Effective Goal Setting

Setting goals is easy but really knowing if you’ll meet them and if you will meet them has been the biggest issue.

I’ve set enough goals to accurately speculate if I will reach them, so I’ve set out to solve or help with the problem of failing.

Here is a list of common reasons I fail at completing some of my goals,(I hope you can also relate to some of these if not all of them):

Lack of determination.

You need to get excited, and you need to hold on to your inspiration, you need to get your mind ready for each and every goal that comes your way and wrap yourself around it. Determination will keep you fighting when times get hard and see that the end objective is worth it.

Inaccurate Deadline

Sometimes the problem is that your goal is too high to climb in a selected amount of time. Giving yourself a reasonable amount of time is key because this could be detrimental to the goal and to your brain as well. You set a goal, you don’t meet it, and then you quit. Your brain shuts down on the goal and it becomes a lost cause, you don’t want to do that. You need to be honest with yourself and consider your capabilities in the context of your life and how you do things now.

Too BIG a change and not enough resources

I had a friend in my past that weighed just over 150 lb.s and my friend wanted to lose 30 lb.s before the summer, it was around this time. No doubt this is possible, and she read several articles on the web of success stories from other women that helped support her choice. But the problem is she hadn’t worked out or jogged consistently for 3 years, and we need to understand that very few of us can really just turn on a button and expect to become superstar fitness people overnight and start a rigorous regimen all of a sudden. The girl on tv is not you and you need to consider what you can adequately do without quitting after a few days. If you do insist on losing those 30 lb’s you should probably look into some type of trainer, diet, plan, or something similar to invest in. With the proper resources you’ll be able to push yourself harder since you know you’ve invested something tangible into it. So consider mentally focusing on yourself then putting together a plan around your goal and push towards it.

Not enough SUPPORT

You need support, rather that is your mother or a social community that talks about your goal, you need to find it and build yourself around it. With more people trying to do it and supporting your initiative, you’ll find yourself more motivated to complete the task and you’ll find yourself maybe even going above and beyond.

Summary: You need to immerse yourself with support, determination, logical goal-setting, and invest in YOU! This is all I have for now and might add a few more later.

Some of this year’s career goals

1. I want to become more efficient and focused in whatever I may be doing.

2. Books: I want to finish  books in these categories: Software Development, Logic, Neuropsychology, Math, Electronics, Networking, and Vocab and Spelling.

3. I want to get more into deeper development steps and processes.

4. I want to show more consistency in my work and reliability.

5. I want to become better with time management and learn on a track to finish one or two steps at a time.

walk away with my words

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how long i’ve stalled for you,

fragile heart, i’ve dropped too many times,

and I’m overly concerned with my own understanding,

and your words constrict my convictions,

while saying nothing, my heart yearns to remain,

but for my heart seems to be so stained,

wounded, pain surges through these veins,

never healing because how ofter it rains,

so there goes our winning streak,

// chorus

but you will,

walk away with my words,

and I will look down on myself,

can I watch it all disappear

o this seems so hard

but you will,

walk away with my words,

and I will look down on myself,

can I watch it all disappear

won’t sleep tonight

// end chorus

heavy heart, o don’t you start , o don’t you start,

lie alone, lie alone, in the dark

don’t speak those words that take us back,

to tears and shame, pointing fingers that blame,

mocking our name, now the future looks faint,

please refrain, running in place, not this time,

can’t find the right time, to break this momentum,

so it just keeps on pulling through, getting through,

looking for answers and not asking questions,

this was not of my intentions, the monster i invented..

// chorus

but you will,

walk away with my words,

and I will look down on myself,

can I watch it all disappear

o this seems so hard

but you will,

walk away with my words,

and I will look down on myself,

can I watch it all disappear

won’t sleep tonight

// end chorus

What did I ship in 2010

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog and he put together a list of all the things  he “shipped” (means ideas you made into products and put into the world) in 2010, so I wanted to offer the same list from myself this year.

• Trained in PHP/MySQL
• Created my personal site
• Received my first IT job (non-freelancing and paying)
• Moved into my first apartment
• Bought 2 or 3 cars and returned them all (losing somethings in the process but became a car expert ha)
• Made my first stock investment
• Had my first Christmas in a long time
• Recreated my site
• Began reworking a business idea (A. Harrel)
• Became a team leader
• Learned Java basics

My list is in all thankfulness in God and for enabling me all of these opportunities this year.

You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.

Overall a great year and I will continue to pray for every blessing and every downfall that makes me stronger.

Now I believe next year with the help of God will be a really exciting year and today I will say goodbye to 2010.

Christian

(i just bought an iPad with the money I saved with google voice)

I was recently considering trying to lower my high cell phone bill.

If you’re curious I am using AT&T(i know, i know), but I hope that next year they really get their service to what it should be.

I have an iPhone and I am paying around $125  on a monthly basis and will be doing so for the next 2 years, or so I thought.

A few months ago I managed to get into the beta version of voice and loved the interface, it has a cool-and-suprisingly-accurate voice to text, along with contact organization, and a bundle of other great features.

I use it for texting and calling such as when I post craigslist ads and I don’t truly want to give it out my actual number.

But I started thinking, because you can turn off text forwarding and it will essentially not count against your texts then you could just use this for your texting plan and almost eliminate your texting plan (will take some time for people to use that number instead). Along with the iPhone app you can cut $20 off of your bill just by enabling google voice to be your texting machine. If it is too tedious to use one for texting and calling just use the google number for calling too, (since the calls forward to your cell phone anyways).

So just do it, you’ll be saving $480 on a 2 year contract.

(i just bought an iPad with the money I saved with google voice)

You will never be as good as you want to be, because you aren’t as good as you ought to be..

I was thinking in self-study today, wondering if I could help build a team of people to create a group of really good web engineers, but with my recent failures I thought that I would rethink the cause. You can become a developer/designer in a few months, for some a few years, but you can’t become great without some type of magic or immersion. If you aren’t immersing yourself in what you say that you need to learn to succeed, then it reflects on the type of person you are, YOU ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOU ARE, and if you have a hard time really dedicating time to what you are studying because of mental blocks and a lack of time management, then maybe the subject is not right for you. This goes across all domains of jobs. I believe that if one wants to do something, they should do it well, learn well, practice well, fail well, and retry well, this methodology simply works, if you know what you should be learning. So stop thinking about what you need to do and get started, immerse yourself, dedicate a schedule, invest in you, you will see the benefits later, for me it’s instantaneous because the value of learning is enough for me.

You will never be as good as you want to be, because you aren’t as good as you ought to be..

Stock Market….

Today was the first day I invested in the stock market, I went all in, over 2500 shares. Bad thing is I have a limited amount of information on how the stock market and I am just betting on the Irish because of Allan Harrel and because I’m partially Irish, so it’s a little bias. But what better stock than the Luck of the Irish, I mean what could go wrong…?

We’ll see what happens…

Consulting or Not

Honestly I have to say, I’ve been working or observing a consulting firm lately and I can’t help but think to myself that I can do everything they are saying they want us to do. They take a rather simple outside business perspective and right the steps accordingly, me being introverted I’ve had the path all along, but everyone else is in awe of a path being laid in front of them.  But the frustration in it is that if you don’t step up to the plate with all of your skills then you may easily get exactly what I am getting. But what stinks is I’ve provided a great plan and now it’s like I am being micromanaged… I have to say being micro-managed  is one of my pet peeves, but what can I do…Maybe it isn’t all consulting firms but this one in particular.