What is converged vision?

Today I want to shed some light on the theme of my blog, and the direction I want to take my blog, software and life in: converged vision.

Goals often fail to materialise for a number of reasons, among these reasons are:

• Failure to follow through 
• Failure to take action 
• Having so many goals we don't know what direction to go in 
• Having goals that don't turn us on or have no compelling outcome 
• Having goals that are unrealistic 
• Having goals that are too easy to achieve and don't stretch us: we may achieve them, but they don't benefit us as much as they could. 

Now I have an idea which I'm sure is not new or unique about why our goals sometimes fail to become realities: we set goals that are divergent. That is, we set goals that do not support each other which divide our focus and have us running around like chickens without heads. For example, setting a goal to earn £50 000 a year and then setting a goal to buy a new Ferrari in the next year. You may find that the cost of maintaining your new car is half your targeted income. 

When it comes time to set out goals we have to get real and do some research especially when it comes to the cost of our "thing goals". If I want my company to earn £100 000 a year but set a goal to buy a £750 000 house next year, I may well achieve the first goal, but am likely to fail in the second as it is going to be based on my income which I've targeted at £100 000. The bank in very unlikely to give me a mortgage of 7.5 times my annual income. So, how do I resolve these in-congruent goals? I still want a mansion, but am not earning enough!
Simple really: your goals have to be convergent. You have to have a converged vision of your outcomes that are supported by all your goals. All your goals should work in concert to achieve the vision you have. Goals that do not work towards this vision should be discarded, reworded order erred till your vision changes. I'm not a particularly religious guy any-more but I used to be quite a serious Mormon. They have a way of expressing the single-mindedness required of church members: you must press forward steadfastly with an eye single to the glory of god.

Well, I'm not saying you should become a Mormon or have your eye focused purely the glory of god, but what I am saying is that your goals should be designed to be convergent on your vision. Note that I say designed, not randomly brain-stormed. I know many times when you set goals they are a list of things you want to have, do, go to, see or be and they are normally stated almost randomly as you think of them. In fact, a lot of goal-setting books, audio books, seminars and courses will help you think of the things that you want to achieve, have, or do by encouraging you to list a bunch of things that come to your mind, then select the top three from the list and think of ways to achieve them. I think this approach is a mistake as it often results in divergent goals that do not support the vision of the life you want to live and the person you want to be.

I believe that when you have identified the things you want to do, own or be, you should choose the ones that all focus on your vision of who and what you want to be. These goals, and the pursuit of them will shape your life for the next few years, so make sure they a the goals that will support your vision of a life well lived and your general happiness. Design your goals to support each other and your desired outcome. That way you will press forward with an eye single to your desired outcome (or vision), rather than have a bunch of divergent goals that eat your energy and are possibly counter-productive, or at least so in-congruent as to guarantee your failure.

So, looking back at our examples, if I want to earn at least £100 000 and live in £750 000 mansion in the country, I have to have a few very specific goals:

• Save £300 000 in the next 5 years 
• Earn £100 000 per year 
• Buy my house in 5 years 

 Or

•  Earn £200 000 a year and buy my house next year!

Now to figure out how to make that kind of money; but that's a subject for another post.

Thinking about goals

I've decided to learn how to program Android devices and then brush up on my WPF programming and finally to learn programming for the iOS (iPhone and iPad). The vehicle I'm going to use is the development of a goal-management application that will run on all these platforms: not a single code-base, but one for each platform with some common interfaces.

Apart from learning how to program for these platforms, I want to return to the methods of goal-setting and planning that I used when I was younger; methods that resulted in success. But I want to do more than just automate these methods or make them easier to access, I want to know more about what makes me tick: what makes goals work; what makes goals effective; and why sometimes when we are achieving all our goals, we still feel unsatisfied and unfulfilled.

There seem to be a lot of quick-fix solutions in terms of time-management and goal management systems with promises to change your life in 7 days. I have utmost respect for many of the authors of these systems and have seen results in my life from programs such as "Unleash the power within". However, I've also experienced that some things in life take time: learning to play a musical instrument with a degree of mastery; learning to paint; mastering just about any craft. These things take time and the "change your life in a week" solutions sell folks the idea that they really can master their destiny in a week. I think there is a big difference to taking charge of your life and time (which these systems can help with) and reaching goals that require consistent effort over long durations of time. Others might disagree, so I'll leave the blog open to comments as I develop my product.

The last few years have seen my life go down a path that I never foresaw, that some would describe as failure. I believe that too much focus on goals and achieving these goals lead me to a place where I had all the things I wanted, had reached all the goals I set for myself and was bored.

I've realised a couple of things:

1. my dreams that I had strived so hard to achieve were small dreams and I should have dreamed bigger.
2. achieving goals without having a solid reason for the goals will put you in a position where you don't celebrate your accomplishments as they have little meaning to you.

So I've been thinking about these questions:

• What is a goal?
• Why do we set goals?
• What makes goals important (caring about the outcome)?
• Why do we just give up on some goals?
• How are goals related to vision?
• How are goals related to how I define myself?
• How are goals related to relationships?

This blog is going to be quite central to my life for the next few weeks while I work on this project and as the application develops I'll be posting downloadable links to the software. This blog is part of the project.