Goals are something your schoolteachers tried to get you to set yourself, what motivational trainers jump around about and usually make everyone else just squirm and rear up in revulsion about. They are seen as cheesy, pointless and boring.

How very wrong those people are.

Goals are simply a list of the things you want to achieve. They are signposts on the road, and a map to where you want to be. They give you a structure for your life. How can you get what you want if you don’t know what that is? Defining goals gives you a very clear way to set out exactly what you want so you now exactly where you are going.

Are you, or do you know: a 3D animator for TV, a vocal coach, an early-30s CFO, a project manager, a screenwriter, a TV producer, a video editor, a sound recording engineer, a photographer, a graphic designer or lead rock vocalist? Email me ASAP: alex.cameron@digitaltx.tv

	Goal	Category	Priority
1.	Work with BlackKatz to find and move into a £600/month max. 3 bed flatshare within 800 ft radial feet of Clapham common with high ceilings, a shared home office	S	1
2.	Finalise the prophecy business plan with the help of 2 specialist advisors and close a 1st round of £350k seed funding from the BA Capital angel network	B	1
3.	Record a CD of a full set of 20 killstream music demos on a new PC dedicated solely to running Cubase and recruit all the band members through partysound	A	3
4.	Sign a distribution deal with 1 of the 5 tech publishers to release “IPTV/VoD: The Open 4th Platform” on Amazon and in Borders	S	3
5.	Release the Rockstar 2.0 project website, DVD and report to the media and syndicate it through 5 supporting organisations	B	3
6.	Build a robust and comprehensive (needs quantifying) financial infrastructure for my personal life that is managed by online and desktop software, including arrangements for a pension, long-term savings, health insurance and future-proofing.	S	2
7.	Verify with the accountants that after funding has successfully closed for Prophecy that Digital TX has been successfully dissolved legally and properly without financial debts or other loose ends.	B	5
8.	Establish a small team of friends to create, film, edit and produce 3 short films on DVD using DV/Premiere - 1 parody, 1 documentary and 1 music video.	S	4
9.	Evolve (needs quantifying) my public profile/persona by working with specialists to develop a specific image and enhance my performance. Complete 6 sessions with a vocal trainer, attend 10 Toastmasters meetings and establish a small team of expert friends to consult on cosmetics in return for helping them with contacts and career advice.	S	3
10.	Build a portable rack of the ideal guitar equipment that i have always wanted - a Joe Perry Les Paul and BC Rich Mockingbird brought over from LA, Marshall JMP-1 valve preamp, TC Electronics G-System processor, Tremelo & Wah pedals and MOTU audio interface.	S	4
11.	Form a close business partnership with a highly-aggressive ex-city financial accountancy whizzkid in his early 30s who can take care of the money and administrative matters for all the projects i am involved in.	B	2
12.	Obtain enough significant (needs quantifying) TV, radio and press publicity for the newly-designed Everyone’s Home’s shelter that enables it to raise the 200k it needs to begin its construction.	E	3
13.	Celebrate my 30th birthday by spending the preceding 2 weeks travelling round Israel, 1 week handling lion cubs in South Africa and the last week swimming with dolphins in the Carribbean.	S	2
14.	Marry that girl.	E	1

Goals are NOT a todo list, a shopping list or a would-be-nice-to-have list. They are not the dreams in your head or the things you think about every day. You probably think you don’t have any, but when you actually start thinking about it, you will actually have too many. The problem is most people don’t know how to do it, or even do it properly. Without goals it’s very difficult to have the important feelings everyone needs – direction, purpose, momentum or meaning.

The secret to setting goals is to WRITE THEM DOWN. Get that? As long as they are a dreamy list in your head, they aren’t real. A chav playing on a slot machine in a pub talks and talks of his grand dreams. A very successful and wealthy person has his or her goals everywhere – on the inside of their jacket, in their bag, on their wall, on their PC, on every door and as many other places as they can think of to remind them every day. Which one is the better plan?

Other than committing to them, there’s also a biological reason that you write things down. The act of writing triggers a process of recognition (RAS) in your brain that embeds your goals into your subconscious. When that happens, you go on autopilot. When you look back, you’ll generally find you’ve achieved 80% of them without even thinking about them. The more you write them down and embed them into your head, the more successful you will be. Keep it in your head, and it’s a dream with no structure. It won’t happen.

