Challenges with goals setting
Challenges with goals setting
It is okay to adjust by starting small and keeping goals alive
The year 2021 has started the 3rd month, are you still struggling with setting goals for the year? For me, the goals for this year are:
learn how to play the piano to play my favourite songs
write a book to share my knowledge and experience to help others
start with investing in financial instruments
creating a podcast by interviewing entrepreneurs and leaders working in tech
staying fit and healthy
With all of those goals, I started small, and the idea is trying to keep them alive as frequent as possible. For instance, I try to play the piano every day for around 5 to 10 minutes. Honestly, there are days I did not play at all. And I felt guilty for not playing. However, I quickly rectify the accident by going back to the piano chair right on the following day so that I do not leave it empty for so long.
There is a goal, like writing a book also seems to fade away. The reason being I was too ambitious. I jumped into the new job at the same employer — IBM. It’s totally a new area that I don’t have much hands-on experience in, and I need to spend time to learn. At the same time, I tried to write both Vietnamese and English content. That killed me. I took one step back by starting to write short blog posts on LinkedIn and Medium instead. Oh, by the way, I have earned 4 cents from Medium — my first money from them.
With the goal of starting to invest — I started small by opening an account with Saxo and deposited the first $100 into that account yesterday. Follow the advice from one of my friends who is really a veteran investor, I will buy ETF products.
With the goal of staying fit and healthy — I try to do exercise everyday morning. I usually jog and walk about 3–4 times per week with 35 minutes each time. On those days that I do not jog, I turn to swim about 2 times per week and 10–15 minutes each time. Every Sunday morning, I play tennis for about 1–1.5 hours with my neighbours. I reallise the benefit of doing exercise regularly is that I have become more energetic, thinking positive and could focus longer when working at home. In fact, I passed the Cloud Pak for Data Solution Architect 2.5 Exam by focusing my time in doing that in one week.
With the goal of creating a podcast — I have been procrastinating for at least 2 months. First, I planned to start right after the new year 2021 started, but then I postponed it to after the Chinese New Year. Now the Chinese New Year has passed for a month, and I have not started yet. The challenge for me is that I keep questioning whether podcasting is still the right thing to do because there have been so many podcasters these days. The contents are pretty much similar to what I am planning to do with my own podcast. I keep thinking about the video format or writing format or even not doing it at all.
To me, we all face challenges with the goals we set for the year and it’s okay to adjust the goals but most importantly — don’t give up your goals and try to keep them alive by starting small first.