DEFINING GOALS

Author JP Vijaykumar
Date Jan 04 2011

WHAT IS A GOAL?

A goal is something you aspire to achieve in life, profession, education and hobby.

A goal is something like achieving a better position/ recognition/ distinction / milestone in career /
sports /education, accomplishing a master feat/monumental task in profession, acquiring an advanced
accreditation/ certification / diploma in studies, acquiring wealth/ assets in life, within a deadline. A
goal requires your effort to realize.

Goals are categorized into personal goals, team goals, family goals and community goals.

Most of our goals are positive and constructive. If someone’s goals are destructive and negative, then that
person is a sick person or a terrorist.

Some common goals are –

Passing certification exam. Buying a home this year. Getting married this year. Scaling mount
Everest next year. Competing in winter Olympics.

Wishes and goals are synonymous.

A wish is something you hope for to happen. A wish does not require any effort, nor will have any
deadline. A wish is for any or many. A wish may or may not happen. On the contrary a goal will
materialize, depending on your effort and pursuance.

A goal without deadline is a wish.

Wishes are constructive or destructive, positive or negative. Some common wishes are -
I wish to get promotion. I wish you get fired. I wish you loose the election.

QUALITIES OF A GOAL

A goal is something -
you aspire to achieve in life/profession/sports.
you would like to achieve before a deadline.
that is constructive and positive.
that improves / or adds value to your hobby/profession/skills/life.
that gives you happiness and satisfaction.

WHEN YOU SHOULD DEFINE/REDEFINE/REFINE/RE-REFINE YOUR GOALS?

You need to define/ redefine/refine/re-refine your goals if –

You or your people are not happy with what you are doing.
Your goal does not enrich or adds value to your skills/life
Your goal violates the law
Your goal interferes with the freedom of others.

I want to have as many drinks as possible everyday. I end up a drunkard.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide. The happiness that it brings is merely negative,
a momentary cessation of unhappiness -- B Russel
My goal is to practice violin every day after midnight. My goal interferes with the freedom of others and
disturbs others’ sleep.

My goal is to drive a ferrari at 200 miles per hour. My goal violates the legally permitted speed limit on
the local highway.

I am happy doing nothing. My family is not happy as I am idle and unproductive.

Better work and fail than to sleep one's life away -- Jerome K Jerome

The world belongs to the energetic -- Ralf Waldo Emerson

Review your goals. What are your goals? Did you achieve anything positive by pursing/achieving your
goals? If not redefine your goals and pursue.

EXCEPTIONS TO HAVING GOALS

When one wants to retire.

When one is recouping
When one is nearing nirvana / niryana.

EVERYONE HAS GOALS

When you are a kid, you will have academic goals.

After studies, you will have professional and career goals.

You will have financial goals and family goals to settle in life.

At different stages of life, you will have different goals.

If you are a humanitarian, you will have goals to help the people around you.

If you are a saint, who relinquished all desires, you still have the goal of salvation/ attaining moksha.

If you are a fatalist and accept whatever comes your way. Then you may not have goals.

If you do not have any goals, not to have goals itself is a goal.

Don’t be idle, be active and pursue goals.

DEFINE / PRIORITIZE YOUR GOALS AND PURSUE THEM

You should dream and work your way to realize your goals.

Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the day time and too sleepy to worry at night

You must be the change, you want to see in this world ..Mahathma Gandhi

Any change should begin with you.

Work hard and prove yourself.

The wearer only knows where the shoe pinches

The worker only knows the value of hard work and success.
Time and tide wait for none

Time is money

Time wasted can never be regained. Don’t idle away your life and time.

Most successful people in the world are the best time managers. They know the value of time and utilize
their time very effectively and judiciously.

You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it
.. Charles Baxton

He who wants to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything .. Samuel Johnson

Practice makes a man perfect.

These quotations stress the importance of practice and preparation to achieve success.

When love and skill work together expect a master piece .. John Ruskin

You should have the urge to come up in life.

Strive hard and put on your best performance everyday. Don’t procrastinate and postpone things.

