Everyone knows you should make SMART goals and work towards them. But only a few people are able to do it. How do they do it?
Hint: writing it on a to-do list may help.
At least Simon Sinek says so. The reason : you can only achieve the goals you SEE. Seeing these goals helps you achieve them. Our bodies are engineered that way. Hear it from Simon Sinek:
Simon Sinek studies people and culture, and speaks on leadership. In this talk at 99U, he shares his learnings on, “Where leaders come from”. He says, “our feelings are produced by two types of chemicals – the selfish and the social”.
For those of you who want to be good leaders, go ahead and watch the entire video. Simon speaks about leadership, and gets invited to a lot of places, to say this. However, what I’m going to focus on, is what Simon says, between the 9th and the 14th minute of the video. He talks about one chemical – Dopamine.
Dopamine is the chemical that gets you to do stuff. So when Hubspot is looking for people who can Get Sh*t Done, they should ask the person to get his medical tests done. See how much of Dopamine does he have.
You get Dopamine when you accomplish something. When you cross off ONE thing, on that to-do list. The moment when you shout YES! That’s why to-do lists matter. That’s why GOALS matter.
There is one more important thing here that Simon points out – You need to SEE your goals to be motivated. That’s why you need to write ONLY the goals that you can see, or imagine. That’s why SMART goals work. Simon hinted at it when talking of the apple tree.
You need to be Specific – to be able to see what it exactly looks like.
You need to be able to Measure it – to know how far or how close to the goal you are.
You need to be able to Achieve it – for you to be able to SEE the goal.
The goal needs to be Relevant, to your primary RESPONSIBILITY at work – if this is not the case, you will not see yourself achieving it.
The goal needs to be Time-bound – Well, even for the dreamers among us, we know that dreaming it isn’t enough. You need to do something to achieve it. Making goals time-bound help you get you bu** off the ground and go and achieve it. It tells you exactly when you need to make a move.
Enjoy the video. It should help you understand your people, so that you can lead them better.
What is the one thing, you remember from the video? Write down in the comments and share it with others.
