Setting a goal is simple. Just say what you plan on doing and everything else falls into place.

Right?

Wrong.

It turns out that some methods of setting goals are better than others. And we have the research to prove it.

Here are the things you shouldn't be doing when setting your sights on accomplishments.

Stanley Cup champion and 17-year NHL veteran Bret Hedican has combined his passion for sports, business, technology and fashion into two different ventures.

Related: 10 Things Exceptionally Productive Entrepreneurs Do Every Day

The first is RosterBot, an app dedicated to organizing team sports and recreational activities. Rosterbot automatically synchronizes practices and games with a user’s calendar, lets parents chat internally to coordinate carpooling and helps team managers handle invoicing and booking. “We take the work out of play,” the 44-year-old Hedican says of his involvement with the company since 2010.

I was an entrepreneur before I became a mother, but for many women in my circle, the opposite is true; motherhood has forged the path to entrepreneurship. For some, the challenges of motherhood have been the inspiration behind their companies while for others, the flexibility allowed by being your own boss has been the key to managing a career and family. Whatever their reason for entering entrepreneurship, all agree that motherhood has provided them with the skills to help their business thrive.

The competition for talent in Silicon Valley seems to get tougher every year. Joshua Reeves, CEO and co-founder of ZenPayroll, thinks he has found the answer: shoeless offices and a free plane ticket (after their one-year anniversary) to anywhere in the world.

ZenPayroll kicked 2015 off with 60 employees and is projected to grow to almost 300 by the end of the year. “This is a marathon, not sprint,” says Reeves. Reeves believes it’s always important to be thinking of solving problems over the long-term, not the short-term, which in turn means that pacing is important.

Image: http://mashable.com 

The equity crowdfunding law Arizona passed this year heralded a new opportunity for all individuals to invest and help grow Arizona startups but it still is missing a key aspect: a way for investors to cash out of their investment. Bruce Brimacombe, founder and CEO of GOE3, a Mesa-based startup, says the crowdfunding bill is missing an exit strategy. Under normal investment regulations, accredited investors – individuals with a net worth north of $1 million – can recoup their investment and gains by either selling their stake or through an initial public offering of stock.

The first of the state’s new equity crowdfunding deals opened for business to investors Friday.

The real estate limited partnership, open to any Texas resident 18 or older with at least a $500 investment, would finance a senior living facility to be built in Cedar Hill. The deal is listed on the state-approved portal MassVenture.com and will close June 19 if it raises at least $450,000.

The pervasive ability and need to communicate constantly and globally through the Internet and smartphones is incenting everyone to get more out of their own assets and time, and capitalize on the idle resources of others. This new sharing economy is rapidly becoming the new business of sharing, with major winners already including Airbnb (rooms), Uber (rides), and Chegg (books).

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com 

With this being National Small Business Week, we’re excited to bring you a special conversation featuring Barbara Corcoran — serial entrepreneur, best selling author, keynote speaker, and co-star of the extremely popular show Shark Tank. Barbara shares with us her thoughts on entrepreneurship today, what was the most successful business she invested in, her definition of success, and why it drives her crazy when she invests in a company that doesn’t share her passion for business.

One frigid morning this January, I broke into a cold sweat thinking about the future for Canadian entrepreneurs. At a patent conference with some of the world’s foremost innovation experts and practitioners, the lead strategist from one of the world’s most valuable technology companies announced: “We don’t sue Canadian companies until they start to matter to us. The money is not worth it when they’re small and we don’t want to look like a bully. We wait until they get big enough, then we go after them. And we kill them.”

Image: http://www.theglobeandmail.com 

Fitbit has filed for an initial public offering, riding strong sales of its devices and making it one of a handful of fitness tracker manufacturers to enter the public market. It will offer up to $100 million of common stock, but The Wall Street Journal noted that’s likely to change.

The company, which started in 2007, plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol FIT. The news confirmed what sources told Reuters five months ago.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Seed accelerators have been around for 10 years now and their popularity doesn’t appear to be waning any time soon. Sure, criticism for the programs themselves and the proliferation of different programs around the world have taken some wind out of the sails, but primarily, joining an accelerator program – or rather, being accepted to an accelerator – is still considered valuable and an endorsement of the concept and business model.

