A fundamental objective of this workshop is to make change happen.
You can change the way you produce things
change the market
change the people you work with
change your bank account
change yourself
Before you can make a change happen, though, you need to determine which change you’d like to create. Sure, you might stumble on something, but you’re far more likely to find something if you know what you’re looking for.
The goal setting we’re going to do in this project isn’t forever. It’s a temporary placeholder. The pressure is off, because the list of long-term goals you come up with will only be your list for the next two weeks, and then you can create a new list.
First hurdle: Writing down a goal doesn’t make it less likely to occur. (Just like buying life insurance doesn’t make it more likely you will die).
Second hurdle: Writing down a goal doesn’t make it hurt more when you don’t reach it.
Third hurdle: Sharing a goal with a trusted circle isn’t humiliating.
Cultivating & growing in our self awareness through our own writing & shipping. Practice fighting the Resistance. (See the first 20 pages of Pressfield for that reference.)
Personal transformation, and habituating our daily struggle against the Resistance, is how we start transforming the world — by developing the habit of showing up to do our most creative work: our art.
Here are a few of the core principles from adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy. If you haven’t gotten to read the book yet, here’s one summary / review).
- Small is good, small is all (The large is a reflection of the small)
- Trust the People (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy)
- There is always enough time for the right work. There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.
The Zigler 7 steps to goal setting offer a succinct and effective way to delineate your goals.
Some critics prefer a less rigorous goal approach. And in the long run, they may be correct—overdoing the process can be as debilitating as not doing the process at all. But before you can scale back, incorporating a goal-mindset into your daily life, it helps to see it in full splendor. It helps you know.
Your format of the goals for this project should match the format of these 7 steps.
Because this is a direct and clear process, you’ll be challenged to find goals that you actually believe in, that are worth the effort and focus you (or your organization) are going to put into them. Careful what you wish for, you might get it.
The most common initial approach is to pick goals that are:
Vague
Grandiose
Trivial
These are all variations on hiding. If a goal feels safely small or safely ridiculous, it’s mostly safe and not much of a goal at all.
Action:
- On your own take a first crack at your written personal goals. Use the Ziglar Seven Steps of Goal Setting process to break your goals into specifics, and describe the when and the what and the who. Try to do this before your group meets. These are personal goals, goals that aren’t designed to be shared with everyone. But, like all useful goals, the goals that are worth your time and effort, are important, they’re specific and they have a specific timeframe associated with them. If the goals don’t make you a little uncomfortable, they’re probably not important enough to you.
- With those personal ones identified, use the same process to create goals you’d feel comfortable sharing in a public-facing project: Select one or two goals for your organization, your career, and/or your work project. Share them with your group. Are the goals worthy of your best work? Are they unrealistic, designed to give you a place to hide?
- After discussing with you group, go ahead and post one or two goals for your organization, your career, and/or your work project. As you do so, tell us about why you selected this goal, and how you decided this was the right goal for you. What’s it feel like to pick this goal and share it publicly? What edge is this goal creating for you?
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Reminders:
After you publish your project Wednesday at midnight EST, your fellow workshop participants will post their feedback to your project by Thursday at 10pm Eastern Time / 8pm MT. This is one of the most important elements of the program. Please plan to provide feedback on at least five other participant’s work each Thursday.
Every project should have a title that is unique, that invites the reader in. It’s not homework, it’s a project. “Three things I know about getting things done,” is great, “Project 1: Goal setting” is not. You don’t need to restate the question, you need to establish early on in your post what you’re here to say.
Every project should, after getting feedback, end with a ‘reflective script’ (RS) that
highlights what you’ve learned since you published it. If you were going to write the post
again, what would you do differently?
After reviewing the feedback, post an RS to your project (leaving the original post as is) by
Saturday at 10pm ET / 8pm MT. This ‘reflective script’ should have your take on what you learned from the comments. The RS itself should be written at the bottom of your original post — not as a comment. You can read more about the purpose of the RS in the participant guide.
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Projects Due: Wednesday, October 9, 11:59pm EST
Comments Due: Thursday, October 10, 10pm ET / 8pm MT / 7pm PT
RS Due: Saturday, October 12, 10pm ET / 8pm MT / 7pm PT
CPA Incubator 