by Eileen Roth
Table 18-1How a Mission Becomes a Goal Mission Goal
To enjoy some quality time with my mate. One date night a week and a
vacation mixing adventure
with unstructured relaxation.
To move the company from a high-risk Create a new organizational
leadership position to a mid-tier provider structure, sales initiative, and
with better margins. marketing retool that exploits
existing strengths and
minimizes risks.
To have more relaxation time in the Organize the kitchen setup,
evening, entertain friends more often, meal-planning process,
and eat more healthily. shopping, and cooking.
Goals can be short or long term, and successful people establish both. Goals can come from you or from a parent, boss, or partner. Effective people balance self-generated with external goals. Setting goals enables actual desires to define the way we spend time — the ultimate empowerment.
Quiz question: What’s your goal in reading this chapter? How does this chapter fit into a value-driven mission?
Setting goals by the clock
Timing is everything. Start too late on your goals and you won’t have time to realize them. Set goals when you’re overworked, overwhelmed, tired, or depressed, and chances are they won’t represent your truest hopes or best potential. But set your goals when you feel good and can enthusiastically imagine feeling even better, and you’re likely to aim high while still being realistic.
Although big goals are often set around New Year’s, overindulgence in the dead of dreary winter weather doesn’t bring out the best ideas. New Year’s resolves are usually forgotten as people hunker down to the hard job of getting through the winter. The lazy, crazy days of summer can undo the best-laid plans just as well. Crisp fall breezes, however, enhance goal-setting; and spring, a time of renewal in nature, tends to get the juices flowing too. Why not renew yourself this spring with a goal-setting session inspired by the spirit of growth?
To set shorter-term goals, such as redoing the kitchen, organizing your desk, or developing an exercise program, choose a time when you feel good and you’re not pressured by other projects. Many people like to plan at the end of the month for the next month, or every Sunday evening for the week ahead.
Going away to set your goals
Have you ever noticed how going away on a trip can put everything into perspective? How offsite meetings can spark good ideas and build consensus? Getting out of your usual environment can open up your mind to set goals and you don’t have to fly to a beach in Mexico, but feel free if you have the budget!
If the weather’s right, a park, forest preserve, or local beach makes a great place for thinking about goals. In a cold or rainy season, try a meditation center, cabin in the woods, library, or museum. Take a sturdy pad so you can perch anywhere, and perhaps a blanket or beach chair. Sit for a bit to clear your mind, and then let the ideas flow.
Nine types of goals
There are nine main areas to consider when thinking about your goals. If you’re doing your annual goal session, you may want to cover them all. Working on a specific plan may keep you within a single category. If it’s big goal-setting time, write each of the following as headers on separate sheets of paper:
Business
Family
Financial
Home
Mental
Personal
Physical
Social
Spiritual
Goal-setting techniques
Now how to decide on your goals? Choose from the following five techniques, or mix and match.
Six months left to live: The doctor has just told you that you have six months left to live. What would you do with your remaining days? I know it’s morbid, but imagining that your life is almost over is a powerful way to focus on what you want. Try to write down what you’d do in that limited time frame.
Write your own eulogy: While you’re at it, imagine what you’d like people to say about you after you’re gone. Specifically, pick three people — a family member, a friend, and a business or community associate and write what you’d like to hear, with angel ears, at your own funeral. Compare this with what they may say today. The difference constitutes your goals.
Likes and strengths, dislikes and weaknesses: A lighter approach to assessing where you are and what you want in life or a specific situation is to divide a piece of paper into four quadrants and answer the following questions:
What do I like/want to do? What do I dislike/not want to do?
What are my strengths?What are my weaknesses?
Things you like to do and strengths are goals or components of goals. Things you don’t like to do and weaknesses are goals in a different way: How can you get these out of your life? For instance, if you like details but hate face-to-face meetings with people, you probably don’t want to be a recruiter, salesperson, or publicist. Consider accounting, engineering, or research.
Weaknesses can also become goals themselves if you feel correcting them could help you get what you want.
Brainstorming: To brainstorm your goals, take a piece of paper and write your mission statement on the top. Now, thinking of ideas as raindrops and letting them fall fast and hard, write down every thought that comes to mind, no matter how ridiculous or trivial it may seem. Let one idea lead to the next or make random leaps. Don’t edit or judge. Just write.
After your brainstorming session, you may want to leave your list alone overnight to incubate. Come back the next day with a fresh perspective, review your list, and use it to write your goal or goals.
