Top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in most fields all set goals. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation and it helps you to organize your time and your resources.

-- Goal Setting

Hello my cubicle convictions, open space schemers, corner office objectives, home den dutiful and coffee shop schemas. My name is Brock Armstrong and I am not the workplace hero. If there is a Workplace Hero around these parts, it is you my friend. And I will explain why, in a few minutes. Right now, I want to give you some data.

The first Workplace Hero podcast episode was released on March 5, 2017. Here is a snippet of the Facebook live video I did to celebrate.

Since then, I have released 30 episodes (including this one) which have received a total of about 12,000 downloads, ranging between 647 downloads for Katy Bowman’s “To Sit or Not To Sit” episode and 250 downloads for the “What Happens at Work Stays at Work” episode.

When I started the podcast, I of course had high hopes of thousands of downloads and advertiser’s banging down my virtual door but at the same time I really had no idea if anyone would listen or care (aside from my mom). And as you can see, this podcast is by no means a wild, runaway success but it is also by some measures and stats I have seen passed around on the podcast forums, performing better than 95% of the podcasts on the Apple Podcasts app.

Even more important than that though, this podcast has been a blast to produce. It really has scratched an itch that I have had for a while. I have worked as a tech and/or producer on 13 different podcasts and all but two or three of them have been interview style podcasts. You know, where two people sit down and have an organic conversation (usually over Skype) and then it was my job to try to make it sound good and make sense.

Well, I have always been more interested in creating a more produced, scripted, researched and polished podcast. This is likely due to my background in music and my occasional dips into broadcast radio. Workplace Hero is that podcast. I love the artistry that I can bring to it. The time I take to add sound effects and drum beats and music soothes my soul. Truly.

Now, I know I am rambling a bit but I do have a point here… so let me get to it.

When I decided to commit to this podcast, I was worried that it would be harder, more time consuming, slower to take off than I had anticipated and I didn’t want to prematurely pull the plug on it before I had a chance to really experience what it was like to be a solo podcaster. I didn’t want to get 5 episodes in, realize that my mom is the only one commenting on the blog posts (which she kinda is) and that I am only getting 200 downloads per episode (remember that I have worked on shows that get 100,000 + downloads per episode so that is my frame of reference) and end the adventure before the podcast really had a chance to grow, build an audience and become part of my daily life.

So I remembered (incorrectly, I might add) something I had read that Tim Ferriss said when he started his podcast. I incorrectly remembered him writing that he decided to do 30 episodes to see if he liked liked podcasting. What he actually wrote was “ I decided to try long-form audio for six episodes. If I didn’t enjoy it, I would throw in the towel and walk.” https://tim.blog/2016/04/11/tim-ferriss-podcast-business/

Well, despite what Tim actually wrote, I decided my number was 30.

I was not allowed to stop, pull the plug, take a week off or break stride for 30 episodes. Once I reached 30, then I had a decision to make. Until then, it was business as usual. A business that is losing me money and time every week but also a business that I enjoy and hope is helping people in some small way, each week.

Today, I am happy to say that I made it to 30. Six months later, here I am sitting down to write the 30th episode.

—Fan Fare— It literally says in my script the words fan fare. That’s how I roll.

Anyway, whether or not my goal was set deliberately through calculation and research or was set due to a misremembered quote from the 4-Hour Workweek guy, I am very glad that I set that goal. There were certainly times along the way that if the goal had not been there - and publicly stated (which is crucial) - I am sure I would have wimped out.

Over at MindTools.com they ask the question: why set goals?

Well, top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in most fields all set goals. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation and it helps you to organize your time and your resources.

By setting sharp, clearly defined goals you will see and be able to measure forward progress in what might previously have seemed like a long and occasionally pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set. This certainly was true for me.

I could have easily been distracted by the downsides of working so hard on something that is growing so slowly, or spent more time staring at my website and audio analytic data than focussing on the topic for the next episode. But by having the overarching goal of hitting 30 episodes, I could see my forward progress. And by committing to those 30 episodes, I knew that once a week I needed to buckle down and put in the time required to create those episodes.

So, how do you start to set personal goals? Well, to begin with, you have to look at your goals in levels.

First you create the "big picture" of what you want to do with your time (over the next 6 months let’s say since that is how long it takes to release a 30 weekly podcasts), and identify the large-scale goal that you want to achieve in those 6 months.

Then, you break this big picture goal down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit to reach your big picture. For me that was to choose a topic each week, decide whether to get an expert on to talk about it, do some research, write my script, record the audio, edit the audio, and post all of that for the world to see. Each week. Without fail.

Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to achieve these goals.

Easy right? Well, not for everyone. I know more than a few people who have had great ideas, decide to try one and give up on it before they have given it a fair shake at all. Sure, there are ideas that don’t deserve being seen through to the end but hopefully those get vetted before the domain name is purchased, the logo is drawn and the company name is registered. I have had more than a few of those ideas. Ideas that died while I was trying to explain it to a friend, trying to choose a name for it, and one idea even died as I was pitching it to a potential investor. That was awkward.

The people over at CodeOfLiving.com have a great list called “5 Reasons Why Goal Setting Is Important” this is it in a nutshell: 1. Goals Give Your Focus Imagine having to shoot an arrow without being given a target. Where would you aim? And say you did aim at some random thing (out of sheer perplexity). Why would you aim there? And what would the purpose be? Get the idea? This is a literal example of what life is like without a goal or target in mind.

Remember the story Alfred told Bruce Wayne in the Dark Knight movie? When they were slowly realizing the the Joker had no real goal? “...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” As cool as Heath Ledger was in that movie as The Joker, don’t be like him. Get some focus and have a goal.

2. Goals Allow You To Measure Progress By setting goals for yourself you are able to measure your progress because ...