When You Don't Hit Your Goals For The Year (II)

First published on January 6, 2021

Argentinian consultant Fred Kofman tells a story about how, in his workshops, he will sometimes hold an apple (if I remember correctly - it might actually be a ball of some sort) up in front of the workshop and drop it. Of course, it falls down towards the ground.

'Why did the apple fall?' he asks. 'Gravity' is usually the first answer. But Kofman knows it's not the only answer.

With a little prodding, or sometimes without, a second answer emerges: 'Because you dropped it'. Both are true, Kofman explains, but only one of them is within our control, so only one of them is useful if we want to avoid our apples hitting the ground in the future.

This is a part of what Kofman calls the disctinction between Victim Mindset and Player Mindset. People who have followed my work for a while will recognise this as very close to Life Happening To Me vs Life Created By Me.

In the Victim Mindset, everything that happens has nothing to do with us. When arriving at a meeting late, this is 'I'm sorry I'm late, there was loads of traffic'. When coming into the house soaked on a rainy day, this is 'I am soaked. It is pouring down out there!'

Player Mindset is taking 100% responsibility. When late to the meeting, this is 'I'm sorry I'm late, I didn't leave enough time for rush-hour traffic.' When arriving home soaked, this is 'I am soaked. I didn't take an umbrella!'

Are you late because of the traffic or because you didn't leave enough time? Well, both, but only one of those is within your control so only one is useful if you want to be on time in future. Are you wet because of the rain or because you didn't have an umbrella? Well, both, but only one is useful if you want to avoid getting soaked next time it rains.

The rain example reminds me of what I believe is a believe Norweigan saying: 'There is no bad weather, only bad gear.'

(At this point in writing this article, I just realised that my timer wasn't going. I thought to myself 'Oh how annoying - the timer didn't work!' But of course the truth is: I didn't start the timer. The Victim/Player question is everywhere.)

Kofman dropping his apple has been in my mind in the last few weeks as I have reflected on my goals for 2020 and how I have failed pretty miserably to complete them. As usual, I used Warren Buffett's 25/5 exercise (skip down to Number 2, here, to read more) and came up with five goals. One is complete. One is maybe complete, if I stretch things a little... which means it isn't complete. Three are not, including the ones I promised a year ago would get done in 2020, when they didn't get done in 2019: publishing my books.

With the 'Gravity/Letting It Go' question in mind, I've been reflecting on those goals. Now of course, 2020 was a special year. Not only a global pandemic but also - for my wife and I - a pregnancy in a global pandemic. Lots was going on. But the global pandemic is just gravity for me: there's nothing I can do about it. And with my goals in mind, it is simply an excuse. Even faced with a global pandemic, all of my goals were completely doable.

So when I sit and look at those goals for last year, aiming to take 100% responsibility for not completing them, what do I notice?

Well, I notice the deeply wise moral of Warren Buffett's 25/5 exercise. You can read the story in full here, but the moral of his story is: the things most likely to stop you doing the most important things in your work are the next most important things. In his exercise you list the 25 things you would most like to achieve in your career, and then you whittle down to a top 5. Numbers 6-25 must become your Avoid At All Costs List. And, of course, in 2020 I achieved several things on that Avoid At All Costs List. If I had put the time from them into the four goals I didn't achieve, then at least one, maybe all of those goals could have been met.

And for the second year in a row, despite thinking I had learned the lesson last year, it was some training (not in the top five) that was the most notable time drain holding me back from completing those goals. When you say Yes to one thing, you are saying No to something else.

Now of course there were also decisions about whether the right thing to do for me or for my work was to rush out the books, or complete the other goals halfheartedly. But if I hadn't done that training course this autumn, I would have had 4-5 hours back every week, and that would have been enough to complete at least one of those goals fully and completely. Training and learning is something I have to be VERY wary of in 2021.

What was that training I did? It was a BetterUp Conscious Business Coaching training, based on the book, Conscious Business by a certain Fred Kofman. And I heard a great story in it that Fred told, about why an apple falls. Let me tell you about it...