WORK
Goals
It is a very common thing these days to talk in terms of achieving
goals or objectives or whatever is the phrase of the moment. But such
goals are typically set by a Government or a Management with all too
little regard for those who have to reach the standards set.
I am not thinking about that kind of thing.
Few people will take a long road journey without some plan of how to
get there. Without such a broad plan things will be chaotic and there
is a good chance of just going around in circles. Similarly the person
who is able to translate his or her ambitions and desires in life into
a sequence of steps, each of which can be taken with relative ease,
has a very good chance of making progress.
That is pretty clear. But it can be quite hard to step outside
ourselves to plan our lives. There is a strong tendency to keep our
heads down and get on with the work in hand and hope for the best,
rather like that driver who is not at all sure that he is on the right
road but puts his foot down in the hope that this will gets him there
faster.
So at times I have found myself being involved in a conversation
about someone’s career in which we just spend time taking an
overview of things. It seldom takes all that long to get a good
picture of the map of someone’s life and where they are on it. It
is then not hard to plot a good course forwards, that might hold good
for months or years into the future. Such a brief bit of planning of
goals and how to reach them can be of enormous long-term value.
