Do Your Goals Need a Refresh?
I normally consider myself a “good girl”, and yes the trauma of that follows me through life. Being a good girl usually means that you do what you say you’re going to do.
And last week I had to admit that I wasn’t a good girl, because I missed a deadline. *GASP*
It was a self-imposed deadline, but a deadline is a deadline. And I had to admit in “public” that I missed it.
The “public” was the writing program I’m in, so a whole two or three dozen people saw it. I said I would have 75K words done by a certain date on my next book. It’s a mystery novel – I do have another productivity book (in addition to this one) cooking, but it has to wait until after the mystery is finished.
I had started the timeline with 5,000 words already written. The deadline was 70 days, so I knew I could do 1,000 words a day and meet the commitment.
To be clear, it is absolutely possible for me to write 70,000 words in 70 days. (I’m not saying they’re good words – I’m still on the $hitty first draft – but any kind of words will suffice at this stage.)
That may seem like a lot, but even when I’m outside my flow window I can generally do +/- 1500 words in an hour. A simple hour a day would get it done. I just… didn’t do it.
So I’m refreshing that goal.
Have you looked back at what you started out to do this year? Need to refresh any? April 19th is Refresh Your Goals Day, if you need some motivation.
Here’s a quick guide to moving forward and getting your $hit done.
Diagnose the problem
Are you an overthinker? Do you constantly do your analysis unto decision-making paralysis? Me too! This is not that. Diagnosing the problem isn’t about wallowing in what you did wrong, or calling yourself names (I see you, now be nice to yourself), or feeling bad, especially if you’re normally a Good Girl (or Boy.)
It’s to look at objectively what happened and see if you can figure out how/why it happened. You’re a doctor studying the symptoms, or if you prefer, a mechanic studying the problem, so that you can figure out what the underlying condition or mechanical issue is.
I first learned this method, the Five Whys, when I started consulting. You start with “why did this happen” and after each answer, question why that happened, until you get to the root of the problem. Sometimes you need to go more than five whys, sometimes fewer.
So let’s look at my failure to get the 70K words done.
Why didn’t I make the 70K word deadline? Because I didn’t write for an hour a day. (This clearly is not the root of the problem; need to go deeper.)
Why didn’t I write for an hour a day? Mostly because I didn’t have time.
Now, saying there wasn’t time is bull$hit. You (and I) have time to do what we want to do, but making sure we take the time is different.
Why didn’t I write for an hour a day? I didn’t take the time. (Fixed.)
Why didn’t I take the time? Because it wasn’t on my calendar. (Still not at the root of the issue.)
Why wasn’t it on my calendar? I didn’t put it on there because I assumed since I like to write that I would just get it done. (This is more like it. And if you’re counting, this is the 4th why.)
Sometimes when you do the five whys you get into a reason that requires more work on your part. For example, if I found out that I didn’t get it done because of a fear of failure (or success), I’d have to do some inner work around that. Some obstacles will block you until you work through them.
Decide what you’ll do differently
Now you’ve got the reason(s) you didn’t make the goal. Sometimes the answer, or what you’ll do differently, is obvious.
Like in my example above, all I have to do is put it on my calendar. Problem solved.
But what if I was the kind of person who treated time blocks and calendar assignments as things to be pushed around the calendar? Then more work would have to be done – just putting it on the calendar wouldn’t take care of the problem.
Sometimes what you’d do differently is to not make that particular goal in the first place. Completely valid. Maybe you missed it because a part of you didn’t think it was a worthy or reasonable goal to try to achieve.
If you discover during the diagnostic process that your heart’s just not in it, maybe that’s not the right goal. And you refresh it by eliminating it, or putting it off for later so you can work on a project that’s closer to your heart now.
Be realistic about the timeline
Sometimes you might miss a goal because you underestimated the time it would actually take, which is very common. When setting goals, you do have to know yourself in order to achieve them.
I’ve been writing for a very long time, and I know what my word count generally looks like after an hour. But if you’re a person who doesn’t have that background and you’re writing your first book, you might think 1,000 words an hour is reasonable for you.
So you made a goal of 50,000 words in 50 days, let’s say, and you set aside an hour a day. But then it turned out that you can generate +/- 750 words an hour instead of a thousand, so you missed your goal.
In my example, I originally thought I’d get the 70K words in 70 days, and then I’d write another ~70K words which would essentially complete the first draft of the book at the end of the second 70-day period.
Which leaves me with a choice: to stay on my original idea of writing an hour a day. That will get me the 70K words by the next deadline and I’ll be halfway done with the book.
Or, I could still commit to finishing the book in the next 70 days, which means I need to set aside two hours a day.
And if I wasn’t running my productivity consulting business, I might do that just to accelerate the completion of the first draft. But looking over my calendar, I can see there are way too many days where a two-hour block will just not fit unless I want to be writing in the evenings.
I have done that in the past, but at the moment I’m not feeling it. Which means I won't do it. (That’s where knowing thyself really comes in!)
Short story long, I have adjusted my goal to be halfway finished (70K more words) by the deadline instead of all the way finished. That way I can keep my writing block to an hour a day.
There are times when you might be able to still reach the original goal, as in my example if I doubled my writing time each day. But there are times when you won’t be able to.
You do need to accept where you are before you commit to refreshing the goal. Not in the service of beating yourself up, but just, here’s where I am now and this is what my near-term commitments look like.
What is possible and doable, given my existing commitments?
Could I reach my original goal, and if I can, what would that require?
Am I willing to do that, or would that cause me more stress and burnout?
What can I commit to that moves me forward without requiring too much?
Recap (tl;dr)
It’s a good time now to look back on 2026 goals and refresh them if necessary. If there are things you wanted to accomplish but didn’t, what got in your way and how can you avoid it for next time? Is the goal worthwhile, and is it necessary to achieve now? Or has it fallen behind as a priority that can be taken up later in the year?
If one of your goals is to get more done in your business, an easy way to start is with my book, The Rebel’s Guide to Getting $hit Done: Peak Productivity for Business Owners. Check it out here.
Photo by Shagal Sajid on Unsplash.