Dream about positive and constructive things and work on your dreams and realize them.
You will never know, one day you will hit jackpot in realizing your dreams.

Never ever have negative and destructive goals. If you have negative and destructive goals, you may
become a ticking time bomb to yourself, to your kin and to the community. You loose your peace, health
and even life.

Being positive, you live and let others live.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction ..Newton’s third law of motion.

Karma (the effects of your good deeds and bad deeds) comes in search of you, as a calf finds its
mother in a herd of cattle .. Githa

When you have multiple goals, you should prioritize them.

Depending on the situation you are in, reprioritize your goals.

When you are driving on the highway, safety is your first goal. Texting on your cell phone should always
take the back seat. If texting takes the priority while driving, you endanger your safety and others’ safety.

When you are in a library respect others’ goals of reading and observe silence. I love this idiom “a bull in
a china shop”.

Be a Roman in Rome.

DISADVANTAGES OF NOT HAVING GOALS

Why should I have goals? I love to be idle.

An idle man's brain is a devils workshop.

Without doing your part, how can you expect results

If I sit idle and do nothing, then I become perfect in what? Idling?

If you have no goals and do nothing, you become dull/ inactive/ lethargic, over a period you become
allergic to work and become a non performing asset. In the present day competitive world, you lag and
fall behind. You become a liability to yourself and to others. This inactivity is slow poison. By the time,
you realize the damage caused by your inactivity/lethargy, you are beyond repair.

The secret of the oldest people in the world is they keep themselves active/busy. They are never idle and
inactive. In other words, activity increases longevity, reduces health risks.

Too much of laziness makes you immovable/ unproductive.

I am lazy and I don't want any goals. I am happy doing nothing.

The trouble with not having goals is that you spend your life running up and down
the field and never score .. Bill Copeland

A goalless person becomes lazy and catches rust.

Don’t be idle when alone, don’t be alone when idle.

Idle is never ideal.

Don’t be idle, work your way to success.

When you are idle, chances are that you may drown in crazy thoughts. If your crazy thoughts control you,
you may become a liability to yourself and to others.

Crazy thoughts are to be nipped in the bud.

When you are extremely busy and had no free time, you may choose not to have goals. Still it is a good
idea to have some goals. How will you kill time, if you are stuck in a God forsaken place and had nothing
to do? If you do not have any activity to kill time, the enormity of idle time will kill you.

In your extremely busy profession, you had no goals to keep you active and pass your leisure time. After
serving a major part of your life, you retired and if you don’t know what to do and how to spend your
vast idle time, you will become a lunatic.

All of a sudden in your married life, if you are separated from your life’s partner, how will you survive
the solo journey for the rest of your life? If you don’t know how to cope with the separation from your
better half, you will commit harakiri.

It’s not the end of life, hell will not break loose. Take control of the situation and move on. If you can
concentrate on your goals and carry on with your normal activities, you can cope with any calamities in
life.

Have some goals to keep you engaged in times of need/boredom/inactivity/loneliness.

In any game, the participants or participating teams perform their best to defeat their opponent and win
the game/trophy. If there is a game with no scope for any team to win, then what interest does the teams
will have to play in the game?

When there is no goal, there is no game. Exception, if the teams are performing equally well, then it is a
draw. If it is a one person show, then I am the winner and I am the looser. Or I would say, I won over
myself/ I defeated me.
In every work place, there will be daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly status review meetings. We
need to update the lead/manager the progress/status of our tasks. The purpose of these status review
meetings is to make sure that, we are on the right track and can meet our goals within the deadlines.

If there are no status review meetings, in our work place, then none will work on their tasks/jobs.

What if there are no exams nor grading system in the schools, then students will not study at all. As there
are exams and grading system students study with the goal of passing their exams and securing good
grades. In this process they acquire knowledge and prepare themselves to meet the challenges of life
ahead of them.

If there are no exams nor grading, then students will not study as there are no goals.

BENEFITS OF HAVING GOALS

In schooling students study with the goal of passing their exams and securing good grades. By pursuing
their goals, students are sharpening their brain power / analytical skills.

How to make a line small, without altering the line. Draw a bigger line by the side of the 1st line, then the
1st line becomes relatively small, compared to the 2nd line.

