Good Excuse Goals (TM) is an event-based form of structured procrastination and also mitigates perfectionism. The premise is to set something in motion that:

1. Involves at least 3 other people who matter
2. Leads to a time-stamped event/presentation/celebration and
3. Has a clear “why” that means a lot to you personally

The old way of date-based goal setting says set a final due date and work towards completing the task at hand before that date. The problem with this form of goal setting is that if you miss the deadline, there is no accountability. You can keep procrastinating and pushing the date backward to whenever you feel like doing what you need to do.

Event-based goal setting says create a good excuse to complete the goal on time by creating an event (celebration, presentation, etc) that involves other people. For some reason, we’re comfortable disappointing ourselves. That’s why so many new year’s resolution go undone. But we hate disappointing other people, so event-based goal setting uses our desire to impress others to motivate us.

Student Example:

It’s the first day of the semester and you already have a term paper due in 4 weeks. Date-based goal setting says mark your calendar with the dates you want your first, second, and final draft to be done and that’s it. Event-based goal setting says on the second day of the semester, schedule two meetings with your professor TA; one to review the first draft and one to review the second draft. By establishing the meetings, you now have another person holding you accountable to your goals and are less likely to procrastinate. By mid-semester, you’ll have 90% of the paper done already.

Artist Example:

Say for instance you’re a musician who wants to release an album by a certain date. Instead of just secretly writing the date on a calendar, good excuse goal setting says book a venue for a listening party or live performance a week or two before you want to actual CD to be done and send invitations to 30 friends and fans anticipating that 5-10 of them will come. Now you have to get ready and that forces (in a good way) you to create the music you want to make. By creating the event, you’ve set something in motion and create a good excuse to complete the CD.

It could be something you need to start, stop, decrease, or go harder on
It could be a relationship with an organization or person that you need to end (ie board seat, job, volunteer, etc)
Or one you need to begin (mentor, leadership role, ToastMasters, your own company, etc)
It may be something you need to invest in (an instrument software, a class, training, lessons, video cam)
Or something that you need to stop invest in

More ideas…