This year I was determined to come up with a set of goals to help keep me on track throughout the year. I imagined keeping track of these goals in an excel spreadsheet with conditional formatting, I would score my progress with arrows or faces or progress bars. Excited to start, I set up a ‘goal setting session’ with my coach, Nicol. (If you are an independent freelancer without a coach you should know that having a good coach is like having the best ever boss and worth every single penny).
Anyway, Nicol questioned me about my desire for goals.
Why did I want them?
So that I could monitor my performance and progress (and beat myself with a stick when I fail or when they are too easy)
Was I not pleased with my current performance?
Well yes, I was but I could always do more, do better, no?
And then Nicol and I talked through my projected end of year numbers, my clients (new, lost and retained), where my work was coming from and what sort of projects I was taking on this year vs last year. Of course, to do this I opened a spreadsheet with multiple tabs, formulae, predictions and conditional formatting. As it turned out I am doing OK.
So, Nicol suggested instead of coming up with some future focussed notion of what success might look like I focus on what I’m doing right now. So, we set about defining the I ams… because what’s the point in defining something I should be doing rather than actually doing it.
We defined 4 ‘I ams’ to help me stay on track in work and life (because the two are intrinsically intertwined are they not?) and here they are:
- I am a good friend to myself
- I am being true to myself and those who matter to me
- I am writing a novel (there’s a bit more blurb around this one)
- I am building a business where I can be free to choose my clients, my projects as well as where and when I work
I’ve printed these out and stuck them on my desk, just above the keyboard (of course I couldnt resist colouring them in too). Each has a subtext (which I haven’t shared) which links them back to my values (Freedom, Transparency, Competence, Being valued & Adventure) and they keep me grounded in the here and now.
These days, instead of fretting about whether or not I am doing enough or what I should be doing, I start each day checking in on what I am doing. If I was back in my old life helping people set goals and objectives, I would definitely be starting off by defining their I ams.
