Setting goals is one of the most common practices of the personal development crowd, an easy way to give your life some focus and direction. The exercise is also something I advocate strongly and implement in my own life. However, if one is not careful goals can actually become more destructive than helpful.

When goals become the ends rather than the means they can create a lifestyle of checking boxes rather than skilled living.

Living simply to reach goals is similar to a hamster spinning in a wheel, lots of movement, but no real progress. Without an overall purpose for your goals the practice of constantly striving can create anxiety, restlessness and eventually become more of a burden rather than a help.

These thoughts came to light in a recent discussion with my friend Glenn. After setting my personal goals for 2008 I have spent the past few months attempting to reach them, some with great success and others, not so much. Throughout the process I have had to remind myself of the ultimate purpose for setting my goals in the first place: a life lived to the hilt in worship of God and leadership of my family.

Knowing the ultimate purpose of you goals helps not only in progressing forward, but also in prioritizing your life.

The quickest way to identify your top priorities is to identify the areas in your life in which you are irreplaceable.

As a husband I am irreplaceable. No one else can be a husband to my wife, but me. As a father, I am also irreplaceable. No one can lead, care for and be a father to my child like I can. Finally, in my worship to God, I am irreplaceable. Others can serve Him, many better than I can, but no one can replace my individual worship to God. In every other area of my life someone can replace me.

At my job, there are 1,000 other pilots that can replace me as the pilot. At my church there are plenty of other people who can replace me as a small group leader. Even my blog, while extraordinary and unique I know, haha, could easily be written by someone far better than me. On that note, if you ever want to write a guest post, please let me know.

When you make goals in various areas of your life there are bound to be times where they conflict with one another. If you don’t have a good grasp on your priorities you goals can actually lead you away from where you want to go.

This morning my wife and I took our 2 month-old daughter with us to the gym. Since I was planning on running on the treadmill I took our daughter and parked her stroller next to me. At around minute 18 she began to frown…I knew I was in trouble. Soon she began to whimper and whine. I had planned on running for 30 minutes. I shut down the treadmill and took care of my daughter who was beginning to cry. While running a marathon this year is a goal of mine, being a good father is another goal and takes priority.

Knowing which goals will take priority will determine whether your goals are ultimately helping you or hurting you in the pursuit of your best life.

The bottom line: Goals are an incredibly effective way of helping move your life in the right direction, but just as important as setting goals is deciding what the right direction actually is and which goals have priority over others as you walk out this journey. Keep setting goals, just make sure they’re serving you and not the other way around.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Here are the links to my latest guest posts: Why You Need Community to Reach Your Goals on Alex Blackwell’s blog, the Next 45 Years. AND “What an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet Can Teach You About Investing” on The Dividend Guy. Just happened to come out on the same day. Enjoy!

The last post, Create a Personal Board of Directors Part I, focused on who you should place on your board. The emphasis was on diversity, relationship, shared values and leaders. This post will focus on what to do once you’ve created your board, emphasizing purpose and structure. You can bring together the most diverse group of talented, creative and wise people in the world, but if there is no clear purpose or system to organize them you will have nothing but a few interesting conversations. With a bit more thought and intentionality your board can be of incredible value to your life, providing council, accountability, encouragement and security.

As I have discussed this topic with various people who have boards of their own, or similar systems of oversight, I have come across some common threads that make them successful. But, the truth is you must come up with a system that makes the most sense for you. Things like how many times you meet, if you communicate by phone, e-mail, face-to-face, what areas to cover…all of these things will depend completely on your current circumstances and should be decided on by you and your board, most likely, through a bit of trial and error. The following points are simply starting points, thoughts that have come forward as I’ve created my own board and begun the process myself.

Goals - If the purpose of a personal board or council is to guide you in your life then they must understand where you want to go. Making a set of goals each year is a good way to communicate to your board where you would like them to focus their energies. My previous post on balance provides a great starting point for making annual goals, but the method is not as important as the result, giving your board a starting point to work from.

Once you have created your goals it is important that each member of your board knows and understands them. Equally important is continually reviewing them, assessing your progress and discussing areas of improvement. Some system of review should be at place on your board, whether it means reviewing your goals once a month, once a quarter, or again, whatever makes sense for your situation. The key is simply to update your board on your progress from time to time.