When you are alone, your pain /problems will be magnified and haunt/torment you.
when you are busy with some work or the other, you tend to ignore / forget your pain/ problems.

When you are actively involved in achieving your goals, you are sure to ignore unrelated petty issues.

Define bigger challenges and work on them, your petty issues become negligible/ignorable.

Every one has problems. Most of our spare time is wasted in worrying about our problems. When you
had no other work to do than to worry about your problems, the severity of your problems is magnified
and you loose your peace of mind. If you had goals at hand, you stop worrying about your problems and
start working on your goals. Your problem looses its significance / importance. When you are working
actively on your goals, you will never ever fall into an infinite loop of worrying about your problems and
loose your mental peace.

Worrying will not solve our problems.

Though we worry to worry, we worry and worry.

When I have goals, I eagerly work on my goals.

When I had nothing to work and keep me occupied, I get bored. To be out of boredom, I keep multiple
goals in my queue.

Enjoy the satisfaction of accomplishing goals.

We do budgeting to meet our financial needs/commitments and make provisions to meet our future
expenses and liabilities. In a similar way, we define our goals to meet our present and future demands.

Achieving goals depend on our priorities, efforts and pursuance.

Defining goals is the first step.

Pursuing goals with determination and dedication until you realize them is the next step.

In the first step, if the goal itself is not properly defined, then the effort that follows, goes waste.

Every object continues to be in its state of rest or of uniform motion, unless an external force is
applied on it. Newton’s first law of motion.
I just love to sleep all my life, unless my determination forces me to get up and come up in life.

Having goals makes you competitive.

Being competitive, you are well prepared to face the challenges of life with confidence.

It is always better to have goals in your life, profession, and hobby. When you are having goals, you plan
your strategy upfront, work and complete them in time.

Upfront, I had no idea, as to how to complete my task. But when I start working, I get new ideas, I
perfect my strategies and complete the job.

If I sit idle without working on my job, chances are that I may not complete the job.
So keep working on your goals and accomplish something great.

Some are useless goals, some goals do not provide any value. You have to understand, the benefits/
usefulness of your goals. One memorizes all the city names and street names in America. What is the use
of memorizing all that stuff? There are mapquest, googlemaps, yahoomaps and the like to help me with
the required information. Rather I would spend my time constructively to learn piano or math and
compose music or solve complex algorithms.

Choose your goals that suit your lifestyle and aspirations

A thing well began is half done.

All are prospectors.

We invest in stocks, real estate, business. Why don’t we invest in our kids and in ourselves?

Sit with your kids and assign them short term goals and long term goals depending on their interest and
aspirations. Explain the benefits and convince them to work on their goals. Encourage them to meet their
goals, reward them when they meet their goals. Make sure they are not bored due to lack of activity. If
your kids are idle and bored, they may get attracted towards vices.

What if your kids don’t define their goals, chances are they may be attracted towards bad habits.

If the kids are introduced at the right time to positive goals, they succeed in life

Explain your kids the benefits of having goals. Make sure your kids are not idle and wasting their time.
When the kids are having no activity, they seek pleasure in inactivity.

You can take the horse to the pond. You can not make it drink.

Some of the greatest tennis players, musicians, politicians, scientists were inspired and encouraged by
their parents, while defining and pursuing their goals.

When the mind is thoughtless? The process of checking for thoughts inside the mind itself is a thought.
So the mind is never thoughtless, unless one is asleep or dead. Keep your thoughts in the positive
direction and reap the benefits.

Make sure you are working on positive and constructive goals. Believe and respect your work.
Boredom is inactivity or loss of interest in activity. You need to have multiple goals in your queue. If you
are loosing interest to work on a goal or if you finished a goal, switch to another goal. If your queue is
empty, then you get into boredom, due to lack of activity/ lack of goals.

Pursuing goals is a passion.

If you pursue positive and constructive goals, you reap the benefits of your achievements.
If you pursue negative and destructive goals, you become a victim of your achievement and pay the
penalty.
Positive and constructive goals may not make you famous, but beware negative and destructive goals
will definitely make one notorious.

