10 years ago I stopped writing goals and that was a mistake.

Well, maybe it was not a real mistake.

Having retired 10 years ago and thought I did not have to have a Plan or Goals.

What really happened was there was always tomorrow to do whatever did not get accomplished today. I had a very flexible plan in my head with only some of it written, and both versions were fluid.

My past business life with goals

Most of my professional business life I have had Goals. I, my team, and my manager jointly created my Goals. The goals process created yearly Goals and Quarterly Goals. The same process up and down the organization. We reviewed the goals in 1–1, team meeting, and group meeting. Regular check-ins were used to measured progress against the goal. Our yearly compensation package was directly tied to Goals. It was a pay for our performance organization, that simple.

Every employer preached Goals. I preached Goals. They paid me and my direct reports all based on our accomplished Goals. There was a process, time-frames, deadline, feedback, with money and stock doled out according to accomplishments.

I know that in the last 10 years the Business Goals process has not has changed much. The process may have changed slightly but not the overall philosophy is pay for accomplishments.

What the last ten years without goals was like for me

I have mostly been volunteering for the during the last ten years. And that is why I stopped setting goals.

First Volunteering experiment

I was an Information Technology Professional prior to retiring. I spent the last years working in Desktop Support and Building Metric Systems for the Information Technology Group.

Desktop support was something I both knew from the technology perspective and managed a large graphically dispersed team. I was proud to be both a manager who managed, and a manager who could perform the job.

Knowing how to provide support for desktop computing was both a blessing and a curse.

To this day I’m the go-to person in my community for some of the most difficult computer issues for both businesses and personal friends, not to mention…