Normally when I write about updates on intrastate crowdfunding legislation it’s simply to let readers know that one, two, maybe even as many as three states have either enacted or proposed new legislation. Not this time, however, as the first quarter of 2015 has brought an explosion of intrastate legislation.

The Big Picture

Maybe with the new legislative season, state politicians are looking for an arguably bipartisan bill they think will be popular with their constituents. I mean, who can say no to legislation designed to open up sources of capital to small and growing businesses? On the other hand, maybe state politicians/regulators are simply seeing other states enacting similar rules and they don’t want their state to be left behind. Whatever the reason, 2015 is shaping up to be the year of intrastate crowdfundin

Babson College convened healthcare industry leaders from around the world for the first-ever Global Healthcare Entrepreneurship Summit on May 7, 2015.

The event, at which participants dove into the critical need to develop sustainable healthcare systems for low-resource countries, was created in collaboration with the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, the Office of Global Surgery and Health at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, and the Steven C. and Carmella R. Kletjian Foundation. Faculty from Babson and Harvard, as well as partners from low and middle-income countries, led event participants through Babson-developed case studies to provide real-world examples of the impact of and need for entrepreneurial leaders in global healthcare.

Successful CMOs achieve growth by leveraging technology. Join us for GrowthBeat Summit on June 1-2 in Boston, where we'll discuss how to merge creativity with technology to drive growth. Space is limited. Request your personal invitation here! Editor’s note: This post first appeared on Carl Cheo’s website. We’ve republished it here with his permission.

To make learning more fun and interesting, here’s a list of important computer science theories and concepts explained with analogies and minimally technical terms. It’s like an ultra-fast-track computer science degree program for everyone, just to get you to understand the general concepts.

What do Google, MongoDB, Uber, and Pimco all have in common? Over the last year, each has had a C-level executive leave by publicly declaring his need for work-life balance.

That’s great for them, but executives who publicly lament their out-of-whack work-life balance and ceremoniously quit do nothing to help millions of people with the same stress and imbalance. The majority of overworked employees, like these executives, just crave quality time with their families. But they can’t quit. There’s no golden parachute to save them.

When it comes to the research results on happiness in the American workforce, the statistics are not flattering.

A recent survey by the staffing firm Manpower Group discovered that nearly two-thirds of American and Canadian workers were not happy in their job. A recent Gallup survey found that close to 60% of American workers were unhappy enough in their jobs to want a new career. Most of us have found ourselves in a job that was not fulfilling at some point.

This week, global professional services firm EY released new findings from a global survey about the work-life challenges today’s employees confront. It asked 9,700 full-time workers in eight countries, and in companies of varying sizes, about what makes today’s workers tick—and ticked off.

One strong message from the data is that, in the United States, Millennials want flexible work arrangements — and indeed, feel they desperately need some flexibility. But they worry about “flexibility stigma”—the likelihood that they’ll be labeled less than fully committed to work if they avail themselves of arrangements like flex time and paternity leave — and as a result suffer negative job and career consequences.

Limited partners in venture capital funds regularly fret over rising valuations, as once-mythical unicorns keep evolving into overgrown pigeons. But a related worry has yet to get much public attention: Over-exposure.

Venture capital funds have always “clubbed up” with one another, meaning that LPs would regularly have multiple exposures to the same portfolio company. But LPs could limit it a bit via their own portfolio management, making sure that they had diversity of VC fund type (i.e., a mix of early-stage, expansion-stage, late-stage, etc.). The historical result was that, if an LP had multiple exposures, it was usually spread throughout the cap table (one or two early-stage exposures, one new Series B/C/D, etc.).

There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction that comes from identifying a smart solution for a market challenge. Unfortunately though, the joy of that “a-ha!” moment can often lead to rash decisions, like shelling out thousands of dollars for a website domain only to realize that your idea is not legally feasible. Or spending hours meeting with investors only to discover that someone else already went to market with the exact same idea six months ago.

When you’re thinking about taking the plunge and becoming an entrepreneur, for the first few weeks and months of your entrepreneurial journey, the prospect of being your own boss and investing in your own enterprise is exhilarating. You read stories about overnight successes and other business leaders finally feeling fulfilled in their work and think that you’ll experience the same level of success or fulfillment as soon as you get started.