Time Management and Your Goals
Last time we spoke, the subject was How to Determine If You Use Your Time Wisely. Well, I suppose that we did not exactly speak.
Anyway, in that post I mentioned my point of view on how you can determine if you are using your time wisely (yeah, the title does make that kind of obvious). Today I would like to present a few of my thoughts on goal setting.
Some of the phrases we hear, almost constantly in the corporate world, are “smart goals setting”, “career objectives and goals”, and my favorite, “time management goals”. The problem that I have with these phrases is that each of them have been interpreted in more than one way in the past and are often used as vehicles for some political agenda.
What? Not in your organization?
Well, anyway, because of this, I am going to try to avoid jargon and just tell you how I set goals for myself and for my team.
Goal vs. Objective
The first thing that I would like to do is clear up what I see as a common misconception. Actually, in the comments of the Time Management post, a couple of other people mentioned exactly what I am getting to here. There is a big difference between a goal and an objective.
I like to break this up into three parts. Dreams, Goals, and Objectives.
A dream in this context is an idea that is so big that many people cannot easily wrap their minds around how it could be made real.
A goal is an idea about the way that you would like something to be in the future. It is the result of a task or a set of tasks, not the tasks themselves.
An objective is one of the tasks needed to achieve a goal. The key thing to understand here is that an objective is measurable, whereas a goal is not necessarily measurable.
To Have a Dream
Some people set goals related to their work/life balance or to get promoted. Others set goals for raising smart children or for their home business or blog. The key is to have a dream and to break it down into its required components. Then write your to-do list.
How To Meet Your Goals
Of course, a to-do list will not help you to achieve your goals if you do not work from it. If you have trouble completing the items on your to-do list, you may want to do the following. This has worked for me in the past when I was feeling unmotivated (actually, that was most of the time for a while).
- Think about, and maybe write down how each item will benefit you. Why do you want to achieve this goal?
- Periodically review where you are in completing each item and think about if you should continue to work to finish all of them on this day. Perhaps it would be better to come back to one, or maybe you really need to work until they are all done. Being aware of this is essential.
- Answer this question: Is there anyone who would or should help you on any of these tasks?
- Set a deadline for each item & stick to it. Move on when you need to and understand that you messed up when you don’t meet a deadline. You have to teach this to yourself.
- If need be, or only just for fun, set an award for each completed item. Just watch that it is not always chocolate – that stuff will make it harder for you to climb steps if you eat enough.
Conclusion
One thing that I can say with some certainty is that you cannot achieve your goals if you don’t know what they are. Today is a good day to think about your dreams and how you will make them a reality.
Your Turn
How do you determine your goals?
Also, I am thinking about doing more goals-related posts in the future. Perhaps it will be something about the (rather popular, but overdone) subject of personal branding or perhaps something about goal myths. What would you like to talk about?
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Great post. I like how you differentiate goals, objectives, and dreams. The definitions are very well put. I think breaking it down to pieces and making a to do list is a very efficient & helpful way in meeting your goals. I have a few short and long term goals and a to do list of every week to meet those goals to keep me in track. You should write something relating to goal myths.. it definitely got my interested when reading about it. Thanks for sharing!
That is great Justin. I think that one of the keys to success is to take these concepts and make them your own. That is, as no two people seem to do this in the same way, it is difficult to just follow the directions laid out by many of the “experts”.
I really appreciate your comment!
Have a great day!
Twitter: jblack2012
said:
I like to be as specific as possible. In fact, I have one of my goals tattooed on my arm as a specific date.
The more specific you can be, the more serious you get about where you want to go.
Instead of saying I want to be rich some day, you would get super-specific and say “I will have $1,000,024 on July 19th 2010 by selling 200,000 e-books to my loyal readers.” or something like that.
You have to be able to measure your goals, that’s the key. Otherwise you are driving without a map.
-Joshua Black
The Underdog Millionaire
Joshua Black | The Underdog Millionaire´s last [type] ..What You Don’t Know About Copywriting Could Kill You…
Ha! Tattoos are probably a good way to keep yourself motivated, but how do you scratch them off of your list?
Excellent point about being as specific as possible. That has certainly helped me in the past.