You can set goals for any time period that suits you. You can have daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, quarterly goals, yearly goals, decade-long goals or life time goals. It’s totally up to you. Generally you can divide the time periods into 3 main sections: short term (the next 12 months), medium-term (the next 5 years) and long-term (the next 20 years).

Personally, I tend to set yearly goals over 12 months as it’s easy to remember and keep track of. I review them 4 times a year, or every 3 months. For me my review is scheduled into my diary for 3pm on the last day or each quarter month, i.e. March, July, June, September and December.

Like all things, it takes practice to get it right.

Step 1 – Get it all out
So take an A4 notepad and a pen somewhere quiet. Scribble down everything you want to do, whether it is tomorrow or in 10 years. If it is small or big. Everything. A total mess with no order or organisation. You don’t need to give it any structure or work hard on the phrasing. Just put down everything that comes to mind randomly. It doesn’t have to be about your job or career. It can be about your love life or cooking recipe. You’ll end up with a whole load of pages with scribbled crap everywhere.

Step 2 – pick the most important ones
When you have limitless and/or near infinite possibilities, the way you clear the chaos is to put a hard limit. What you’re saying is that although there are 100 options, you will deliberately narrow the field to 10. Things get a lot easier. So get another blank A4 page and number 10 lines 1 through 10. Go through your crazy list, and pick out the 10 most important. Order doesn’t matter. Review them again and re-write them. They need to be just out of reach. If you can already do them, its just a to-do list. We’re reaching that little bit further out of the comfort zone.

Step 3 – Fleshing out
Now you have your 10 objectives, its time to go into a bit more detail and put them onto a PC (in any program that works, personally I use a tabled page in MS Word). The way most goal systems work is on the SMART principle, which has varying meanings as a self-help acronym, but generally it equates to one or more of these:

• Specific, simple, sensible, significant, stretching
• Measurable, meaningful, motivational
• Achievable, attainable, acceptable, agreed upon, action
• Realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results
• Time-bound, tangible, trackable, timely

So for each goal, map it out to be simple/specific (S). Then how you will know you have reached it (M). Then whether it’s actually achievable (A), realistic and reasonable (R). Then, finally, give it a time when it needs to be completed (T). Each one only needs to be a sentence, so don’t get into a flap that you need to write an essay in each column. The simpler It is, the easier it will be to relate to and execute.

Step 4 – Organising your 10 goals
The last thing to do is make your shiny new goal sheet understandable when you come back to it. You need to give each goal a priority score from 1 to 5 based on its importance, and identify each as a member of a category so you can see if you are over-emphasising or ignoring certain areas of your life.

Here’s what I use:

• Priority (1: Critical, 5: Can be put off)
• Category (Business, emotional, ambition, standard of living, health)

The key is to be as specific as you possibly can. The more vague and general you are, the less likely you are to achieve it. Focus in like a laser on the smallest detail you can. Suddenly you have a life structure, and a direction to head in. You know where you are going and it’s slowly being embedded in your head. Successful people are marked out by their obsession of setting goals, but setting them in themselves is an art that needs to be practiced and improved with time.

Now print it out and put it fucking everywhere. Carry it with you at all times, and have it face you and remind you wherever you do. Put copies on your walls, in your drawers, in your bag(s) – even tattoo it if you have to.

Now the auto-pilot will kick in and your subconscious mind will be working away every second to see each of those goals realised. You will tend to find you complete about 80% of them in the time period you specify, but forgive yourself if you miss a few. If your life feels directionless and purpose-less, then its simply because you have to create your own destiny rather than having it set for you. You aren’t lost, you are simply not sure of what to do next.

Goal-setting is a tool that is simple and surprisingly effective. It’s not going to change your entire life overnight or make you a millionaire, but they are your map to what you want. Without a map, you are lost. You might as well stand in a desert, put on a blindfold and just wander around randomly and complain life feels empty and pointless. Your goals are your mission, your instruction manual, your psychological Tom-Tom GPS and your personal guide dog.

No goals = no direction. No direction = hopelessness. Hopelessness = oblivion.