I was sent this article from a friend and thought it was on point and helps those making goals for the new year make and set the right goal. I reflected back on decisions and goals I made in the past years  and looking back at goals I have achieved and the ones that passed me by. The biggest difference in the goals I set and completed are the ones I wrote down and set correctly. Read this article and I hope it will help you like its helping me set goals correctly.

Written by George Chingarande

Thursday, 27 September 2007

In the battle for achievement and success, there is a message that all serious aspirants can not afford to ignore and there is an invitation that none can risk spurning. This is so because this message is to achievement what breathing is to life-the core without which the centre cannot hold. And the invitation is an invitation to greatness. It is this message and this invitation that I bring you. Ignore it at your peril. Statistics reveal that: 3 % of the people in the earth govern and rule the other 97% 3% of the people earn as much as the other 97% put together 3% own as much real estate as the other 97%. 3% of the people in the world have goals that are written down, the other 97% does not. Which group would you rather belong to? If democracy has trained us to believe that power belongs to the majority, these statistics tell us that wealth and real success are being enjoyed by an infinitesimally small fraction. Many aspire to win but in reality few are winning. Why is this so? Perhaps the most revealing exposition on the importance of goals comes form a Harvard study. A synopsis of the study that was conducted at Harvard Business School between 1979 and 1989 is presented below. In 1979 the graduates of the MBA program at Harvard were asked a simple question: “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” The results were very interesting. 84% had no specific goals at all, 13% had goals but they were not committed to paper, and only 3% had clear goals and plans that were written down. In 1989, a good ten years after the first phase of the study, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. Their results were even more startling. The 13% that had goals but not written down were earning twice as much as the 84% that did not have any goals. An even more interesting statistic is that the 3% who had written down plans and goals were earning on average ten times more than the other 97%. Further more the mere act of writing a goal down on paper increased its chances of being accomplished by a staggering 90%. However, there is still another shocking and some what contradictory message from statistics. Most people who have New Year’s resolutions and who try to attain their goals fail dismally. This is particularly true of behaviorally anchored goals such as losing weight, quitting smoking, and procrastination cessation. It has been established that the majority of people who seriously embark on a weight loss program actually lose weight for a time, but after a year or so they balloon back to or even beyond their original weight. The same is true for those that try to quit smoking, the employee who sets the goal not to be late for work, the tight rope walker who determines not to fail, the subordinates who are told to reduce defects and mistakes. Those that try not to fall into wrong relationships, more often than not fall into wrong relationships. The same is true also for those that try not to be nervous or clumsy. We are goal seeking and pleasure seeking organisms. If you take a homing pigeon and blind-fold it and drive it or fly it in circles to any where in the world and then release it, it will fly straight home. It has an inborn home-seeking mechanism. Humans have an inborn goal seeking mechanism. The human mind works in pictures and not words. Once a goal statement is fed into it, the mind instantly converts it to a picture and then relentlessly seeks information and creates circumstances that will result in its fulfillment. Once you determine that you hate or like red cars, isn’t it strange that you start seeing them all over the place? The mind does not create a picture of the verb in the goal statement, in this case “like or hate” but of the object and its adverb (red car). What You Resist will Persist There are two types of goal setting approaches. These are negative and positive, or problem reductionism and benefit increamentalism, or away from and towards. When a goal such as, “to lose weight or quit smoking” is fed into the mind it creates the picture of the object who happens to be overweight or a smoker and seeks to make this a reality. If your goal is not to fail or to come out of debt, it creates the picture of a failure or a debtor. The rule is, “What you resist will persist. What you desire and picture in your mind will become your reality.” Most weight reduction programs are sound and actually work but they need to be augmented by the right psychology. If the physic and the psyche are at loggerheads, the psyche always triumphs. It is easier to substitute an undesired habit with another than to break it. Fulfilling a goal couched in negative terms is a monumental assignment only rarely achieved both by individuals and organizations. For this reason most self improvement programs and organizational performance management systems rarely achieve the intended results. The intentions are perfect but the psychology is flawed. Negative goal setting stems from an excessive preoccupation with risk to the exclusion of benefits. On an organizational level many deals stall because of losers focusing on what could go wrong instead of the benefits should things go well? In setting goals losers focus on risks, but winners on benefits. The magic of achievement lies in positive goal setting. Below are examples: 1a) To lose weight (negative and wrong) b) To fit into a size 30 skate by 31 December 2008 (positive and correct) 2a) To reduce the number of late deliveries by 10% (negative) b) To deliver 90% of the orders on time This week I invite you to make positive goal setting a weapon in your armory. Ask not what if things go wrong; rather ask what if they go well. Ignore it at your peril.