Mind mapping: Similar to brainstorming, mind mapping is an exercise in free association, but here the emphasis is visual. To chart the terrain of your brain, take a piece of unruled paper and turn it sideways (landscape). In the center, write a keyword or phrase from your mission statement and draw a horizontal oval around it. As that idea sparks new ones, draw branches that are spokes radiating out from the central oval and write them down at the branches’ ends. Continue branching from any thought that sparks a new one, letting your mind wander and your pen or pencil take you wherever the branches want to go, like a river flowing into tributaries and streams. You can add pictures or symbols if you like — whatever it takes to make your thoughts visible.
See Figure 18-1 for a picture of the mind map that helped me decide to become a professional organizer.
As with your brainstorming list, you may benefit from taking a night away from your mind map, and then coming back and using the map as a guide to writing down your goals.
Figure 18-1: The mind map that helped launch my career in professional organizing. Notice that organizing and people keep showing up in my favorite jobs.
Achieving your goals
How? Now that you know what you want and have considered the ways to get it, you’re ready for the most challenging aspect of procuring your goals in the material world: The mental discipline. An optimistic outlook, keeping lists, remaining undeterred by setbacks, and aiming high all require perseverance and discipline. The rest of this chapter provides concrete tools for achieving your goals. You can prepare your mind to follow through on your plan with what I call the Three P’s: putting it on paper, picturing the play, and pursuing the peak.
Putting it on paper
Studies have shown that people who write things down accomplish them. To Do lists and daily calendars are living proof of this principle. After completing the goal-setting exercises of your choice, write down the final results to complete your commitment and take a load off your mind.
Where you write your goals is less important than getting the writing done, but do choose a place that works for you. Some people like to use the goals section in their daily planner. Others prefer to devote a small notebook to their goals so they have a record over time. You can also write goals on regular sheets of paper and file t
hem by the nine categories and/or date in a section of your filing system, or do the same thing on the computer. Consider how often you like to consult and add to your goals, and choose a format you can access accordingly.
Picturing the play
If you ever participated in a sport, you probably heard your coach say “picture the play.” If a picture is worth a thousand words, visualizing the winning move can be worth its weight in gold.
Imagine yourself living your goal — in color. See the clothes you’re wearing, the way the light falls, the people around you. If your goal is to ski down a mountain, include every inch of snow-covered slope, from the top over all the moguls to the final snowplow at the base. If visualizing from scratch leaves you staring at a blank screen, try clipping pictures from magazines that relate to your goals. You can paste them into a book or divide them into files by topic. If you visualize yourself as you want to be, you can ultimately stop seeing and start being.
Pursuing the peak
No one runs half a race, climbs half a mountain, or pulls their money out of a CD halfway to maturity, so never make a halfway goal. Aim for the top.
Sure, there may be failures and setbacks, obstacles to conquer and hurdles to clear as you work for your goal. The trick here is to see them coming. What can you do to get the information or training you need to succeed? Take a class? Read a book? Find a mentor or join a support group?
Remember that electricity wasn’t discovered in a day and Abraham Lincoln lost eight political races before attaining the nation’s highest office. Reach for the top and don’t stop until you get there. The pursuit of the peak sets the winners apart from the losers.
You and your plan participants
Who? Every plan involves people. Who are the players in yours?
The first question is what role you play in relation to this plan. Are you acting as a parent, partner, employee, colleague, caretaker, manager, friend? We all play multiple roles. Your mission statement can guide you to yours.
Next consider whose cooperation and support you need to make this plan work. How can you get key players on your side, whether your mother-in-law, your boss, or the best caterer in town?
Finally, share your goal with someone — a co-worker, friend, or mate — anyone who will make you feel accountable for achieving it. They don’t even have to ask you about your progress. Just knowing that they may, can impel you may help down your path. See Chapter 19 for more information on working with others and being accountable.
The planning time frame
When? Time is of the essence in any plan, and part of your preparation is assigning a deadline — one of the most powerful motivators your mind will ever face. Like the guy who runs the race, look for your finish line. Is the quarterly report due on the first of July? Do you need to book a plane ticket in time to take advantage of 30-day advance rates? Would you like to conquer the beginning ski slopes by January so you can move on to intermediate runs before the snow melts?
Once you set a deadline, another question crops up: What are the steps from here to there? That’s the time to break down your goal into smaller pieces. You wouldn’t eat a whole pie without slicing it up so break your goals into achievable steps, and then put them in order so you simply move from one small task to the next. (The next section on lists will help with this.) Slice your goals into bite-size pieces and succeed.
