New Feature Launched: Life Balance Wheel
We launched a new feature called Life Balance Wheel. From now on, on your Reports page, at the bottom of the link menu to the right, you should see a new link called “Life Balance Wheel”. This link will show you a page displaying four life balance wheel charts, indicating how balanced you are in four different metrics: Goals, Action, Habits and Hours.
To switch on / off reporting items on each chart, just click on the title bullet points. Be default they will be all display on the chart.
By definition of the chart, if you see a shape that most resembles a circle, then it means you are very balanced in different goal categories.
If you have defined many goal categories, they may not show clearly on the charts. If this is the case, try removing some of your old goals in order to reduce the number of total category names.
Hope you like the new reporting charts, and let us know if you have any feedback or comments.
Are You a Goal-Getter?
7 steps to achieving your goals
I recently overheard someone reply, when asked about her holiday weekend, “It was successful. My New Year’s resolution is to overeat on every major holiday. I figure I’m going to do it anyway; why not make it a goal I can actually keep?” I had to laugh. It made me think about the goals we create in our lives and in our businesses.
Many fall into one of two major categories. The first category is goals we set that we have a 95 percent chance of accomplishing–mostly because we have done it before, so the likelihood is high that we’ll succeed. (Our overeater above almost didn’t pig out because she was feeling poorly. But she pulled herself together and gorged.) The other category is goals where there is a 95 percent degree of uncertainty that we’ll accomplish them, and we have never done it before, but we would like to. There are benefits to both kinds of goals.
You might think the first kind of goal is for slackers, but there is some value in setting goals that you’re confident you’ll achieve. Using that confidence as a springboard for trying new things can be a useful thing–kind of like doing the perfect swan dive as a warm-up for an Olympic-caliber diver. The problem is if you stop at those, you don’t get to really compete with the big dogs.
Let’s dive into the second kind of goal–the uncertain one.
Goal-setting has been written about every which way. This article is a little bit about setting, but more about accomplishing the goal. The kind of goals you set is certainly important, but for the sake of brevity, I’m going to assume you’re setting an uncertain goal that has some reasonable chance of success. The human brain is set up to help you achieve goals that you sincerely believe are achievable. If you want to stretch yourself or your business to new heights, here are my thoughts on goal-setting and goal-getting.
- Dream, but be motivated.
It’s OK to dream and have big goals. But if you’re actually going to accomplish them, you have to DO something about them, and that takes motivation. The very first thing you need to achieve a goal is a reason and deep desire to achieve it. The path to achieving goals is fraught with boredom, excuses and difficulty. You will have a lot of opportunities to talk yourself out of the goal. But if you can keep going back to the reason and your desire for the goal, those will help you stay on track. - Break it down into 24-hour bites.
The brain has a built in B.S. monitor that rings out when all you do is set an enormous goal but then don’t manage it to 24-hour cycles–daily mini goals. If your goal is to shed 50 pounds, your brain doesn’t see you 50 pounds lighter in 24 hours, but it can see you five ounces lighter in that time. Set your goals so that your B.S. alarm doesn’t go off. To prevent that alarm bell, the mini goal must be reasonable and sustainable. Losing one pound in a day is doable, but it’s not reasonable or sustainable, so the B.S. sentinel will scream its head off, and you’ll eventually stop going after your big goal. - Do something daily.
Nothing replaces repetition and creating momentum like doing something to get you closer to your goal every day. You will naturally take some time off, but if you don’t take seriously the first 30 days of work on the goal and use them to create momentum, it’s almost guaranteed you won’t get there. The first 30 days are critical to convincing your B.S. monitor that you’re serious. Organizationally, it convinces colleagues you’re serious. - Adapt and adjust.
As you work on your daily mini goals and toward the bigger goal, be willing to adapt. Make the mini goals more difficult if they seem too easy. Make them easier if they become too taxing. The main thing is that if your brain deems the mini goal to be too difficult, you’ll quit. If it’s too easy, you’re running in place. Find the middle so you have advancement each day. - Feedback and reward.
The human brain responds to two things to learn and attain new behaviors and knowledge: feedback and reward. As you go about your goal-getting, be brave enough to request feedback from others, and then reward yourself each day for accomplishing your little goals. Research has shown that even keeping a calendar where you put a little gold star on the days you are successful (a la kindergarten) can be effective positive reinforcement. The visual is enough reward for the brain to know it’s doing something right. - Schedule slop time.
When I was a television news producer, the worst thing you could do going into a newscast is be so tightly scheduled that there was no room for error. Every newscast was filled with anchors reading more slowly than you counted on, reports going longer than they were supposed to and other time-gobblers. The good producers always included “slop time” in their show. They would leave one to two minutes of unscheduled time to be stolen by the gobblers. You should do the same with your goals. Schedule time when you’re not focused on your goal, when you get to cheat on it or not do it at all. You’re going to do it anyway, so you might as well allow yourself the room to be human so you don’t feel dejected by temporarily ignoring your goal. Just don’t make it a habit. - Know you’re going to get bored.
