Goals

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What kind of goals did you accomplish? How did you do it?

What kind of goals did you fail at? What made you fail?

How often do you set goals? Do goals give you structure or do they overwhelm you?

Yes, I have 2 primary long-term goals I am currently working towards: a career and marriage

Also I have a bunch of secondary shorter-term goals I'm working on too!! !

Haven't yet succeeded with marriage or a career HOWEVER I am now officially engaged and very close to getting married!

goals, not sure

from sheep herding, the learned lesson,
you need a plan, but most likely it will go not as planned
preparation, preparation, most time is won by doing as thorough as possible preparation
hasty is always going to be more difficult

and be calm,
the more you panic the more everything goes south

everything will be alright, eventually

Getting a girlfriend. That was a very early one and although I kind of achieved it, my "success" eventually led me to realise that the goal needed modifying, so it became one of finding a partner I was fairly compatible with, learning how to get along with them in peace and harmony, and cultivating strong bonds of friendship and loyalty with them. That took me a lot longer, and I don't think anybody every achieves it 100%, but my level of achievement there is more than good enough for me, and for her, I trust.

Getting and keeping friends. I never had too much trouble with that, especially when I stopped being quite such a selfish jerk, but there have been many times when I've felt dangerously near to becoming friendless, and I've had to spend many days back-to-back where the only people I've spoken to have been shopkeepers. That still happens to me for a while every year. I don't suppose I'll ever balance my wish for plenty of good company and my wish for enough space to get everything done. And so much is beyond my control. All the open-mic venues in my home town are closing down, friends move out of the area, friends die, friends are too busy, and my tendency not to be outgoing seems inexorable. But maybe I've already got the best balance there is, and wouldn't be as happy if I were with people much more often than I am. Quality is more important than quantity, and I seem to be an incorrigible perfectionist. The trouble with perfectionism is that it's never achieved.

Recording and performing good music, preferably with other musicians. Again it took me a very long time, and I was crap when I started out, and have tapes to prove it, but little by little I inched forwards and I can now entertain people quite well with my live music and I seem to impress them with my recordings. I'm usually quite pleased with my results in both departments. Annoyingly, I still seem to get "better" results as a solo artist than I do when playing with others, but I get at least as much pleasure from the latter, and wouldn't give that up for the world. My view of what constitutes good music has changed. It used to be all about precision but somewhere along the line I got into something rather more wild. Although my nerdy brain will probably always drag me back to an excess of tidyness, I'm convinced that something more immediate and dirty is the higher road for me. So again, I'm not really there, but it would be a shame if there were no new horizons to go for. I gave up trying to make money out of it a long time ago. I've no head for business and I don't want commercial pressure to compromise my self-expression.

One goal I kind of achieved with music was to make a multi-track tape recorder from domestic machines and electronic components, in the days before multi-track recording machines were affordable. I slaved away for ages on that, teaching myself about the technology I'd need. The result wasn't the best quality, but at the time it was a lot better than nothing, and it finally allowed me to play all the instruments of a rock band.

Getting and maintaining personal comfort. I've always been uncomfortable in my own body so it'll probably always be an uphill struggle, but I keep discovering tips and tricks to keep myself comfy. Lack of money will probably become a severe problem not long from now, because there's nothing like a nice chunk of capital for keeping things safe and cosy, and that's slipping away. And of course old age is creeping up on me and may well undo a lot of the progress I've made. I just hope I don't know a lot about it when it finally brings me down and kills me. But for now I'm OK, and it's been that way for most of my life.

I didn't really plan much of this, I just found myself plugging away at things. I've never been one to set out life goals. I more set myself small goals and enjoy getting those to fruition.

I personally achieve far fewer goals now that I'm married to a woman that thinks that positive thinking is the only thing that actually matters and prioritizes short term over the long term. So, step one is don't get involved with people that have no interest in actually getting anything done, it just makes any sort of achievement that much harder.

But, personally, I have the most luck with goals that are of a specific time period, are set by somebody else and where somebody else decides whether or not I've actually followed through with them.

Independent of that, whatever goals I do set need to be ones where I can chunk away at them over time and can leave the work in a state which makes it easier to start and restart.The best way I've seen to do that is to start with the end goal and then identify the thing that's stopping me from just doing it. Then I'll look at that thing and see what is blocking me from doing that and continuing until I find something that I can do right now. Those things go on a checklist to get me where I'm going. But, the real issue there is that the roadmap will get me there, it only does so if I remember what I'm supposed to be doing and can maintain some motivation.

IMHO, the motivation and the tracking where I am in the process are by far the most important aspects of the whole process as it doesn't matter how well designed the goal is if you give up due to a lack of motivation or organization.

I accomplished my goal of learning how to be a value investor. I read the Intelligent Investor to learn how.
I am failing at my dream of marrying a woman who was raised in the Church of Christ. I just have not found the right woman yet and its hard because the Church of Christ is in serious decline and has a limited dating pool and there was no suitable women for me where I used to live.

Be my best version of myself.