I’ve been thinking about goals a lot over the last few months. It’s never really been a strong point of mine. Historically, I’ve just been go go go, and never really sat back to think about where I was going.

It always kinda…I dunno, felt like a waste of time, I guess. Why set goals when there’s so much work to do? Who has time for that?

But, as I’ve said several times on this blog, my biggest fear is burning out, and honestly I believe that not setting goals will help keep me from burning out. The consequence, it seems, is that if I don’t explicitly set a goal, I will end up having an implied goal in my head, and it’s almost always more optimistic than what I should really shoot for.

The result? Yeah. I bust my ass unsustainably, and still take longer than what I expected to accomplish what I was doing. So not only do I feel like I failed (even though I didn’t technically set a goal) while working much too fast and failing to actually pace myself.

For me, it’s kind of the opposite. I work too hard without a goal. Without rails, I will kill myself working too hard, or completely disassociating. It’s unhealthy, ineffective, and the result is, surprise! I don’t hit my (nonexistent) goals. I find that because I don’t prioritize anything, therefore everything is a priority. (As I write this it’s all laughably obvious). And because it’s all a priority, I change gears, change contexts constantly as a result.

And hoooooooly shit I’m bad at context switching.

I find myself thinking that maybe I can accomplish the same thing with quarterly goals. I originally thought I would follow the EOS “Quarterly Rocks” system, but honestly I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. It felt too rigid, perhaps too specific. I know about the concept of SMART goals and all of that, but honestly I found myself just…agonizing over exactly what these goals would be, and it just felt like I was wasting my time.

How can I set goals that are measurable when I don’t even have a benchmark to set against yet? Grow my business by a bajillion percent, sure sounds good. Acquire…eh, I dunno 100 customers? 10? 50? 1000? It all just feels so…arbitrary. And since I know that it feels arbitrary right now, its really hard to take it seriously, because deep down inside, I know that I just picked something.

Then, while watching some CGP Grey (really love his stuff) on YouTube, I discovered his goal setting approach – the Theme.

Essentially, he proposes that instead of setting a goal, you should set a theme. Something that helps you set your intention for the quarter, but is decidedly not measured. It’s simply an intent you set once every quarter that helps you clarify your primary intent for the quarter. Some themes he’s said have been things like “growth” or “health”.

Now this is something I can get behind! No more agonizing over numbers or goals, just simply setting an intent, writing down that intent, and then every evening I ensure my primary goal aligns with my theme.

This quarter, for example, my theme is “launch”. I’m working on launching a few different consulting and masterminds that teach people how to grow their business using partnerships, and they are my primary priority. So every day I write down in my launchpad (what I call my daily journal) the word “Launch”. Its a nice reminder and frames my mindset every day. With one word, it keeps me grounded. It keeps me focused. This quarter, we’re launching.

No, we’re not building that feature. We’re not taking on that promotion. We’re not taking on that project. This month? We’re launching.

Do I think this will be the only way I measure goals forever? Not at all. I imagine SMART goals actually make a lot of sense when you actually have a benchmark to measure against, but I think, at least for now, the conventional wisdom that I need to have goals seems like really shit advice.

So, if you’re looking at yourself, and struggling with setting goals, maybe try setting a theme instead. Perhaps it will help you as much as it is helping me.