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How many goals can you realistically tackle at once?
By John DeVries | February 7, 2008
It’s hard to believe there’s any new information to read or write about on the topic of goals. There certainly is a plethora of information about goal setting and goal achievement on the internet. This post isn’t really about setting or achieving goals. Instead, I want to talk about how many goals you can realistically set and achieve at one time. That number will certainly vary from person to person; the next few pages are dedicated to helping you decide exactly how many goals are too many or too few for you, given your current life circumstances.
In an intense moment of motivation and inspiration, I find it’s easy to sit down and make a huge list of all the things I intend to accomplish in life. And when I write them down, they all seem obtainable to me. However, as time passes and you begin to expend energy, having too may goals can be very overwhelming
A realistic and balanced approach.
How many goals you can actually tackle and achieve in a reasonable amount of time, is in my experience, dependent on how much energy you’re able to put towards that goal. The amount of energy you have available to put towards it largely depends on both your internal state, and external life circumstances. In order not to bite off more than you can chew you’ve got to be pragmatic about what’s possible. Conversely, setting too few goals that aren’t big enough will leave you feeling like you’re not making any progress.
So, step one is to figure out what you’re capable of right now (in terms of goal achievement). To do that, see where you fit into the following three categories. Chances are if you take a moment to step back and analyze your life, something I recommend in almost any situation, you’ll pretty quickly be able to determine which of the following you fit into.
Which of the following fits you best?
“My life is…”
Category 1 - somewhere from acceptable to great. I have a lot going for me and I’m excited about what I can achieve.
Category 2 - there’s just this one thing that if I could fix, would change everything for me.
Category 3 - my life has turned to bunk. It seems like everything has fallen apart.
Before we begin, let me suggest something about the above statements. Your personal level of optimism or pessimism will be a major contributing factor in terms of your ability to achieve any goal. If statement three describes you, we need to get something strait. It’s important to be realistic with yourself. If you realize your life has turned out poorly thus far and you’re really not happy with the results, that’s fine as long as it’s true. But there is an important distinction to be made here. You need to decide if things are really that bad, or if you have pessimistic tendencies. The fastest way I can think of for you to come up with a somewhat accurate answer on the spot is this.
When frustrating situations occur in your life, how quickly do you recover? Are you discouraged, depressed, outraged, angry, anxious, and/or frustrated for an extended period of time? These are natural feelings surrounding any traumatic life event; but humans are resilient creatures. Those who are optimists recover faster, put positive spins on their misfortunes, live longer, and tend to lead more successful and fulfilling lives. I’m not making a judgment here, but you’re going to find any goal somewhere between difficult and impossible to achieve if you’re overall life context is negative. If this is you, stop reading this article and read the following books.
”Learned Optimism” – Martin E. Seligman
”You Can’t Afford The Luxury of Negative Thought” – John-Rodger McWilliams & Peter McWilliams
On the other hand, if you’re an optimist or if you have even an average level of optimism, this article can help you. Read on.
What to do if you’re in Category 1: “My life is pretty dang good.”
Your life requires balance. You’re a physical, emotional, spiritual, social human being. Since you’re in category one, I think you have two basic options.
Option 1
If you’ve got a huge goal you absolutely must achieve, I’d say its safe for you to focus on that one thing as long as you don’t neglect the other areas of your life, they can afford to slide a bit or at least remain the same since you’re doing pretty well. It’s probably safe for you to cut back a little on your social life, exercise, diet, or even your spirituality in order to focus more energy on a goal in another area.
Option 2
When you set only one goal, you may achieve it quickly. But if it isn’t vital that you achieve it as fast as possible you may want to take a more balanced approach. Focusing your life entirely around just area can mean setbacks in others if you’re not careful. If you don’t feel like the other areas of your life have room to slide, set a few smaller goals in multiple areas. You may not see progress quite as quickly, but the results will be noticeable over time, especially if you set goals that are quantifiable
For example: If you’re obese, making your weight the priority is likely to be beneficial to you. By solving your weight problem, the other areas of your life are bound to improve significantly. On the other hand, if you are maybe 10-30 lbs over weight, throwing all your energy into your weight loss (while netting quick results) may cost you too much in the other areas of your life. Thus, when the goal is smaller or less urgent, take a balanced approach.
I’m in Category 2: “I’ve got this one thing that would change my life if I could do it.”
First off, would it really change your life that much? An unhealthy obsession over the need for a relationship, a job, or a car ultimately won’t leave you satisfied even if it’s filled. True appreciation for what you have right now is really the only way to be happy. Live in the moment, your life is already beautiful. Perhaps you just haven’t been seeing it or believing it.
On the other hand, if you’re having to support your four person family on only 12,000 dollars a year, more money would indeed make a significant impact on your overall wellbeing (and that of your family’s).