When you are working on positive and constructive goals, you need to work hard.

But if you are working on negative and destructive goals, not much effort is needed. If everyone is
working on negative and destructive goals, then the whole world becomes a burial ground.

To check on our negative and destructive goals, there is our conscience and the law. Obey the law.

Positive and constructive goals benefit you and the people around you.

I enjoyed the movie “BUCKET LIST”.

I don’t wait till the end, I will list out my goals today itself and start working on them.

Defining goals is a refined TODO LIST.

I always keep long term goals and short term goals in my queue.
I always look forward to working on my goals and plan my strategies, well ahead of time and make the
best use of my time. That way I will never be idle nor bored due to lack of activity.

Define how to define. Refine what to define.

Goals differ from person to person, from time to time, from need to greed.

I define my goals, you define your goals.

Unless you define, what you want to define, none can help you, to define and refine your goals.

Let me first define my goal. My goal is to define “Defining goals”.

Hope my goal helps you define your goal.

MY FAVOURITE IDIOMS / QUOTATIONS

A bull in a china shop

A foolish man seeks happiness in the distance.
A man of straw.
A nation without heroes is a nation without future. . Marya Mannes
An idle man’s brain is a devils workshop.
A thing well begun is half done.
Be a Roman in Rome.
Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions - Why am I doing it, What the
results might be and will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers
to these questions, go ahead. .Chanakya
Better work and fail than to sleep one's life away. . Jerome K Jerome
Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the day time and too sleepy to worry at night.
Don’t be idle when alone, don’t be alone when idle.
Do or die.
Drunkenness is temporary suicide. The happiness that it brings is merely negative,
a momentary cessation of unhappiness. . B Russel
Every object continues to be in its state of rest or of uniform motion, unless an external force is
applied on it. Newton’s first law of motion.
Every rule has got an exception. But every exception does not imply a rule.
Fait accompli
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction ..Newton’s third law of motion.
He who wants to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything. . Samuel Johnson
Imagination is more important than knowledge. .Albert Einstein
Karma comes in search of you, as a calf finds its mother in a herd of cattle .. Githa
Leaving no stone unturned.
Magnum opus
Ours is to work, the results will take care of themselves ..Swamy Vivekananda
Practice makes a man perfect.
Sink or swim.
The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. . George S. Patton
There’s as much risk in doing nothing as in doing something. .Trammel Crow
The trouble with not having goals is that you spend your life running up and down
the field and never score. . Bill Copeland
The wearer only knows where the shoe pinches
The wise grows it under his feet. . James Oppenheim
The world belongs to the energetic. . Ralf Waldo Emerson
Time is money.
Time and tide wait for none.
When love and skill work together expect a master piece. . John Ruskin
You can take the horse to the pond. But you can not make it drink.
You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it. . Charles Baxton
You must be the change, you want to see in this world ..Mahathma Gandhi

REFERENCES:

Professional Death: http://www.psychinnovations.com/psych/node/2

Professional Death: http://www.scribd.com/jp_vijaykumar
Living as if they had only one day left
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/wayoflife/04/06/bucket.list.buried.life/index.html?hpt=C2
Being bored could be an early death:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100210/ap_on_he_me/eu_med_bored_to_death
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/05/12/cool.lawns.gardens.ireport/index.html?hpt=Sbin
http://www.roadjunky.com/article/705/papillon-by-henri-charriere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papillon_(autobiography)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hanks
*************************************************************************************
****
***********************PERSONAL UNEDITED
NOTES*************************************
*************************************************************************************
****

Having goals keeps/makes you active and competitive.

You are well prepared to face the demands of your life and profession, if you are working on your goals.

I will do my best to scale Mount Everest. If not I will scale myself.

We all know, that worrying will not solve our problems.

After joining job, you will have career oriented goals.

Everyday should be different. Yesterday I had one drink. Today I had two drinks and tomorrow I will
have three drinks. If I go on increase my intake of drinks everyday then I end up a drunkard.

The greatest boon a man can give his children, is loving their mother .. Napoleon Bonaparte
You are not supposed to have strenuous goals and exceed your physical limits in achieving your goals.

