It’s Wednesday, so that means it’s time for another blog article here on Bearz Repeating!

Unfortunately, on this particular Wednesday, I’m also busy packing my bags for a long trip over the holiday weekend. Combine these travel preparations with starting a new data science training program, and the result is that I haven’t been able to finish my planned article for this week.

That said, this seemed like an ideal opportunity for me to share a few thoughts on what happens when we don’t complete our goals, which will almost inevitably happen — although I didn’t expect it to happen to me quite so soon!

First and foremost, it’s critical to get back on your feet and keep moving towards your destination. Second, the best step for future success is understanding why you fell short of your goal to begin with. This will often take some frank self-evaluation, or perhaps seeking advice from friends. Finally, you should consider modifying your goal to reflect what you’ve just learned.

How does this three-step strategy relate to me? Let’s spell it out.

For the first step, I am definitely committed to avoiding this situation in the future and providing high-quality articles in a timely manner. Getting back on my feet — check.

Second is evaluation. The major reason I fell short this week was because I didn’t do a great job allotting my time this past week. OK, straightforward enough. How should this impact my goal? Well, one strategy for improvement would be to explicitly schedule time to work on my blog during the week. That’s our third and final step — seems good.

But wait, there’s more! It just so happens that I generally plan my topics several weeks in advance. This enables me to set a new sub-goal of maintaining a “reserve” of one or two finished articles that I can schedule to post automatically on Wednesdays, rather than rushing to finish something on Tuesday night. This goal has the side benefit of being more quantifiable than the objective of working on my blog “sometime” during the week.

So, overall, while I’m unhappy that I didn’t complete my planned blog article on time, I’m quite happy that I was able to not only come up with some new and more specific goals for myself, I was also able to write an unexpected article about adapting your goals to new situations.

That’s all I have for today. But before you go, I’m curious: have you ever fallen short of your goals, in a big way or even just a little one? If so, how did you cope with that, especially if it was public? Share your stories in the comments! And join me again next week, when I’ll talk about planting your goals in the growth zone.