The value of goals

One of the luxuries I have at the moment is a lot of time to think about goals by virtue of being engaged in the development of my own goal management software. I've read many books, been to seminars and done several courses on goal setting, time management, personal power and so forth and what I've noticed is that most goal-setting courses focus on an aspect of goal management and have a system for setting and managing goals that is somewhat rigid.

That is, goals may be qualified in terms of how they relate to your vision, how one should focus ones time on the important rather than the trivial, how goals are related to who you want to be and so forth. As my life circumstances have changed from bad to good and back again, I've grown to believe that there are different reasons for setting goals at different times in our lives, and that the manner in which we approach goal-setting and management should be guided in a way that is sympathetic with where we are in our lives.

For example, when a person finds themselves at the peak of their career, all their personal goals achieved, but for some reason feels hollow, empty and wonders what it's all about; an approach that involves some analysis of what you want your life to mean, and what your vision for your life is would be appropriate.

When that same person is on the ropes, down and out and hanging to their sanity by a thread, an approach that allows them to foster some hope based on the goals that can be achieved would be appropriate. I'be been on the ropes before and goals gave me something to look forward to, to focus on and to drive me forward in such a way that I was able to get myself out of the problems that I was in. I've also been in a place where I had achieved many of my goals and was still not happy: the achievement of goals does not make you happy if you have the wrong goals. Setting goals can have great value to get our minds into a more positive frame of mind. When our needs are already met and we are moderately successful, goals should have meaning attached to them so that the achievement of the goals can be truly celebrated.

Books don't generally offer this type of flexibility of guidance: they tend to be algorithmic in their approach. Indeed, even most religions seem somewhat algorithmic: "keep this commandment and God will bless you with this blessing" as if God was some sort of genie who blesses on command. Perhaps books are not the best way to get the inspiration that you need depending on your circumstances. I hope to address this problem with my goal-setting software.