One late night I was with a few friends at our White Oak House in Encino. We intentionally polluted our body with a potent poison that enabled us to see life through a different lens.Within this late night session, induced by the hallucinating sounds of DJ Derty, we were in a state of trance. That inner location deep in your mind, halfway between reality and imagination, on the borderline we stood. I am a firm believer that in order to see life, you must step outside the box and look at it with a different lens.

The discussions led its way toward the various levels of communication, but most importantly the logistical understanding of miscommunication. The “why” of why do we miscommunicate.

We came up with a profound thought. The world is miscommunicating and thus it’s creating misconceptions which create thoughts and reactions that are all based on false requests. Let me clarify in detail. The world communicates due to language barriers, misuse of words, non verbal communications and the application of emotion to our words. All of these variables, if not aligned and sent correctly will lead to miscommunication.

If you analyze relationships between human beings, a lot of arguments start out of simple miscommunication because when you said something to the other person they did not understand it the way you intended and thus their response is based on false premises in which your response to their response is not aligned with your initial request.

So what if we were able to communicate without language barriers, without communication barriers to the point where you could say something to your friend, and when they receive your request they give you a confirmation “response” that they understood your information the way you intended it to be understood.

As my bio states, I am a firm believer in the technological singularity, in which information and humans will align and become one. Most importantly I believe IT is what it is. IT meaning Information Technology. Therefore information technology is what it is and if we can correctly send our information to another human being, we can eliminate miscommunication.

The reason all of these miscommunications occur is because we all run different operating systems in our head. We, as a human race, are from different origins, makers and influencers. Abstractly, we are all computers with various operating systems running with very few commonality. We make look similar on the outside, but our brains are like fragmented hard drives. Some of us are macs, pcs, linux, mobile, and some are prehistoric commodore 64s. Others of us are custom apps that we sometimes say “are not from this world”. Maybe from Mars or Venus?

If we all, meaning the human race, have the same operating system then we will be able to communicate as one. When you talk, and communicate it will no longer be what you say coupled with your body language magnified by your emotions. Rather all of those messages that we send when we communicate become variables. The semantic web movement is leading the way in correctly understanding the requests of people and machines as a universal medium for data, information and knowledge exchange.

Most of these communications can be described and sent in a Resource Description Framework (RDF) or the Web Ontology Language (OWL) framework. All of your information that you send when you communicate is packaged and described correctly then sent by you and received by the recipient and processed in which you will receive a response.

My idea is to extend this language into human interactions which will look something like this:

Imagine if you made a statement to your friend and they understood it the way you intended to send it and a green checkbox appeared above their head when they successfully received your request. With their confirmation, a response is then sent back to you and a green check box appears over your head confirming you received the response. A loop would then form and communication on all levels can be understood appropriately.

Why is this important?

The world came from many backgrounds and the current evolvement, power of the internet and billions of biotechnology research lends a hand to technological singularity and one step forward, the installation of the operating system into our brains, thus enabling us to evolve.

Everyday we evolve faster, learn better and share information smarter. We are evolving at an exponential rate. If you think evolution is fast now, compare it to 50 years ago and then compare it to where it will be in 50 years.

There are so many wasted souls dying daily in the world. These are people, human potential with computing power, ideas and influences that can’t be understood simply because their operating system is no longer supported or understood. There are humanitarians, (i.e. people technicians) that are doing gods work trying to nourish and save these people so they can contribute something positive to the world.

However, I believe that currently this work has not reached it full potential. It will reach its full potential when every person is given food, but most importantly the “operating system”. This operating system will enable human race to learn at a faster rate and thus have we will have the opportunity to upload and download information into our operating systems (brains) which will allow every human being to reach his/her full potential and be utilized to further the advancement of the human race and reach the technological singularity that is ahead of us.