Actually, in your example you stated (according to my way of looking at this subject) a dream (the implied lifestyle), the objective (to make $), and a goal (sale of ebooks).
And you made the objective and goal measurable.
Have a great day Joshua!
Twitter: alljessilicious
said:
I recently read somewhere about the power of writing your goals down, as well, and how something like 97% of people don’t write them down, but the 3% that do achieve their goals while the other 97% don’t.
I have a hard time with goal-setting. I have goals, I write them down occasionally, but there is no consistency or system with it. I have a hard time following a structure or system, whether it’s with goals, planning my days, or budgeting (although I think I finally found a system that WORKS for budgeting!). This is my ongoing challenge when it comes to setting goals. It’s one thing to think about them, but to really play full out I need to have a system in place to support me working toward them as well.
Any thoughts on that particular part of the topic that you could blog about?
Jess Webb´s last [type] ..Being Yourself and Living Your Passions- A Blog Carnival
Congratulations on finding a system that works for budgeting! You may now be able to get a really high paying job with that kind of information.
I think that the easiest way in my experience to work through goals is to break them down a bit farther and then pick 3 times per day to review my list of them. That review tends to motivate me in the short term.
In the end, though goal setting is hard and achieving them is often even harder.
I appreciate the conversation Jess. Have a great day!
Mark,
I really like how to further explained the time management in to 3 more categories, dream, goal and objective. I think it is a great idea as you said, dream tasks are hard to define and break in to smaller tasks to get it started. Many times I too feel that way, I do not know where to begin a certain task and it can be overwhelming, from now on I will try this approach. Thank you for showing me the way.
Ha. Hey Preeti.
I know that looking at it this way has helped me quite a bit. I still get overwhelmed when I have what feels like too much to do, but after breaking things down, it gets much easier to get to work and get done so I can get on to the fun stuff.
Have a great day!
Twitter: buildrankprofit
said:
G’day Mark,
Great post mate, love that you have defined and then differentiated between a goal and an Objective. I spent years wondering why I was never meeting my objectiveless goals until I learned about the SMART goal concept.
Love the example you gave, I personally think it was a Freudian look into the real Mark Wagner
I shall call you Marky Mark and the funky bunch (of ice blue bananas)
(I won’t really)
Alex´s last [type] ..How not to write an ebook – Are you asking the right questions
Hey Alex,
Good that you mention SMART goals (I know you have been an advocate in the past). That is the framework that I have used at my job and in my own projects & I am also a big fan. I expect that at some point I will go into much more detail about that sometime in the future.
Ha. I don’t know if it was Freudian, but surely it could have been something else. Hopefully, everyone will get the point.
Have a great day!
Twitter: markbell10
said:
Hey Mark,
Good post. I can really relate to how you have perfectly defined dreams, goals and objectives. In my research background, the goals are aims – things we want to do or find out about, the objectives are stepping stones to that end goal. Dreams are an encapsulation of lots of goals.
One of my goals at the minute is to develop a means of passive income through my two websites. The objectives I’ve taken to that would be some of the following –
- create sites
- create content
- socialise through blogs
- advertise
- ebooks
- guest posting
- adsense and affiliation
In terms of determining goals – I think it depends on what you want in life. I’ve a good job, albeit on contract. So I guess a goal is to get a secure (or make my own) job. We like to travel, so travel the world would be a goal.
To determine your own goals, I think you really need to think what you want to achieve or experience in your life. That will make for a good starting point. It would be the same in your career.
I agree that a good place to start is to think about what you want to achieve & experience in your life. Actually, I really can’t think of a better starting point for any individual. Thanks for your thoughts!!
Twitter: lanterns4less
said:
Great information. You are right about the two words goals and objective being confused as having the same meaning. Without objectives one will face extreme difficulty reaching his or her goals.
Shirley Kelly´s last [type] ..How Important Is The Wedding Cookie Table
I appreciate you stopping by! I think that many people get confused about the meanings of those two words in this context. Thank you for taking part in the conversation.
Have a great day Shirley.
I have to say that making a to do list is very important in dream setting and goal achieving. To write it down and keep it in a visible place will be a constant reminder to stay focused. The loss of focus because of outside distractions is the main reason people fail to achieve their dreams. I live for tattoo artistry and I would be where I am without strict focus.