This purple man and small purple child are reaching for a purple star. That is their goal. As you can see, they will never achieve it.

Many people tell you to set goals. Whether you are trying to get 20 more RSS subscribers, $100/month in blog revenue, or simply trying to lose weight, you’re supposed to create a chart of what you want to achieve. This is folly!

SETTING YOURSELF UP TO FAIL
Goals create a tangible target for you to reach. For example, say my goal for Blog Badly is to scrap up enough money to pay for hosting. Will I ever reach this amount? No. Will BlueHost keep taking my money? Yes. Will I curl up and cry in a corner? Perhaps.

As you can see, when you set goals and don’t reach them, you have failed. Failure generally makes people unhappy. Therefore: goals -> failure -> unhappiness. This scientifically proves that goals cause unhappiness. That is the power of flow charts.

WHAT SHOULD I DO WITHOUT GOALS?
Nothing! That’s the great part about it - if you don’t strive to achieve anything, you’ll be happier whenever you do achieve something. Everything will seem like a huge accomplishment. If you don’t set goals, then you can’t lose: no goals -> no failure -> no unhappiness.

BUT I REALLY WANT GOALS!
If you insist on setting goals for your blog, don’t expect much. Here are a few examples of great goals for any blog, old or new:

• Get more readers than just your family, best (and only) friend, and cat. Oh, and that hobo that you sometimes show your blog too. He sure loves blogging.
• Make one cent from your blog a month. This is the equivalent of digging in your couch for two seconds.
• Comment on one blog per week.
• Change your PR from N/A to 0.
• Rank within the 10 million’s on Alexa

These are, of course, just a few sample goals. Try it for yourself: set low expectations and meet them! You’ll feel a lot better afterwards.