goals

Wisdom from a Newsletter

This is from a newsletter I get…

He describes how, as a 25yo man, he was totally broke, and blamed the government, taxes, the high price of goods etc, for his lack of professional success. One day by happenstance, he met an entrepreneur named John Earl Schoaff who became his mentor, and helped change his life. Mr Shoaff taught Jim many things, but one specific conversation that changed Jim’s life went as follows.

This excerpt is from the book 7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness by Jim Rohn

One morning, two weeks after I started working for him, Mr. Shoaff and I were having breakfast together. Just as I was about to finish my eggs, he said, “Jim, let’s take a look at your list of goals so that we can review and discuss them. Maybe that’s the best way I can help you right now.”

“But I don’t have a list with me,” I replied.

“Well, is it out in your car or at home somewhere?”

“No, sir, I don’t have a list anywhere.”

Mr. Shoaff sighed. “Well, young man, looks like this is where we’d better start.” Then, looking directly into my eyes, he said, “If you don’t have a list of your goals, I can guess your bank balance within a few hundred dollars.”

He guessed right. And that really got my attention. I was astonished. “You mean that if I had a list of my goals my bank balance would change?” I asked. “Drastically,” he said. That day I became a student of the art and science of goal-setting.

Personal Goal – Programming

Today I spent some time on looking at some of the goals I want to achieve sometime this year. One of those goals is to learn Python 3 programming language formally.

What does that mean?

Formally to me means that instead of learning the language by trial and error, I actually take a course on it online. I find that I personally learn much better that way. One of the obstacles to accomplishing that task was the fact that I quit my Lynda subscription.

Unfortunately, once I did that I could never go back to just using Lynda.com. It is now LinkedIn Learning and I don’t know why but I’ve never cared for LinkedIn and I remember purposely removing my profile from the platform. I don’t remember why but that was a long time ago.

At any rate, I’ve signed up for LinkedIn Learning and we’re off and running. I think 30 minutes a day spent on it is a reasonable goal. I’ve hit 47 minutes today with a Getting Things Done course along with the start of the actual Python course by Bill Weinman who is awesome but also makes me want to take a nap. I’m pretty sure that is the same guy who taught the SQL course that I kept falling asleep in the middle of.

In any event, I believe that without taking small steps every day you’ll never reach the place you are trying to get to.

I am so passionate about daily writing right now that I just couldn’t imagine NOT doing it. If you would have asked me 6 months ago if I could write a couple of short stories during our busiest time of the year I would have laughed in your face.

Not only did I write two stories, I almost finished three of them.

There isn’t a point to this post other than to affirm that I think I am on the right track and to remind myself to not give up.