Good Excuse Goal Setting (TM)

Good Excuse Goals (TM) is an event-based form of structured procrastination and also mitigates perfectionism. The premise is to set something in motion that:

1. involves other people
2. leads to a time-stamped event and
3. means something to you

The old way of date-based goal setting says set a final due date and work towards completing the task at hand before that date. The problem with this form of goal setting is that if you miss the deadline, there is no accountability. You can keep procrastinating and pushing the date backward to whenever you feel like doing what you need to do.

Event-based goal setting says create a good excuse to complete the goal on time by creating an event (celebration, presentation, etc) that involves other people. For some reason, we’re comfortable disappointing ourselves. That’s why so many new year’s resolution go undone. But we hate disappointing other people, so event-based goal setting uses our desire to impress others to motivate us.

Student Example:

It’s the first day of the semester and you already have a term paper due in 4 weeks. Date-based goal setting says mark your calendar with the dates you want your first, second, and final draft to be done and that’s it. Event-based goal setting says on the second day of the semester, schedule two meetings with your professor TA; one to review the first draft and one to review the second draft. By establishing the meetings, you now have another person holding you accountable to your goals and are less likely to procrastinate. By mid-semester, you’ll have 90% of the paper done already.

Artist Example:

Say for instance you’re a musician who wants to release an album by a certain date. Instead of just secretly writing the date on a calendar, good excuse goal setting says book a venue for a listening party or live performance a week or two before you want to actual CD to be done and send invitations to 30 friends and fans anticipating that 5-10 of them will come. Now you have to get ready and that forces (in a good way) you to create the music you want to make. By creating the event, you’ve set something in motion and create a good excuse to complete the CD.

It could be something you need to start, stop, or go harder on
It could be a relationship with an organization or person that you need to end (ie board seat, job, volunteer, etc)
Or one you need to begin (mentor, leadership role, ToastMasters, your own company, etc)
It may be something you need to invest in (an instrument software, a class, training, lessons, video cam)
Or something that you need to stop invest in

More ideas

Goal	Good Excuse
Want to write a book	Create a reading for you 1st chapter with 4 friends
Want a new job	Schedule a “board meeting” with mentors and friends and get feedback on your 2-weeks notice letter and job search plan.
Want to lose 10 lbs	Buy the dress you want to fit in and organize a dinner party at your house where you will wear the dress
Want to travel somewhere	Buy your plane ticket with a few friends
Want to go to graduate school	Register for the entrance exam (GMAT, MCAT, LSAT) and organize your first study group with friends
Want to quit your job	Have a friend organize a secret “I Quit My Job” party for you after a certain date that you declare to quit by
Want to run a marathon	Pay for your registration, join a training group, and organize a celebration among friends that evening or at the finish line
Want to release a music CD	Organize a listening party among friends. Perhaps some of them are musicians too and may want to debut their music as well.
Want to lead a workshop	Invite 5 friends over for a trial version of the workshop. This will force you to get the curriculum ready.
Want to blog	Organize a blog launch party and email to go out on a certain date to everyone you know. You can create the html email now and schedule it to go out 30 days from now. This is irreversible which forces you to get ready.
Want to start a business	Enter a business plan competition with a team of people. You’ll end up with a business plan and a whole new awareness about your business from the experience.
Want to move cities	By your one way plane ticket and schedule the movers to come.

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Putting Your Passions To Work

For most people passions are part-time instead of full-time. They are things you do on the weekend if you get around to them. A lot of people drive to work park in the parking lot and leave half of who they are in the passenger seat while dragging the other half of themselves into the office.

What if could align our passions and profession? I think it’s possible and here’s why.

One day I met a woman who worked in HR at Google. I asked her if this is what she was passionate about and she responded “I really love archaeology.” As our conversation progressed we realized that she was still pursuing archaelogy. Instead of digging for fossils and artifacts she was digging through talent pool of resumes to find hidden gems in people.

Passions are action-based where the interest are topic-based. Archaeology was her interest, but digging and finding were her passions. The same framework may apply for someone who has manifested their passion for strategizing through playing chess. Someone like that may want to explore a career in consulting.

Believing that our passions and professions can and should be aligned would revolutionize the career exploration process and hiring process. Instead of hiring based on Grade Point Averages, employers would hire based on Great Passion Advantage. And instead of searching for jobs by industry, company, or title, we would search for jobs by actions.

Here is a simple process to do this for yourself:

1. List five things that interest you now and as a child.
   Ex. baseball

2. For each entry write down all of the actions associated with that interest.
   Ex. playing baseball, coaching baseball, collecting baseball cards, watching baseball

3. Circle all of the action verbs that excite you.
   Ex. coaching, collecting

4. Identify career opportunities that would allow you to do those actions regularly.
   Ex. life coach, executive coach, sports coach, IRS (collect money), forensics (collect evidence)

In this example, baseball just served as the vehicle to exercise the person’s true passions for coaching and collecting. Just because everyone can’t make it to the major leagues, doesn’t mean that there aren’t career opportunities that will allow you DO what you love. In this economy, we have to think outside of the box…and the diamond.

Procrastination Help & Tips To Stop

Procrastination is a huge issue for a lot of people. Working for myself for the past month has exposed my issues with it even though I’m doing what I love. I procrastinate. The day ends. I stress and feel guilty. I go to sleep. And then I do it all over again. There’s got to be a better way.

Here are some solutions I’m experimenting with to heal my habit:

• Find a procrastination partner: Identify the person at work or in your life who will randomly email, call, text, or stop by your desk occasionally and ask you “What are you procrastinating on?” or “What’s the one thing that would make your day wildly successful if you accomplished it today?” After you respond, their role is to combat all excuses and encourage you to start working on whatever your “one thing” is right then and there. Note: This doesn’t work if they start procrastinating with you.
• Make a distraction detector list: Write your distractions on a post-it or the wall in front of you so that you know when you’re being distracted. Some of mine are sorting stray paper, unwashed clothes, the refrigerator, cutting my nails, and Facebook. When you catch yourself about to do either, just stop and refocus on what you’re procrastinating on.
• Set something in motion: Create an early deadline by setting something in motion that involves another person. For example, if you have a project due in a month, set up a feedback session with your colleague or boss around the 2 week mark.

• Find something worse to procrastinate on: I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but if we find a few things to procrastinate on, we end up procrastinating on the thing we don’t want to do with the lesser of the two evils. For example, if you need to do your taxes and go to the DMV but you don’t want to do either, you’re more likely to get the lesser of the two evils done b having two things to procrastinate on than if you only had one thing to procrastinate on.

• Shorten the work day: Just like Parkinson’s Law, if we have 8 hours to do 4 hours of work, for some silly reason we tend to expand the work to fill the 8 hours. If you know you only get in a good 4-5 hours of real work everyday, don’t beat yourself up about the other 3+. Who made up the 8 hours work day anyway? Consciously excel during your peak hours and consciously rest during your non-peak time.You know how to look busy. After all, you’ve been procrastinating for years now.

At the root of procrastination is a fear of failure…when we put our best foot forward. We’re not afraid to fail when we know we only gave a lackluster effort. When we procrastinate, we give ourselves an escape route in case we fail. If we fail we can say “I waited to the last minute.” which really means “I didn’t give it my all.” which means “I could have done better if I really tried.” If we succeed we can say “I’m smart.”, “That was nothing.”, or “I think better when I procrastinate.” Procrastination is about quality of effort, not quantity of time.