Goal setting

A common joke for a lot of geeks when discussing money-making schemes is a farcical three-step plan for success:

Step 1. Do something weird. (e.g. Build a stadium in the middle of nowhere, experiment with polyphasic sleep, etc)
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit!

It spawned from a South Park episode involving the Underpants Gnomes, in which their plan was the same, except replace "Do something weird" with "Steal underpants".

Anyway, it's comedic because it partially relies on a ridiculous idea with no clear plan to achieve a goal. It's just an intention towards a goal. Obviously, it could never work that way because one needs to know some of those intermediate steps in order to succeed.

I say bollocks to that. (I've always wanted to say that. Yes, I'm typing and not talking. Details.) There's some truth and wisdom hidden in that business plan, even if the writers didn't mean it that way.

You don't always need to know your path before you start walking. Might as well start walking, and then make the decisions when you come to them. Even if your direction is a bit off, you're still making progress towards your goal step. Sometimes, you'll find yourself atop a little ridge and then be able to see the next few places you'll need to decide, but in general, I think we can just decide as we go.

The key point here, though, is making sure your decisions keep taking you towards that "Profit!!" step (or whatever that goal is). If it's a completely wrong turn, you can almost always turn around and go back the other way, or, failing that, blaze a new path! Heck, maybe it'll be a shortcut.

For example, I know that I want out of the usual 9-5 grind. I wasn't sure how to do this, but I thought that more time would be a good start. So I set my Step 1 as Polyphasic sleeping (perhaps a bit extreme). Already it's done a lot for me with self exploration and confidence building. I've had to conquer little fears by telling people about it and being open and honest. I've learned that honesty is in fact the best policy (honesty to myself and my health, honesty to the public about my experiences), and my readers have complimented me on it. I've discovered a previously unheard-of (to me) form of income (blogging). And obviously, I've discovered oodles and oodles of more time to work on personal projects, which is just what I need to move along this business plan towards my goal of personal freedom. Thus, this has been a successful decision so far.

But if I'd sat and planned out what I would do, I'd probably still be planning. And have made no progress. And chances are, the plan would fall apart within a month, if not sooner.

So given my progress, and all the time now available to me, I've come to another fork in my path: how to achieve the 9-5 escape velocity (i.e., "Profit!!")? I settled on video game creation. It's always been a passion of mine and I know I can accomplish it. So I now have a Step 2: "Work towards indie video games."

Now, though, it's a 4 step process!
Step 1. Polyphasic Sleeping.
Step 2. Work towards indie video games.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profit!!

And I'm starting to discover what step 3 will be ("Learn PyGame for 'toy' games") , which will then be followed by more steps.

"Wait a minute," you're saying, "If we keep adding steps, we'll never get to the Profit step!" True. But you won't keep adding steps (unless you want to). Eventually, you'll find that you don't have a decision to make any more. You'll already be there, and you may not even realize it. That "???" step will just keep getting smaller and smaller.

But at first, "???" can seem daunting. How can we overcome it? Because we want to achieve our goal. We need to achieve it. And besides, it's really not all that big and bad anyway. It's only one step. And most especially, it's the last step between you and your goal. Go out there and get it! It's the home stretch!

Remember, at any given time, you're just two steps away from your goal. Two! Don't give up when you're so close! Just keep persistently making small decisions, expanding your plan, and you can't fail.

Maybe stealing underpants is a valid business afterall... ;)

-sean