But you are welcome to have goals that require your mental involvement and keep you active and
limping with life.

Be reasonable in setting up goals. For example, I want to become the richest person in the world,
overnight. I want to become the fastest runner in the world, when I am not strong enough even to walk.

I want to secure a job

Acquire the necessary skills / training for securing a job.
Work on your resume.
Do your homework and face the interviews with confidence.
Get into your dream job.

Too much of wealth is good. But the way you amazed it, makes the difference.

In my short span of life, it is a dead heat race to assimilate and accumulate as much of knowledge as
possible.

Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resists it .. Githa

While Gurunanak, the preacher of Sikhism, was touring the length and breadth of India, an old lady
approached Gurudev with a request to advise her son to stop eating jaggery. Gurunanak, asked the lady to
come after a week. The old lady brought her son again after a week, Gurunanak, called the boy and
advised him “not to eat jaggery”. The old lady asked Gurunanak, “Gurudev, why you took one weeks
time to advise my son, while you could advise my son last week itself”. Then Gurrunanak replied, I also
eat jaggery. So first I stopped eating jaggery and advised your son. It took me one week to stop eating
jaggery

The Hindu saying in Sanskrit, “sarve janam sukhino bhavanthu”, means - wish all people be happy. This
all people includes you also.

A thing well begun is half done

Practice makes a man perfect. Practice makes any person perfect.
The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war .. George S. Patton

I can hit the ground and start working on the issues at hand anytime.
Determination, dedication to achieve your goal are the prereqs.
Our goals differ in category, priority and our ability to realize

Goals are mostly positive and constructive. Goals without deadlines are like wishes.
Wishes do not require your effort.

Goals will have deadlines. How can we differentiate a goal from a wish?

Some common wishes are

I wish to win a lottery. I wish to get a job. Wish you best of luck. May God bless you
I wish to lose weight. Wish you good health. Wish you success

A stitch in time saves nine.

Don’t be idle when alone. Don’t be alone when idle.

Your goals should improve your hobby/profession/life in a productive way.

You should be benefited positively by pursuing and achieving your goals.
You should derive satisfaction/happiness in accomplishing your goals.

Don’t force anything on kids. If you command them, they revolt and become stubborn. Be friendly and
gentle with them.
You should see sparks of desire in yourself to excel in life.

A rolling stone gathers no moss

A standing stick holds no ground.
Art is long life is short

The longevity of active persons is more

What if the hero of the novel, Papillon, had no goal of getting released from the solitary confinement in
French Guyana prison, not struck to a strict activity schedule. He would not have made out of the prison.
Only the hero’s goal helped him.

If you sit idle, and do nothing, you catch rust and become allergic to work. In due course, you don’t have
energy to lift your own body mass

Every rule has got an exception. Every exception does not imply a rule.

TODO LIST is a list of activities one has to do/ work on. It is not a wish list. You have a todo list, you
have a bucket list, don’t you have a goals list?Todo list is list of tasks to be worked on /completed within
a short period of time, say a weeks time. Bucket list is a list of tasks to be completed before ones death,
which one may not know, whether all the tasks in the bucketlist will be completed before one’s death or
not. In between to do list and bucket list, we don’t have a goals list.

Work on your goals and accomplish them, as if it were your last day

If you are a theist, you pray God and hope your wish be fulfilled. If you are an atheist, you hope for your
wish to come true

The great Mother Theresa served the poor all her life.

The services of the great mother Theresa, benefitted millions.

Rome was not built in one day.

The satisfaction of realizing goals is invaluable

The happiness of accomplishing our goals should be ever fresh.

Wants are unlimited. When one want is satisfied, another want replaces it.

Similarly, your goals should be unlimited. When one goal is realized, another goal should replace it.

I should practice violin at a different time, so as not to disturb others’ sleep.

Define your goals and achieve them and make your life happy and productive.
Enjoy the success of realizing goal after goal.

You define your goal. Even I can define your goal. But you only have to meet your goal.
My goal is my goal, not your goal. Your goal is not my goal, your goal.