Accountability - Just as a CEO is accountable to the shareholders via the corporate board of directors, you too should give your personal board the charge of keeping you accountable, nothing is off limits. One of the greatest lies is that there is such a thing as a secret. Secrets are always exposed, light is always shown on darkness, if not now, soon enough. All you have to do is look at the news over the past few years to see how destructive a secret can be. Enron, WorldComm, steroids in baseball, doping at the Olympics, the fall of prominent church leaders, the list is endless.

It is only when we live as if there is no such thing as a secret that we can truly be free to live our best. One of the reasons for filling your board with people you have had past relationship with is to allow this practice of accountability to operate effectively. Living with no secrets does not mean that everyone you meet should know everything going on in your life, but choosing a few trusted friends and mentors to continually ask you the tough questions is a life practice that will keep you from going down many wrong roads. As part of your board structure, make sure there is someone who will always ask you the tough questions each time you meet or communicate.

Life Decisions and Coaching - One of the most obvious benefits of a personal board of directors is their ability to give you advice during major life decisions such as a career change, relocation, etc. There is wisdom in the presence of a strong group of advisers. If you choose your board wisely there is a good chance that someone on your board has already walked through the situation you are facing at any given time. Even if they have not experienced it personally, chances are that one of them will have a connection to someone that has. This form of social capital can be very beneficial when making your way through life, giving you a forum to filter your ideas and decisions.

Coaching is another aspect of having a personal board that can benefit one greatly. Having quality people around to coach you as you walk through life enables you to avoid unnecessary mistakes. Why pay the price yourself for a stupid choice when you can learn from someone who already has. Make it clear to your board that you value their experience and desire for them to share it with you, no holding back. Coaching is another reason why it is important to have leaders on your board. As I said before, leaders love making other leaders so coaching is a natural part of this and one that you should emphasize if your personal board will be of any impact.

Celebration - Up to this point there has been a lot of talk about principles, life skills, etc. These are all very valuable things, but by themselves can be somewhat lifeless. For me, one of the most important aspects of surrounding yourself with a close group of advisers and friends is that of celebration. Successes, victories and fun times are only as great as the people you have in your life to share them with. One of my dreams has always been to have the money to take a group of my close friends and mentors on a vacation every few years. They wouldn’t have to do anything, but show up, I would take care of the rest including airfare, accommodation, food and whatever we were doing for entertainment. This dream is so exciting because it represents, in my opinion, what is best about life, time spent in quality relationships with the people you love. Climbing a mountain is fun, climbing a mountain with a group of good friends is more fun.

I think that in order for a personal board of directors to really thrive there must be an aspect of celebration among all the members. When someone has a child, celebration. When someone gets a promotion, celebration. Aaron Stern, pastor of The Mill, a college group of around 1,400 at New Life Church, once said that true friendships are measured not by how much a person is there for you during the hard times, but how much they celebrate with you during the good times. True friends are genuinely happy when you succeed, no jealousy, no envy, just joy. This is rare, but it’s good and it’s what makes friendships worth fighting for….and what makes celebration a necessary part of any personal board of directors.

At the start of the first post on this subject I shared that all of this had come about as a result of a conversation with my friend Beau Suder. The conversation is ongoing, as it usually is with us, and he brought up an important point a few days ago. His concern was that as we build a personal board of directors, or as he calls it, advisory council (I think he’s sometimes suspicious of my love for business metaphors) we don’t view members through the lens of, “what can I get from you,” but rather with a heart to serve them as well. I couldn’t agree more.

There is no doubt that when we are young we have less to offer in the way of experience, skills, etc. thus the need for a board in the first place, but it doesn’t mean we should view our relationship with members as a one-way street with us at the receiving end of all the benefits. Find ways to take care of your board in whatever ways you can. Don’t make it hard for them to coach and guide you. AND, understand that one day, when you have gained experience, knowledge and understanding you may be asked to mentor or advise in some capacity…do it!

Recently, my friend Beau Suder and I were discussing the need for accountability in life. Personal accountability is a funny term because it is so often tied to the process of coping with some sort of shameful addiction. It is true that this is often the case…and it has its place, but accountability is much more than just a way to defeat a struggle with some sin issue. The truth is if we want to live well, we all need accountability; people in our lives to help us reach our goals, discuss decisions with, keep us from making wrong turns and shine light on our blind spots. This sort of accountability was readily available to Beau and I during college as many of our closest friends were literally, “just down the hall.”

