Personally, I'm a driven person. I've always been the type of person to drive along a highway and look up onto the hills and wonder "What did that person do to get there?"

It's the competitive pursuit that keeps me pushing forward. Competing with myself to do better, accomplish more. It drives many of us.

However, as you get older, you start to realize things about life. The amount of work you do doesn't really matter. The type of work you do doesn't really matter. The shows and movies you watch don't really matter. These things simply don't get stored into your collective memory (unless you share these experiences with other people). The things you tend to remember, at least for me, are the people and experiences. This is pretty well known to most people.

So how does this relate to goals and setting them?

Well, staring a 3x5 card folded lengthwise into a triangular shape on my desktop I read the following

"Goal: Fully automate the magazine site by December 31st in 2008 2009 2010 2011"

It appears that I've had this goal for quite some time and staring at this card reminds me that I must have had other goals (or distractions) which have taken priority. It makes me wonder if I really considered this goal that important.

The real question I should ask myself, (and maybe you should too) is "Why do I have this goal? How does it help me accomplish my bigger, long term goals?"

You see, for me, my online magazine (covering a relatively small niche market) is how I've been making part of my living for well over a decade. It provides a nice living and great flexibility.

It does not, however, present the level of financial accomplishment I seem to be pursuing. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy it, it just means I need to view this aspect of my life as less "central" and factor it in as only a piece of a larger puzzle.

And there's your motivation for this post. What, in your life, consumes a large mental portion of your daily operating procedure and should it be considered just a piece?

It's amazing what happens (mentally) when you give yourself a perspective shift. The goals you may be working on today may represent the smaller portion of your larger goals - yet consume the largest portions of your available time. This often requires some serious consideration into how you wish to move forward with your future-looking goals.

So, what are your larger goals, and how does your time investment today factor in? Take 5 minutes to consider. It's a mere micro fraction of how much time you'll be spending on other things today.