# Episode 1: Goal Setting

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2024-04-22
- **Format:** Video · 29 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Career, Productivity, Community
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/episode-1-goal-setting
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_g08I4ld10

This is the first proper episode of my podcast 'What So What Now What', recorded with my co-host Ravi on 2 January 2018. We explore goal setting, why January isn't necessarily the best time to set goals, and how framing, milestones and tracking matter more than the goal itself. I also share my own plans for the year around the data community, vlogging and producing more engaging content.

## Key takeaways

- Setting goals around a personal seasonal cycle (for me, September to October following conferences and community exposure) can work better than the arbitrary January calendar reset.
- The framework and milestones surrounding a goal matter more than the goal itself, since the journey, obstacles and process are what actually get you there.
- People tend to set easily achievable goals for the satisfaction of hitting them, when more ambitious or differently framed goals may serve them better.
- Choose a tracking metric you genuinely understand, which takes time and experience to develop, and accept that early goals will often be unrealistic until you learn the real effort involved.
- Good feedback mechanisms, such as others noticing your behaviour change without being told your goals, help ensure a goal that affects a community is genuinely rewarding the collective rather than self-indulgent.

## Chapters

- 0:05 Why we started the podcast
- 1:18 What is a goal?
- 2:45 So what: when to set goals
- 8:38 Framework and milestones over the goal
- 12:16 Now what: plans for the year ahead
- 17:43 Tracking, feedback and engaging content
- 25:30 Webinars, Twitch and wrapping up

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/episode-1-goal-setting

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena