As a writer, you learn early in your career that sometimes you just have to “kill your darlings”.
It’s a rather graphic way of reminding us that, no matter how attached we are to a certain sentence or storyline or character, if it doesn’t work in the overall context, we have to let it go.
I think that applies to goals too.
It’s easy to convince yourself that you need to accomplish everything your heart desires, but if you take a good look at things, you’ll realize that by chasing all your dreams at once, you accomplish none.
What I’m saying is… kill your goals.
Go ahead, think about it for a second. For the last five years, if you eliminated all but the most important goals on your list, would you have accomplished them by now? Or at least, be way further along than if you were splitting your time chasing things that weren’t as important?
Now think ahead for the next five years. If you managed to eliminate all the things that you only kinda, sorta want to do and focus on the top 1-3 goals that are most important to you, do you think you would accomplish them a lot easier?
I bet you would.
I’m not saying you can’t accomplish every thing you want in life. Or that eliminating those not-so-important goals right now means never accomplishing them ever. Just like writers will bank that sexy phrase or that unique character for their next masterpiece, you can choose the most important goal to you right now, and bank the others for another time.
And when you get truly focused and zoned in on the things you most desire, you’ll be creating masterpieces too.