Since then, both of us have graduated and found ourselves in the “real world,” discovering quickly that one must be more intentional in building accountability into his life with most friends being scattered across the globe and not nearly as accessible. Beau brought up the idea his uncle had shared with him of a personal advisory council consisting of a handful of his closest friends, mentors and associates, people he would discuss major life decisions with, share goals and struggles with, etc. We agreed that this was one of the best solutions we had heard and decided to go about creating our own. I chose to call mine a board of directors being the business junkie that I am.

Following that conversation I discussed the idea with some people I highly respect, learning that many of them also have a system like this at work in their lives. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, anything successful in life from a business to a military unit has some sort of human oversight to keep the leadership in check and moving in the right direction. The question then becomes how does one take the structure and benefits of a traditional board of directors and tweak it for personal use? This is what the following couple of posts will be about, looking first at how to go about choosing who should be on your board, followed by defining the purpose and structure of such a board.

Choosing the Right People

Diversity - One of the most important factors in creating your personal board of directors is choosing a diverse group of people. Just as a corporation is strategic in choosing board members with various areas of expertise, one should avoid filling their council with the same type of person or a bunch of yes men. Richard Leider, in an article for Fast Company several years ago, outlined various types of people you should make sure to include on a personal board of directors. These included: “…a clarifier who asks clear questions, a connector who leads you to other people, a challenger who helps you act boldly, and a wise elder or sage” (Feb 2000).

By intentionally placing people from various backgrounds, experiences, personalities and skills on your board you will be sure to get the most complete and well-balanced counsel. When asked about diversity in a board of directors, my father-in-law, CEO of a large non-profit organization operating in Africa, explained, “By having a diverse group of individuals on your board the creativity brought to the table instantly increases as issues and ideas are debated from a wide variety of angles.”

Relationship - It is important that you have a relationship with each member of your board since the most intimate details of your life will be the subject of constant scrutiny. I am not advocating a board entirely made up of your best friends (low diversity), but unlike a corporate board who may not have any contact with the CEO outside of its periodic meetings, a fair amount of trust must exist between you and your members to make the process effective. Also, you need people who are not afraid to confront you and ask the tough questions. It is my experience that strangers, or even people with a weak tie, are very rarely willing to do this.

Shared Values - While I stress diversity as a necessary element of any successful board, there must also be an underlying consensus on major values and world view. For example, it does you no good to ask the help or advice of someone on the subject of prayer if they do not believe in God or the importance of prayer in the first place, it will simply be a waste of time for everyone involved. A common value system must be shared between you and your board if you intend for them to guide your life in a specific direction. Much of this should be resolved by simply following the previous requirement of relationship…you should know potential board members well enough to know if you share the same fundamental beliefs on issues like faith, family, work and money.

Leaders - After much thought on the types of people I will always want on my board I realized they all share a common identity: leaders. The fact is, I want to be a leader so it does me no good to surround myself with a board of followers. By picking leaders in various fields, careers, etc. you ensure that you will have a proactive board constantly pushing you towards excellence and more willing to challenge you than the average person. Leaders love making other leaders, its a natural process and one that should be tapped into if you are going to create a powerful and effective board of directors.

The best life is found in the midst of strong, organic relationships. The kind that go beyond kind words and a few laughs. Proverbs 15:22 states, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” (NIV) Creating a personal board of directors is about placing a system of counsel and accountability in one’s life, an important step in helping one reach their full potential and avoid many pitfalls along the way. Do you already have a system like this in place? If so, tell us about it. Next time, we’ll talk about defining the purpose and structure of your personal board of directors.

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, most people I talk to roll their eyes and sigh, thinking of the futility of the whole exercise after years and years of failure. The spirit behind a New Year’s resolution is a noble one, an attempt to live a better life or do things differently. The problem is most of us just don’t approach it with much intentionality, instead making up an unattainable goal in the heat of battle, like losing 50lbs after stepping on the scale the day after Christmas. Last year about this time, my sage father-in-law showed me an incredibly simple, but effective way of making a list of goals, or resolutions, for the year and actually following through on them. This is the process:

Understand Balance - I am convinced that 99% of people’s disappointments and failures in life are simply due to imbalance in a certain area(s). Eating too much, exercising too little, not praying enough, too much time at the office, too much television, etc. The point is, there’s a happy medium in every area of our lives; a place of balance where we find our best life. All New Year’s goals should be made with the theme of balance in our minds.

