon.
And by adding the positive emotion, it also let our mind to automatically move us to toward the goal because we as a human being always move toward joy and move away pain. Our mind (actually sub-conscious mind) response to emotion very quickly.
There are a lot more about goal setting and affirmations. It takes me many years to figure it out and yet I am still a student of how our mind work
I made some posts about goals setting and affirmations a while ago. Feel free to check them out.
Hi Pat,
You are absolutely right.
Setting goals based on number (and time) is really effective and gets things done faster.
One of my biggest goals for this year is to build a list of over 20000 subscribers (double opt-in).
Thanks a lot for the great post,
-Onibalusi
Definitely quantifiable is the way to go, I’m also a nerd for tracking progress and so I like the rigidity of numbers. The problems come from being too green to have realistic expectations for numbers or too rigid with your goal that you lose some nimbleness. It’s always a struggle in business to get the balance just right.
All I do is goal setting… and I STILL have to remind myself to make sure that each goal must be measurable and have a set deadline. To move onto the biggest part of goal setting, the results, I’ve found that “accountability (preferably to someone other than yourself) is the single biggest piece in actually achieving these quantifiable goals with clear deadlines that you have set. When we know exactly what we want and know that it is possible to achieve our goal if we work our ass off AND we know that there is someone or something that we must answer to… our goals will surely happen.
One of the best ways to say “set ACTUAL goals” without actually yelling it.
I read this thinking it was going to be another “work together” post. I liked that it wasn’t. And the fact that this is one of the best things to stress about goal setting is a plus.
I like.
Wow, I have the same exact goal as you trying to reach 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year
.
I think the most important thing about quantifiable goals is that is forces you to focus, rather than wandering aimlessly. Since both of our goals are 10,000 subscribers, we become more focused on ways to make that happen (i.e. guest posting, etc.) rather than just wandering aimlessly (‘networking’ by spending hours a day on Twitter and Facebook).
Great post! I used to fall into that trap of making terrible goals over and over again. I would never achieve them and could not figure out why. I have revamped my goal setting strategy this year and it seems to be working and lighting the fire to get things done.
My goals
Bring in an extra $500 a mont by December 2010 with new niche cruises
Save up $20k by March 31 2015 for down payment new house
Pay for in cash a cruise to Bermuda for my daughter and I (cost $1620) to be taken September 2011
Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines, numbers, numbers, numbers…This is so important when setting goals. You have to be specific with your goals and have a direction. This is something that was embedded in my head after reading Think and Grow Rich.
Hi Pat,
Great post, this is something I actively do in my business. Setting dates really helps me work toward my goals. I have a planner on my office wall with dates of achievements of what will be done by these dates. I also have my business partners pencil in dates for product launches so I have to get specified tasks done within this time frame. I do find it hard to stick to sometimes but it’s worth doing:-)
Great post Pat!
Dan
If you’d like a tool for setting your goals, you can use this web application:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A Vision Wall (inspiring images attached to yor goals) is available too.
Works also on mobile, and syncs with Evernote.
this makes a lot of sense…without numbers one will not have a clear idea of what is really expected and how to break the goals into small achievable ones..
Hey Pat,
Personal goal here. My clear intention is to complete another 12 books on business, writing, and personal growth by December 31st, 2010. Of course, it’s a “minimum” number, and I’m quite welcomed to go way over it if I want.
Excellent topic btw, the clearer the intentions, the more enthusiastic the mind gets in making sure you reach it. And we all know what enthusiasm does for your success!
One of my goals is to sell 123 apps per day
I like to break big goals like that down into smaller sub-goals too, to make progress toward them faster.
Thanks Dan!
http://www.Gtdagenda.com looks really good. It could be the next best GTD tool after htt://RememberTheMilk.com
I am going to put down my goals and project in it to test it out
There have been some absolutely fantastic comments and suggestions on this post. There have been several references to focus. If I can…I guess I can
Share the acronym
FOCUS
F = Follow
O = One
C = Course
U = Until
S = Successful
As Tyler mentioned, goals helps keep a focus. This acronym has helped in to
follow one goal until I’ve completed it, then on to the next one.
Thanks all for great tips and inspiration!
I am with you…everyone has their own way of looking at goals, deadlines, and dreams.
But I have to argue with those that don’t think numbers are important. If you’re not setting yourself a goal that is specific and you’re doing is wishful thinking I think.
Great post! You really need to be specific to get things done. You can give yourself the chance to actually keep track and measure your efforts. Yeah is 9,999 subs not 10,000 technically yes but if you get to 9,000 subs I’d say your efforts were a success! The reason is you stayed focused. My latest article was about goal setting too over at Financially Digital – it’s more of a revisiting the goals you set at the beginning of the year spin but a similar important message!
Our main goal is to promote web accessibility and spread the word of its importance. So applying this concept, I think my goal is to at least teach 100 people about web accessibility and convince them that this is truly important, by the end of the year.
My goal at this point on my blog is to have at least 10 comments on every blog post. Why 10? Because I feel that is a reasonable amount to shoot for this early on. If 10 people are commenting that means I have quite a bit more readers.
I have thought about setting a goal for the number of subscribers, but I want people to be active on my blog. It seems if people are commenting then I must be writing useful content.
I have other goals for my blog but that is the main one for now.
Thanks for the great post Pat! I will have to apply this to more of my goals.
Hey Pat: A bit off topic, but I’ve sent two e-mails through the contact form over the past 3 weeks and haven’t heard back. Do you know if it is working correctly? Can’t find your direct e-mail and thought the comment field may work.
The numbers are the key. As soon as you set a measurable number to your goal setting, you will end up with a map for the direction that you want to go. If you don’t have a measurement for your goal, especially in business, how will you ever know if you got there?
-Joshua Black
The Underdog Millionaire
This post couldn’t have said it any better. Setting a goal … a successful requires to clear as well as being quantitative. Goals without any time limit will fail, just because its not clear. Very nice post.
Great article as always. One will never go astray with quantified goals because it’s already definite, exact, precise. Not unlike very general goals, like you’ve mentioned. You’ve clearly shown us in this post of yours how important it really is to have a very specific goal. Thanks!
Definitely noticed that when you use numbers and time limits you are more likley to reach your goals. I have certain income goals that I discuss on my blog when it comes to passive income. I also find that making yourself accountable (I do so with my blog) that you are even more likely to work harder to reach your goals.
I always laugh when I hear a friend or family member say they are going to lose weight. Well, how much weight do you want to lose and how long do you want it to take? I mean, that person could lose a pound in a month and fullfill the goal of losing weight.
Great and powerfully helpful advice
Awesome post Pat! It’s so true. When you put a specific value to something, it becomes more REAL for you. It’s something to work towards and measure.
Also, just want to point out that aside from getting specific with your goals it’s also a great idea to share it with others.
Once you verbalize your goals and put yourself out there to the world all of a sudden you have to hold yourself accountable for them as well as having others hold you accountable.
Because at the end of the day, if you don’t have your word, what do you have?
Pat,
I totally agree. Using numbers with goal setting is such a simple tactic to implement and pays off with great results. I even see how this works with the 90 day p90x challenge I am taking. I have just started a blog and my new goal is 1k subscribers by June 1st, 2011.