After many years of trying to set personal goals in various ways and then failing to stick to them, I’m finally having some success. I can’t claim all the credit for this. To get from someone who has never been able to be consistent at anything, to someone who appears to be making the [...]
After many years of trying to set personal goals in various ways and then failing to stick to them, I’m finally having some success. I can’t claim all the credit for this. To get from someone who has never been able to be consistent at anything, to someone who appears to be making the right lifestyle choices for the first time, I needed help. So I followed somebody else’s process.
The Magic Lamp: Goal Setting for People Who Hate Setting Goals
Keith Ellis hasn’t written much, mostly just the book I’m recommending and a cyber thriller which I haven’t read, but what he wrote on goal setting I think is brilliant. It’s only got 19 reviews on Amazon, mostly positive, but it’s ranked around the 17,800 mark in terms of Amazon sales which is quite a healthy ranking.
What it’s got going for it is accessibility, simplicity and what you could call memorability. In other words it’s the kind of book you can read easily, follow easily and remember easily. For a self help book it’s much more likely to work for you than a more complex or over engineered manual.
The book describes a simple 4 step process to setting goals. The first step, listing and prioritising the goals, was a real help to me. I’m the kind of person who fails in goal setting simply because I want to do too much; not because I’m unmotivated but because I’m too motivated in an unfocussed way. Following Keith’s thinking on how to change this really made me realise the relative importance of my various intents. The second step is to JFDI, to actually get on with it, which helped me break my inertia. The third step is about managing and monitoring your progress and the final step is to just keep going, a section in which Keith Ellis helps you to predict and prevent all the many things that can derail you from your goals.
The book does have it’s weak points, certainly in the marketing spin in the book. It does not contain a secret and there’s nothing about this book specific to people who hate setting goals, other than the fact that it’s probably the simplest approach you can read. You’d have to want to set goals before buying it anyway.
Right now this is the only goal setting book I recommend. I’ve read alot of snake oil on this topic and this isn’t that. Many of my friends and family have bought this book on my recommendation and there is a well thumbed copy of it right beside my bed.
I have come to the realisation that there are no shortcuts worth taking. I believe that advertising and marketing that tell you otherwise is snake oil; companies employing experts to convince you that they have the quick and easy answer to whatever ails you. Child not sleeping at night? Here’s the book to solve it! Overweight? Here’s the pill to fix it! Need a nutritious breakfast for your family? Here’s a sugar coated, machine formed, empty bunch of calories in a colourful box that your kids will just love!
If you’re reading this you may be considering trying some of these things. I know I have.
Over the years I have tried the health, lifestyle and diet fads. I have low calorie, low carbohydrate, high fibre, antioxidant rich, organic cookery books for adults and children stacked in shelves all over my house. I have books and DVD’s on parenting, education (the bionic wife is a primary teacher), schemes, themes and shortcuts, all guaranteeing that they will help me to be perfect and to raise the perfect child. That doesn’t mean I believe any of them.
“The Bionic Dad” is actually a phrase coined by one of my best friends. His theory was that after the birth of your first child you become aware of your failings and so become driven to develop into more of a role model. This results in parents embarking on fitness drives, lifestyle changes and the taking up of sports long since consigned to the back of the wardrobe. At the time I thought it was a stupid idea. Now it’s happening to me. Now I’m online.
So I am going to describe my experiences and the things I have experimented with and am now trying in relation to my goals as a parent. If I had to sum up what being a bionic dad is I think that it means being healthy and wise.
My wife and I began a family about 18 months ago. At that point I decided that I needed to bring together my thinking on topics such as health, lifestyle and parenting. I had no strategy to help my kids navigate this increasingly complex 21st century and I needed one.
It took me some time after the birth to go from being aware of the problem to doing something about it, but eventually I began to make progress. I’m finding ways to navigate the mess of information available to us all every day in the media.
I made the decision to take this self improvement project of mine online. This was based on a very selfish reason; if I can connect with other parents like me then I can learn from them and perhaps make this project more than I can on my own.
So I’ll be writing about issues that concern me as a parent. Mostly based on my research and experiences.
