I'm a huge fan of goals. Unless you have a lot of time, don't ever get me started about Zig Ziglar, Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale... See what I mean?
Thinking ahead is part of what I do. I'm not even sure where I learned it. High school theater I think. We did three large productions a year. I rose from grunt carpenter's hand through the lighting crew to Technical Director and set designer (the only student designed set we ever used). Not only did I run the theater, I taught a weekly course for my entire senior year to train the next generation of theater folks. I did it because I could see that without it, the theater program would never be as good as it could be. And though I didn't continue in the field (much), almost every one of those dozen students made a lifetime career out of it.
I jumped into corporate and I was always looking ahead, setting goals that the company never imagined. Automation, new methods of operation, lean process--I reengineered five or six different firms from the inside. And I'd have to say the biggest lesson for me was that without the goal, without the dream? Squat happens.
This post wasn't going to be about goals...but I seem to be here anyway. Jim Collins (Built to Last and Good to Great--two awesome studies of success in corporate America) talks about the power of a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal).
Without BHAGs, my old high school theater might well have languished rather than inspired. Any number of corporations might have followed different paths. Some better, some worse...no way to know, but I like to think that the former is far more true. (My various bosses, even years after I left, were inclined to agree with me.)
Speaking of BHAGs: Way back in 1993 I had the idea that I wanted to write a book. I was in the midst of a mid-life crisis, had lost everything (job, career, house, etc), and I'd decided to ride my bicycle around the world for a couple of years. Along the way, I wrote my first novel. Which became book #1 of my Deities Anonymous series: Cookbook From Hell: Reheated.
To that moment, I had written under 2,000 words of fiction in my entire life.
By the time I finished that book, (and took a class, and threw out the manuscript, and rewrote the book, then survived the edits, then...), I knew what I wanted to do.
"I want to make my full-time living as a writer."
Definitely a BHAG worthy of Jim Collins, for a corporate project manager who loved to read but had no experience writing more than a computer manual or systems proposal. What a goal like that does, is that it focuses the attention. It would be another fifteen years from the publication of that first book to walking away from my corporate job to become a full-time writer.
HOWEVER, if I hadn't had that dream, that goal, where would I be? I wouldn't have spent too much on conferences. I wouldn't have read an entire bookcase worth of how-to books. I wouldn't have spent so much effort learning or sacrificed so much to attend so many classes. And I wouldn't have written 55 novels and 70 short stories. www.mlbuchman.com
It was by having the crazy dream...that it turned out to not be so crazy after all.
M.L.
Buchman started the first of over 50 novels and even more short stories while
flying from South Korea to ride across the Australian Outback. All part of a
solo around-the-world bicycle trip (a mid-life crisis on wheels) that
ultimately launched his writing career.
Booklist
has selected his military and firefighter series(es) as 3-time “Top 10 Romance
of the Year.” NPR and Barnes & Noble have named other titles “Top 5 Romance
of the Year.” In 2016 he was a finalist for RWA's RITA award.
He
has flown and jumped out of airplanes, can single-hand a fifty-foot sailboat,
and has designed and built two houses. In between writing, he also quilts. M.L.
is constantly amazed at what can be done with a degree in geophysics. He also
writes: contemporary romance, thrillers, and SF. More info at: www.mlbuchman.com.
4 comments:
So do you have a class you are teaching on BHAG setting? And as someone who also listens to Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Denis Waitley, Joe Vitali, etc.I know the importance of focus on what I want to achieve.
I also know that there are times of conflict between two goals I want (relationships and writing or maybe day job and writing, etc.).. I'm relatively sure in that 15 year period between setting the BHAB and walking away from your corporate job, you had two important goals in focus. How did you work through that?
Yes, Matt, what Judith said? How do you juggle to important goals?
The short answer...it's hard. It's juggling. It's prioritization. And sometimes it's sacrifice. The same year I released that first novel, I also finally met the woman of my dreams and inherited a 6 year old kid who would change my life (in some ways past recognition).
Some of it was grim determination. Every stolen minute was spent writing or on the career. For years, I rarely read a novel, just craft books and business books and goal setting books... I talked about the goals with my family and created buy-in by having them help me set priorities, brainstorm books, even help me learn as I struggled to understand everything from business to readers to healthy practices. It got to the point where after the family had dinner together, homework was done, and they settled in for the evening, my kid would look at me and say, "Go to your office and write."
I did breakfast, the day job, the kid and I got our Taekwondo black belts together, I helped cook. But from 8pm until as late as I could stand it, was mine. At least one weekend afternoon was mine. Because I was taking time away from being with my family...trust me, I made exceptional use of those minutes. To attend classes that I could barely afford? I would camp in a tent, even in the middle of an Oregon winter--I wanted it that badly.
That's the key to achieving a goal...and selecting one. If you want it so badly that it occupies all of your waking thoughts? Then it's probably the right goal for you. My wife and kid and I sacrificed a lot for my art, but it worked. I've been a full-time writer for 6 years now and even if I could go back to corporate, I don't think they could pay me enough. I've retired my wife to be my assistant. I even give a small percentage of all earnings to the kid--because without her support, I wouldn't be here.
As to a BHAG class? Giggle! Snort! I'm not even sure what my OWN next goal is now that I achieved the full-time writer one!
Thanks Matt!
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