Identifying a goal

Friend of the list Rose Lanigan wrote in with a great response (shared with permission) about setting goals and taking care of aspirations:

Hi Allen,

Happy New Year! Hope you had a nice break and enjoyed the holiday 😊

This email is very interesting – I wanted to reply to your earlier email about setting goals but I’m coming up empty so far.

However, I’m halfway through a Masters degree at Loughborough University (in Data Science if you’re curious), and reading this email today makes me reflect on one of the reasons I enjoy it so much – in the same way, you benefit from [your tournament] videos, I’m finding the challenge of the assignments and the feedback I get really satisfying. Even if I never earned a penny (dime?!)) more if and when I complete this Masters degree, it’s not time wasted because it’s stretching my skills and abilities and I’m learning so much.

I’m currently thinking I want to follow up with a PhD for similar reasons – to continue to reach and stretch what I’m able to do and what I can contribute with these newly acquired skills. Maybe this is my new year’s resolution – complete the Masters to the best of my ability and to move onto a PhD!

Hope your 2025 is a year of learning, loving and growing 😊

Best wishes,
Rose

Yes!

Rose makes a few great points here:

• When put on the spot, many of us will struggle to identify a specific goal we’re striving for; we seem to “come up empty” for a response.

• But on reflection, and on looking at how we’re actually spending our time, we might notice that we’re actually striving to achieve something in particular, or that we enjoy making progress in certain areas.

• A sense of fulfillment is a perfectly legitimate reason to pursue a goal — it’s not as easy to quantify as a dolalrs-and-cents bottom line, but it’s very real, and it is measurable. (I mean, we can see that some things are really satisfying and other things are less so. That’s a measurement.)

• Identifying what we actually care about, however we get to that conclusion, is a great mechanism for identifying goals worth pursuing.

Best of luck to you, Rose, in your pursuits! Fight that fight!

And for the rest of us, whether it’s an advanced degree or whatever moves you, here’s hoping you can identify it and then remember to find the strength to go after it.

All the best,
A.