Goal Setting & Why Marcus Sheridan is Wrong

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My last post was about how you shouldn’t work for some future reward.

Instead, you should work on something for the simple fact that you love working on it and that will take you to personal and business success. At the end of the post, I asked that you give yourself the next 2 months to think about what’s really important to you and then begin doing that in the new year – to work on goal setting.

Marcus Sheridan then commented that he doesn’t see any point in waiting for the new year.

Marcus said, “What I mean is why wait to make a change that has been eating at you?” I used to stand wholeheartedly in this camp. Why wait for tomorrow when I can do it today? But in really just the last 1-2 years, I came to see that it is too difficult for many people (me included) to divorce life’s decisions from time.

When you look back at your life, it is hard to not say, “I did this in year X,” or, “when I was Y years old.”

And when you look forward, it’s difficult not to see the mile markers coming and set them as goals. “I’ll start Z when I hit the next birthday,” or Christmas or whatever else. In fact, many of us see them as motivation, do we not? If I’ve been dying to do something but haven’t had the time or maybe just haven’t put in the time, I can get excited that I get to start something new once I hit that point.

And, giving yourself time to plan properly for big decisions in your life gives you a better chance at success.

As an entrepreneur giving personal or business advice, you can agree with that, right Marcus? While at some point you have to “Just Do It,” you would not suggest that people simply jump into a major life change like committing 20 hours each week to blogging, taking time away from their family to run every day, learning a musical instrument, etc without thinking about whether it’s sustainable and actually what is important to them, correct?

It’s better to think about what’s important first and then take action second than it is to jump from one ill-considered action to another.

I wholeheartedly recommend that you start something today if it’s been eating at you and you have a reasonably good idea of what you want to do, but if it’s been eating at you and you don’t really know what to do, set yourself a goal that you’ll change at life’s next mile marker and dedicate yourself to finding out in the meantime what that change needs to be in order to stick.

Then, like I said, you can work not for the future reward, but rather for the passion you have.

NOTE: Marcus Sheridan is awesome and writes a few great blogs, not the least of which is his great marketing tips and small business ideas blog The Sales Lion. If you want prolific and impactful writing, subscribe to him.