Breaking goals into subgoals is one of the few times I recommend using sticky notes. Write down each step between you and your goal on sticky notes, and then rearrange them on your desk or tabletop or computer screen until you get a time flow you can work with. You can also take a tip from Hollywood screenwriters and use index cards on a bulletin board to get the same effect.
Finding the right place for your plan
Where? Every plan takes place somewhere. Consider the best setting for yours. If you plan to go back to school, do you want to enroll in the local college so you can continue with your job or family life, or is there a better program somewhere else that offers a more valuable degree? Should your effort to expand your customer base focus on existing or new territories? Can scheduling the kids into summer activities close to home work best, or do you want to try sleepover camp or a visit to faraway relatives?
Keep an open mind as you decide where to pursue your plan. You don’t have to vacation in the same place every year. Maybe your meeting would be more effective off-site than in a conference room. If you can’t get going on your exercise program at home, a weekend at a spa or ski resort may give you just the jump start you need.
Lists You Can Live By
With your preparation in place, turn all those thoughts into lists to guide your actions. Lists are the primary tool for effective time management, and if you haven’t discovered their true power, prepare to be pleasantly surprised.
The Master List
Start with your Master List, a comprehensive reference for everything you need to do, present and future, personal and business. There are three main Master List formats to choose from:
A 3-x-5 spiral notebook
The notes section of your paper organizer
A computer (desktop, laptop, or handheld)
To pick the format that works best for you, consider how you like to arrange and add to your list. The basic concept is that as you think of something new to do, now or later, write it down. This could be a spontaneous thought, or an item you’re placing in a Take Action File (see Chapter 16). Note that all Take Action items should go onto your Master List before they go into a file. That’s how you ensure that you remember to go back and pull that piece of paper and do whatever it represents.
Some people keep their Master List in the order that things spring to mind. Others prefer to organize their list by category or project, starting a new page for each. Some prefer the portability and easy access of paper over the computer, while others like the power to move things around offered by a computer program. For instance, if you decide you want to plant roses but it’s the middle of winter, you can easily create a new seasonal section right where you want it. If an upcoming conference starts out as one entry on your Master List but gradually accumulates additional items, you can move them all into one section to find them fast. Still, if your computer isn’t on most of the time, are you really going to boot it up to record your midnight inspiration? If not, paper is preferred.
Whatever form your Master List may take, the important thing is that you write down everything that you need or want to do, in all aspects of your life. It doesn’t really have to be organized. That comes next.
The To Do List
The To Do List puts your Master List into action on a daily basis. Again, you can keep this on paper or in a computer. Many organizers, both paper and electronic, have a separate spot for your To Do List. You may like to keep your To Do List there, or simply use your organizer for appointments and put your To Do List on a separate piece of paper. (See Chapter 16 for how the To Do List fits into the Take Action File system.)
Here are the four steps to creating and maintaining your To Do List:
1.Create your To Do List from the Master List.
Today, take about five to ten items from the Master List that you need or want to accomplish tomorrow and write them on your To Do List. Some of these items may be due tomorrow, while others are intermediary steps or parts of longer-term projects. Don’t schedule more than you can handle in a single day after you account for appointments. (There’s more on choosing items for your To Do List coming up.)
2.Rewrite your To Do List at the end of each day.
The To Do List, a daily tool, needs to be rewritten every day — not just copied over again. Go back to your Master List and see what’s most important for tomorrow. Consider your meetings and errands. Keep your To Do List fresh and to the point.
3.Set realistic time frames.
Most people tend to overestimate the time required to complete small jobs and underestimate large ones. W
ith this in mind, set realistic time frames for each task on your list. If you did the job before, how long did it take? If it’s a new job, jot down how long the task actually takes when you’re done so that you know for next time.
4.Allow for interruptions and overflow.
Things happen so even the most realistic time frames need a cushion to account for interruptions and the unexpected. Double or add a half hour to each task on your list to account for everything from emergencies to phone calls and cappuccino runs.
Acting with Rhythms and Routines
Congratulations! You now have your time-management system in place, but don’t kick back and put up your feet. In order to realize the promise of your plan, you must act.
One of the fastest ways to burn up time is to act on impulse, doing whatever, whenever. The point of planning is to empower you to act with rhythms and routines.
Getting into the groove: Rhythms