One way I’ve often found useful is differentiating between priorities and goals. Priorities being more like values, general themes & directions in life. Goals are the more specific steps or measures to support those priorities. In this parlance, you’ve clarified your priorities and are doing the goals you need to do to support them.

I’m creating my own 101 list now, and I’m finding that many of the goals are small things on the way to larger themes. I am thinking that will keep it from seeming overwhelming, but who knows.

Thank you for your writing. It is very inspiring to me.

101 is way too many goals for anyone to contemplate. Setting goals works because our brains prefer simple idea they can grasp to the swirling ever shifting reality we face.

Set 10 goals, think about them, and your brain will respond night and day to making them happen.

If you’ve got a goal to ‘retire at 45′ say, that’s a sensible achievable goal that will help direct all your daily actions. A plan for achieving that goal might include “save 10% of my monthly pay check”, but that needn’t be a goal, any more than “don’t buy a sports car with my savings” need be.

I’m not saying 10 goals is right, or that 10% saving isn’t a great target, incidentally. I’m just trying to draw a distinction between, as a previous commentator put it, means and ends.

Good luck with your shorter list! :)

I think you’re dead on the money it is a very fine art, getting rid of goals. I think it might be time to build my huge list up and then tear it back down again.

One thing I do is to identify which goals are true ‘end result’ goals, and which are merely implementation details. For instance, from your list, the true goals are 1. Eliminating debt, 2. Build up 50K investment portfolion, 3. Complete fitness ladder rung 30. The rest of them (read a book a week, daily diary entry for kids, and writing full-time), I would argue are implementation details.

By quantifying goals with the intended end result, you give them a life of its own, and it results in more motivation and meaning. By giving meaning to a goal, it becomes an inevitable result, rather than just a target.

Thanks Trent!

I love the idea of writing a diary for your kids. I’m thinking of doing the same. I might just send myself an email each day, I know it will get done that way.

For me the turning point has been technology. I’m utizling a BodyBugg (http://www.bodybugg.com/). I enter in the foods that I eat and the BodyBugg calculates what I burn and its been very accurate. If I eat something crazy I can see where I’m at and how much I need to workout to get back in the black.

Its kind of like a game to me anymore and I personally love it. The only downside for people is that it can be expensive ($300)…but I’d rather lose the fat and be healthy rather than own a Wii, PS3, XBox, iPod, etc. It’s changed my life for the good.

I have been using the 101 idea for awhile (though as 36 in 365) since finding the Triplux site and an important thing to remember about these 101 in 1001 lists is that you need to cross something off your list roughly every 10 days. So most of them need to be acheivable in that time period.

Just as an exmaple, your list includes well over 2,000 books to be read, between your own reading and reading to your children … not to mention 2 versions of the Bible. I realize the children’s books are short, but that is more than two books a day for three years! For your own reading, you are talking a book every 8 days, while accomplishing other things simultaneously like learning songs. There are quite a few other things on the list that overlap in very unrealistic ways.

Something to think about.