This past Wednesday I drove to Las Vegas from LA to attend pubcon 2008 and to celebrate my birthday. Driving to Las Vegas, I had some time to decompose, do some deep thinking and watch the moon rise in front of me and the sun setting in my rear view mirror.

ReZ was asking what “IT” means. We both came to the conclusion after much analysis that IT = Information Technology. Now most of us think of ITT Tech logo when we think about IT, so most people never put it together. That Information Technology “IT”… is what it is. I think if you take a step back, you can call IT… it.

Well IT is it and if you would like to read on, I will tell you why.

Everything that is us is information and the technology that manages that information will is it.

You’ve read the mission “to organize all the world’s information”. That is today’s mission. What about tomorrow? Compare today’s technology capabilities versus 10 years ago. What happens when all the information leaves our computers? Leaves 8GB mini flash cards, 160GB iPods and all of sudden you have unlimited space in the “cloud”, available to you anywhere, everywhere without limitations?

We all crave the newest and the coolest technology. People wait in lines, sleep in the rain and endure embarrassment to be the first with the newest technology that does what? Technology that stores information.

Now let’s fast forward and take a snapshot of the evolutionary timeframe and really think about information technology and see how “IT is what it is”, because what IT is right now, is only relative to what IT will be in the future.

In the near future, we will begin to collect all of our individual information in one place. The massive collective computing power of the world “the cloud” will unite through uniform definitions and precise data locations of the information (i.e. Semantic Web). No more will we hop 13 servers and send our request around the world to get to the real location of the information.

Furthermore, information will be stored where it is accessed. Instead of information being cached and duplicated on many servers, the information will be readily accessible through the cloud and thus be available to everyone within 1 hop from your location. Instant access without wait from any device. Wow!

Information you see in your inbox and in the senders sent box will be one location. Media, files and documents will have one central location in which it is readily accessed by anyone with the correct credentials.

We will all be omni-connected utilizing and accessing the worlds computing power and storage capabilities to access media, education and people instantly with the power of a keyword search.

Let’s dive deeper down the rabbit hole shall we?

What happens when we are all connected, our GPS is enabled at all times and satellites can pinpoint and watch our every move, and every information technology session transaction using any device (i.e. credit card transaction, text message, internet access, gps signal, ipod play) is stored in one location online?

We will begin the creation of a breadcrumb “footprint” of all based on information in which one can replay your life with a power of a click.

Do you remember 10 years ago? 1% of the world knew how to click a mouse. Now everyone is connected to information al la cell phones. Now imagine within our lifetime, you can replay your life with a power of a click?

Now I personally know a few neurologists and mad scientists out there that are staying up late nights, drinking redbull’s, and devising ways to connect the brain to the computer and send and receive data transparently? Don’t believe me, watch this video before proceeding.

What if this “information technology “IT” was able to record the inputs from your eyes, ears and mouth? Obviously that information will be instantly saved to the cloud and readily accessible at a moment’s request.

But what alarms me is who is going to store this information. It can’t be one government, state, country. The world is too segregated by inefficiencies and the fear of the loss of power to any physical country.

But what if there was a new country, not bound to physicality, but its presence was in the air stored with no country boundaries. It will be corporate, an entity with a name synonymous with “one world” a.k.a Google <- Click the link for confirmation. This company will control and store all the world’s information per its mission statement.

As we evolve, as information evolves, storage limitations will cease to exist because the need to duplicate content coupled with the extreme compression of information multiplied by the ability to store pepabtyes of data in a device as small as a cell phone. (1 pepabyte = 1,000 Terabytes, or 1 pepabyte = 1,000,000 GB).

Zoom out, let’s come full circle here. Information is what we are, it’s the driving force of our current evolutionary track and soon someday we will be timeless not bound to any physical storage device or embodiment. We as a human race will be available through the cloud with all of our past (“conversations, thoughts, sensory memories and data”) readily accessible at a keyword search combined with your brains AI and emotional settings and triggers ready to compute new data it receives. Furthermore, we will be connected to others combining all of our information powering the central computer with new data to make available to others and thus your thoughts will be connected to your friends thoughts and understood correctly though the human operating system.

It makes you think that Information technology is what it is for us as a human race. Thus validating “it is what it is”. Most importantly, defining what “it” is. It = Information Technology.

Accept it, live it, want it because it is what it is, and nothing will change that.