Take Stock of Your Present State - Before you can decide what you want to strive for in the future you have to have a good understanding of where you are in the present. Take a pen and piece of paper and sketch out a diagram similar to the one below.

The point is to look at each area of your life, ie. family, work, spirit, body, finances, etc and take stock of where you are at this moment in time. Decide what areas are important to you and create spokes for each one. Next make tick marks on each spoke, labeling them 1-10; 1 meaning you’re failing miserably in that area and 10 meaning you are perfect, no changes necessary. Make a dot where you think you fall in each area, then connect the dots. You will probably notice immediately that the shape you’ve created has very little resemblance to a circle, which would represent perfect balance. Most likely you have some areas that you’re doing great at and others that you’re struggling. The point of this diagram is to show visually what needs to change in order to make a circle, or bring balance to your life. This diagram is the basis for creating your New Year’s goals.

Make Goals for Each Category - Now its time to actually come up with your goals. Remember, the desired end state of this whole process is a balanced life, so all individual goals should be made with this in mind. In other words, if you notice that you have a very high score for work, but a miserable one for family/marriage, make goals that will allow you more time at home and less at the office. In order to create good goals, use the SMART acronym: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timebound. For a better explanation on creating SMART goals reference my previous post on the subject. Again, make goals that will create a circle on your diagram, which will mean putting different levels of effort and focus on each area.

Exchange Your Goals With a Close Friend - Accountability is crucial in achieving any goal in life. Find a close friend and have them go through this exercise with you, then exchange your goals and bring them up on a consistent basis throughout the year. I emphasize close friend for two reasons. First, it is likely that some of your goals will contain personal information, like investing goals, or family issues, so its important to have someone you trust. Second, only a close friend will really get on your case if you falling short in a certain area. We all need a good friend to confront us every once and a while if we really intend to make lasting change in our lives. With accountability your chances of succeeding in achieving your goals and keeping your resolutions increase dramatically.

One of the keys to living well is setting goals for yourself. Its not a new idea, yet so few of us do it well. I think the reason for this is simple: failure. All of us have set goals before and fallen short. Every New Years millions of people resolve to lose weight, watch less television, spend more time with loved ones and by mid-Spring 99% of those goals have gone by the wayside. What’s wrong with this picture? Are some people just lazy? Absolutely, but I think many times the problem lies in the goals themselves rather than the people trying to achieve them. When its unclear exactly what you’re striving for it is much easier to give up when things get hard.

During my time at the Air Force Academy I once heard a lecture that explained a way to set SMART(Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timebound) goals. The principle was being explained in the context of setting quality objectives at the start of a war, but I believe it translates well into ordinary life. An explanation:

Specific - something that can be easily observed, linked to a unit, percentage, time, etc. For example, “Lose weight” = BAD “Lose 50lbs” = GOOD

Measurable - Will you be able to track your progress toward the goal and know when you’ve achieved it? It must be possible to monitor and measure your goal. “Lose 50 lbs” is good because you can easily step on a scale each week to measure your progress.

Achievable - Is the goal something that can reasonably be achieved? If not, scale it down a bit. This does not mean it has to be easy, but an impossible goal motivates no one.

Relevant - Will achieving this goal bring you closer to where you want to be? Your goals should tie into a larger objective for your life. For example, if you are trying to spend more time with your family, a goal of taking on more clients at work may take you further from where you want to be.

Timebound - Every goal must have a specific time frame. Time motivates you by giving you a clear target and a sense of urgency. Without a time frame goals tend to be pushed back, put off and eventually forgotten. Ask any runner, if you have a goal to run a marathon, you have to sign up for one or you’ll never do it. The approaching race date acts as an incredible motivator during the training process. Without it, you may run, but chances are you’ll never reach your ultimate goal.

In the next month I plan on taking a closer look at goals, objectives and how to place systems in your life that will help you live your best, the high life as I like to call it. Stay tuned and please leave comments on your successes and failures in the realm of goal-setting.