When did you last evaluate your progress against your planned goals and objectives? As we wrote recently, you don’t need to start year-long goals (or any goals) at a specific point on the calendar. (More on that here: Bringing Your Dreams to Life.) Likewise, throughout the year you should be making space to evaluate what’s working and what’s not. Regularly take the time to water the flowers of the good things and weed out the other stuff.
Sure, you’re already stretched between work and home responsibilities. Do you need to add one more task to the list? Yes. Taking time to regularly check in with your goals and objectives can help you better manage the load. There’s no need to keep spinning your wheels on things that simply aren’t progressing or aren’t bearing the fruit you hoped they would.
Sometimes the lack of fruit requires you to take a different tactic to achieve the desired outcome. Sometimes it means it’s time to cut your losses and move on. How do you know the difference?
Start with an honest evaluation of where you are, where you expected to be, and where you need to get in order to continue. Now that you’re knee-deep in the quest, is this goal really where you want to be headed? Is getting to this point going to require more of an investment than you’re prepared to give it? Did you set out on this path because it sounded like the right next step or because it felt like a natural growth path?
If it doesn’t fit, it may be time to amend the goal to better fit you and where you see your future. It may also be time to just cut your losses, glean what growth and experience you can from the attempt and move on.
Before you push this target aside completely, get gritty with your self-evaluation. Maybe it’s not a goal to abandon completely. You may simply need to revise your timelines and expectations. Maybe your original plans underestimated the skill development and growth you needed to achieve before reaching your goal. Maybe you underestimated the time and investment it was going to take.
Before you walk away from it, consider how it might look to reframe expectations on how long it’ll complete this task. Does it make sense to reconsider the path forward instead of finding a completely new path?
Life throws us curveballs. The circumstances of your day-to-day life, personal and professional, may be different today than they were the day you cast this particular vision. Family obligations, health, budget cuts, and a host of other factors may have thrown a wrench into the mix that alters your ability to reach those targets. If this goal is not compatible with your current circumstances, adjust as needed. What was a fit before may not be now and it’s okay to make the adjustment where needed.
The wonderful thing about working toward your goals is the self-discovery that unfolds as you make your way toward the finish line. Six months ago, pursuing certification within your field may have made perfect sense. Along the way you may have realized that you don’t actually enjoy this particular vein of study, and you’re sort of dreading the idea of incorporating these tasks more regularly into your work life.
Alternately, you may discover you really love it and you want to invest more of your time in this area instead of the cursory glance of it you’d get in your current role. As you strive and reach, you may uncover new passions, new priorities, and new skills that excite and thrill you but aren’t compatible with your current set of goals. Does this mean an adjustment of your current goals or a change in course to create a life you love?
Whether you opt to stay the course, adapt, or move on, make note of what you’ve gained from the pursuit of this particular goal from start to this moment. Even if we opt to let go of a particular target, the beauty is that we’ve learned something in the process of trying it and abandoning it.
What skills have you developed? What did you learn about yourself, your company, your field, your market? What can you apply to other areas of your professional and personal life? Moving on isn’t a failure. It’s a process and if you’ve grown from it, it’s a success.
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