In this case, throw everything you’ve got into this goal. It doesn’t matter if the goal is your weight, your marriage, your finances, or your spiritual beliefs (or a lack there of). If it’s weighing on your heart and you know it’s got to change, give it everything you’ve got. Since this area is in need of major improvement, you can probably afford a few small setbacks in the other areas of your life. Don’t sacrifice other things that are important to you. Don’t lose your spouse over your financial trouble, do this together. Don’t destroy your physical health to make more money. Don’t empty the bank account completely so you can afford a personal trainer. Instead, cut back on the things you can afford to lose, even if they are things you like. Free up time and energy from sleep (if you can afford to), TV watching, driving, eating out, extra social activities, etc…
Making this one thing your goal will be healthy. As long as you’re careful about not sacrificing too much from the other areas of your life, accomplishing this one thing will result in drastically improved quality of life for you.
Category 3: “Everything has fallen apart.”
Sometimes we spend years of our lives asleep and unaware of our current state. When you finally wake up, it’s usually the result of some traumatic even that woke you from what I’ll call your “life stupor”. Suddenly you’re saying to yourself, “holy cow! How did my life get this out of control? Everything is a mess; I don’t like any of this!”
You may in this case have multiple areas of your life that need attention - now. Under these circumstances I would set perhaps two or three initial goals which you could devote your energy to. Often if you pick one, the others will lag behind so far that your progress in one area will seem negligible when you step back and look at your overall life. If you pick 5 or 6 things to improve, it’s likely you won’t make progress fast enough to start feeling better and to achieve tangible results.
This is where I found myself only 5 months before the writing of this article. My now ex-girlfriend and I had to separate because she had a serious eating disorder (it was destroying our relationship and each other), I didn’t make enough money to pay all of my bills each month, I hated my job, I was angry, I was heart broken, I stopped exercising, had a crap diet, had no spirituality, no purpose, and I was developing muscle twitches from stress. I’ve seen people in worse circumstances, but this was an all-time low for me.
Pretty much every area of my life needed work, and they each needed it pronto. If I had just chosen to solve one of those problems, I don’t think I could have kept my sanity. There was just too much to do. I had to tackle multiple areas and I had to do it quickly or risk a serious mental breakdown.
My first steps made the most dramatic and vital changes. Within literally two weeks of realizing things had to change I did the following:
- I quit my job. I worked on an ambulance. I couldn’t afford to watch other people suffer in my state.
- broke up with my girlfriend (it was mutual, I couldn’t have abandoned her.) She’s doing much better without me around.
- Found a new job
- Went to work as quickly as possible to nail down a purpose for my life and a better sense of spirituality.
Fast forward 5 months.
I make $31,000.00 a year, double what I was making 4 months ago.
I have a life purpose.
My spiritual beliefs are fairly grounded and improving literally by the day.
I’ve mostly gotten over my former romantic partner.
I’m very rarely even a little stressed; they call me “Zen” at work now.
I’m up at 5:00 AM 4-5 days per week.
I lift weights and run 3-5 times a week.
I eat a healthy, vegetarian diet with 6-8 servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
I volunteer with a local community organization almost weekly.
I feel an extreme amount of gratitude for the life I am blessed to have and live.
My prospects for further improvements in the romantic, social, and career areas of my life look very good.
I’m not here to claim I live some extraordinary existence that no one else can achieve. Hardly! I have a long way to go and the journey will never be over. But I can say from the deepest part of me that I’m happy. And the improvement in my overall life I’ve seen in only 4-5 months time has been both drastic and very encouraging.
If you’re in a similar situation, I recommend you pick maybe 2 goals to accomplish right now. Get them done, and get them done fast. As soon as they’re out of the way pick one or two more and do those. Accomplish the ones that seem most urgent. You know what they are. Trust me, in a few months you’ll have everything built back up to a reasonable base-line that you can then work off of. The good news is that when things really hit the bottom, you’ll see improvement and personal growth come very quickly. I don’t even recognize the life I had or person I was only 6 months before now. If this rapid pace of change continues, I’m sure this time next year will be drastically different. You can do it too, I’m nothing special. I love me! But I’m certainly not above you in anyway, especially in terms of potential.
Overview
If you have maybe one or two parts of your life that have totally fallen apart and need attention now. Pick one and apply OVERWHELMING mental and physical force to achieve it. Change your environment, change your thoughts, do something totally different, move to a new city, what ever you need to do to get there.
If life is “ok” or even “good”, but you’ve got a lot of things you want to do, take a moderate approach. Pick a couple small goals and consistently pick away at them over time.
And lastly, if your life has simply fallen apart over the course of a year or even a decade, tackle a few of the big problems to get one area back in line, then go and tackle a few in another area until you’ve got everything up to a bearable level. Then you can either pick one thing to focus on or start working away at multiple goals.
Patience
Most of all though, be patient with yourself. Love you. If other people are deserving of your patience, you should be too. Don’t expect the world to change overnight. If 8-12 months from now you see significant improvement in even one area of your life, that’s major. The good news is that if everything has turned to crap for you as a result of “life neglect”, you’ll make progress very quickly as long as you stay positive and put the energy and time in.
If you think your life is great, even large improvements won’t seem quite as significant as the small ones will to someone who is very low emotionally.
Don’t stress. Part of growth and change is enjoying the ride. If you’re feeling uncomfortable, you’re doing something right. If you’re feeling negative, angry, or anxious, you’re doing something wrong. Try a different approach, or maybe just change your attitude.
