#588 How to Decide Which Goals to Give Up

0:00Hi, it's Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast and you are listening to one of our Squiggly Shortcuts, where in a very short amount of time, we explain something that we think is going to be helpful for your career and give you some simple ideas you can put into action. And today I want to talk about goals, but not what I would normally talk about because I love goal setting and I love matrices that help us plan and set our goals. But today I want to talk about giving up on your goals. and it's because there is I actually came across a word grind set that has gone into the dictionary which is this idea that grit and grinding it out is supposed to be really good for people but actually knowing when to give up on a goal is equally important and I think there is a lot of focus on setting goals and sticking to them and I think there's a lot less of a conversation about knowing when to give up on a goal.

0:54And so what we're trying to talk about here is something that's called productive quitting. It's not about just goal abandonment, like starting loads of goals and just letting them go randomly, because that often doesn't feel like something that you are in control of. This is about being conscious about the goals you continue with and the goals that you kill. And there's actually a really good article that I will link to in the show notes from The New Scientist, which dives into this deeply. But there's some elements of that article that I wanted to talk to you about today, because I think it is some quick shortcuts that might help you think differently about goals.

1:30So the first thing I want to talk about is something called the goal adjustment scale. And there are four questions I'm just going to read out for you, which you can give a score of one to five. And this gives you an indication of where you're starting from. Like, are you good at letting goals go? Or actually, are you holding on to too many goals and they might be getting in your way? And even when you say you're going to stop, you don't stop thinking about them. So they're almost sticking in your head, but you're not making any progress, which is not helpful. So let's go through the goal adjustment scale.

2:00And then I want to talk to you about something called goal shifting, goal shielding and goal shelving. OK, we'll talk about those things next. So let's talk about the goal adjustment scale. These are four questions that I would recommend that you score one to five. The higher your score, the better you are at adjusting your goals. The lower your score, the more a risk that goals could be getting in your way. So here we go. Here are four questions. Number one, it is easy for me to stop thinking about the goal and let it go. So five would be, yeah, I'm good at letting it go. One would be, no, I hate letting goals go.

2:39Second question, it is easy for me to reduce my effort towards the goal. So this is when you can pull back because you might have other things going on. number three I seek other meaningful goals so people who are really good at letting goals go put that energy into something else that they enjoy and number four I start working on other new goals so this will come back to the goal shifting thing in a minute but for the first thing to get your goal baseline just give yourself a score out of five on each of those the higher the score the less of an issue this probably is for you but if you've got some of those where you're scoring like a three and a below, then this is definitely a topic that you might want to work on.

3:20So that's our first thing. We've got a score as a baseline. Now what we need to do is review the goals that we are working with. So you can see here, in case you're wondering why I've got this giant post-it board next to me, you can see here I've written down some goals that I have active at the moment. These are things that I'm either actively thinking about or working on and I've done two columns here. So I've got my personal goals and I've got my professional goals. and for everyone that's listening to this some of the things that I have my personal goals are exercising five times a week reading one book a week growing my vegetables and my professional goals I've got starting and completing my PhD delivering our business plan and developing some investing skills there's a lot of goals going on and arguably I need to let some of these goals go so there are three ways that you can almost audit your goals and what we're looking to do is think about which goals might we want to stop and shift that energy to somewhere else?

4:17Which goals do we really, really want to shield? So these are the ones that we really want to protect. And which goals do we want to shelve? So they're not gone forever, but they are not a goal for now. So if I was to do this, I've got my full list. So I would suggest you start with an audit. I would start with the shielding ones, which ones feel really important. So for me, the PhD feels really important. So I'm going to put a circle around that one. Delivering my business plan feels really important. And actually, the other thing that's really important here is my exercise because that makes me feel good.

4:49So I want to shield those goals. Which ones do you want to shift because they're taking energy perhaps away from you achieving things you really want to focus on. So I'm going to put a line through decorating, that's not going to happen this year. I'm going to put a line through renovation, that's not going to happen this year. I'm going to put a line through investing skills. That's not going to happen this year. And then the last one is goal shelving. So this is the pausing one. So I'm going to pause this growth in new markets, for example. I might even pause, to be honest, the reading one book a week.

5:18I would love to do that, but I can't do it right now. That gives me one more growing my vegetables. I'm going to actually make sure that I'm protecting that one. So that gets a shield too. Now, what this exercise has done is given me a much more realistic way of thinking about my goals. And so just to go back At the start, too many goals can get in your way. People who have productive quitting are shown to be much more effective. It's also shown to have an improvement in their well-being. And using the goal adjustment scale helps you see where you're starting from. And this categorization of goal shielding, goal shifting and goal shelving is a really good way that you can audit your goals and make sure your energy is going on the right things.

6:01so I hope that has given you a way of thinking differently about your goals so that the ones that are really important to you could invest in them and you're more likely to achieve them for more squiggly shortcuts make sure you're subscribed to the squiggly careers podcast