Talk Story with Tee

I’ve never been one to write down my goals. Maybe it’s because I never thought there would be a benefit to it, but boy, was I wrong. I was “talking story” one day with my husband about what our plans are for the future. And as we talked, I thought to myself, “Man, we have a lot of work to do if we want to accomplish all that in five years.”

In my professional life, I’ve always written down goals, provided action steps and measured them. If I don’t meet those goals, I don’t get rewarded.

But I never thought about taking that same mentality and transferring it into my personal life – until that moment with my husband.

So I went to the nearest Staples after work the next day, picked up large flip charts and markers and set time with my husband to write down our goals.

How we did it

1. Started with five year goals – We talked about what we wanted to accomplish in five years – financially, personally, professionally, spiritually, and as a family.
2. Then looked at one year goals –  I asked my husband, “What do we have to do each year to get to our five year goal?” So again, we broke down what we wanted to accomplish by the end of every year. For example, our five year goal is to travel to at least five international countries by 2022 – therefore, we have to aim to visit at least one international country each year.
3. Created action steps – After breaking down our one year goals. We wrote down action step for each goal. Let’s take our travel plans for example. If we want to travel every year overseas, we need to first pick our country, be sure our passports are up-to-date and open an account to save money to travel. These were our action steps we knew we had to take to be sure we can accomplish that goal.
4. Created measurements – To make sure we’re on track, we have a plan to check in every month to make sure we have enough money saved.

What did I learn?

Writing down our goals was very eye-opening for us. The entire process took us about an hour and a half to complete. These are the five things I learned:

1. Goals can be accomplished if they’re realistic – We only included realistic goals we knew we can accomplish in the next five years. We kept our goals simple. We don’t have more than 20 goals between the two of us.
2. Prioritizing is important (need vs. want) – When we started, we brainstormed and I only took goals I knew would be beneficial for my family and myself. I want to invest my time in priorities – what’s needed right now and I what I foresee; not what’s wanted. I’ve always wanted a Range Rover, but not in the next five years – that can wait.
3. Focus is very important – Being realistic and prioritizing are important, but also including action plans and measurements really helped us focus on what we need to do by 2022.
4. I have a lot of work to do – Goals are set for a reason. You want to always grow and succeed. To be sure I can accomplish these realistic, highly prioritized and focused goals – I have work to do.
5. My husband really loves Brazilian Jiu Jitsu – He seriously does! Writing down our goals, I learned what’s important for him personally. It was a great bonding experience for sure. And, oh, if you don’t know what Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is, it’s a style of ground martial art fighting. It teaches you to use less force and more technique.

I typed out our goals, printed and framed them. This is serious business!

Why don’t you try it out?

This was fun and a great bonding experience.

Try it out, and please let me know how it went by either commenting below, or sending me an email.

Remember to keep it simple and it’s ok if you use all the paper before you find the goals you know you can accomplish. Again, you don’t have to do five year goals. This worked for us, but do what best fits you.