Doing something in small pieces each day can lead to boredom. Do it anyway. Achieving goals isn’t always about a daily cork-popping ceremony to celebrate something sensational you did. It’s usually about sticking to the daily, boring small stuff. Get that right, make it slightly more difficult each day, and do it again and again. People who achieve their goals usually do it because they kept going when it gets tough and boring.
There is no secret formula to success. Sure, luck comes into play, but it’s foolhardy to count on that. Mostly, it’s having a direction and place you want to get to and then showing up for the daily grind. Hopefully, it’s not about overeating. Go get ‘em.
Upcoming New Feature - Life Balance Wheel
One of the keys to successful goal organization and management is to have a balanced focus on major areas in life. To make this process easier and more visual, we are about to launch a new feature called “Life Balance Wheel”. Basically you will see a new report chart page showing how balanced you are with your goals, tasks, habits and time allocation for each of your goal categories.
We’re still beta testing it to make sure it works with all major browsers. But it should be ready very soon. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to let us know.
Btw, another update to the iPhone app will be released this week. Please do let us know if you still find bugs in it.
Harry
A New Approach to Goal Setting
We’ve all been exposed to ideas about goal-setting. Some of us love goals, and ardently set them, pursue them, and complete them. Some of us set some goals, but don’t end up following through. And some of us are so turned off of the idea of goals altogether - due to past failures, perhaps, or in resistance to the idea that we “have to” set them - that we don’t even bother.
I’d like to talk about a very practical method of goal-setting that takes a lot of the pressure off and increases results. Before I do though, let’s figure out why we would set goals in the first place.
For one, our minds are habitual machines. Most of what we do, think, and feel is exactly the same as the things we did, thought, and felt yesterday. If you don’t believe me, pay attention to how you brush your teeth or towel yourself off after a shower - you do it in the same way or same pattern EVERY DAY, day in day out. How does this relate to goals? Well if most of our behavior is pretty much on auto-pilot,then nothing changes until we consciously do something new.
In order to do something new, we need to know the second most important piece of the puzzle: our minds are goal-seeking mechanisms. In other words, whatever we focus on, our mind sees it as a goal to be achieved and will begin coming up with strategies, behaviors and ideas that will help to achieve that goal.
Just think about the last time you were trying not to fall down by saying to yourself “don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall!”? What happened? You fell. What were you imagining in your mind? Yourself falling down. Your brain got the picture of you falling down and went “ok, we can do that” and caused you to fall down. This is just how the mind works.
So to relate this to fitness goals, we might as well get our minds on our side and start picturing where we want to go. Whether it’s an increased level of flexibility we want, a certain weight we wish to achieve, or a certain level of muscle mass we’d like to be sporting, the process will be MUCH easier if we’re giving our brain pictures of where we want to go.
This is why having a goal is so valuable, because it gives us a target to move towards, and something to measure our improvements against. It’s the same reason why, when you go on a trip, you have a destination in mind - so you know where to go! If you went to the ticket agent at an airport, and she asked you where you’d like to go, the answer “I don’t know…anywhere but here” would not be much help! She would need a definite destination, just as we do when setting fitness goals.
Now all of this might make a lot of sense, but there still may be an emotional aversion to goal-setting - the reason why does not matter.
Here’s a way around it. It’s called the “Minimum, Target, and Outrageous”, or MTO, system of goal-setting. It’s very simple and works like this:
You set 3 different goals for yourself, a minimum goal, a target goal, and an outrageous goal.
So let’s say I haven’t been active for years and I want to get back into shape. I could set the goals as follows:
- minimum goal - 5 minutes of light cardio per day, 5 days per week;
- target goal - 15 minutes of light cardio per day, 5 days per week;
- outrageous goal - 45 minutes of light cardio 5 days per week.
The beauty of this system is that the minimum goal is so easy, success will be a breeze. Anyone can spare 5 minutes, 5 days per week to do some light cardio. Even better, though, is the fact that once you’re already out there doing your minimum goal, you’ll probably just keep going to reach your target goal, because you’ve already started, and that’s half the battle right there.
Then, on certain days, if you’re feeling particularly inspired, you can go for the gusto and reach for the outrageous goal. Either way, you’re successful. The minimum goal is so easy, you won’t be able to justify not doing it. Once you’re out there, you’ll probably end up going for the target or outrageous goal, and this will leave you feeling like you over-achieved, which is a great feeling!
Of course, this could be applied to anything - weight loss goals, muscle mass goals, healthy eating goals, you name it.
What matters is that you set a target and give yourself the support and structure that will facilitate real progress. With the MTO goal system, you are taking the pressure right off and giving yourself those great feelings of success every time you get out there and take action.
So if you’re someone who has struggled with setting and achieving goals in the past, this might be the ticket to get you into action and feeling capable and motivated as you never have before. Enjoy!
Ten Steps to Success In Anything
By Allen Loomis
It does not matter how big your goal or dream is, this ten step guide will enable you to achieve success in anything. Have you ever wondered if there was something more you should be doing with your life? I often wondered that very same question before I got interested in the self improvement field.
My childhood was encompassed by a series of failures. My mother was a great person, but I often wondered why she failed over, and over again. What’s the difference that makes the difference between her and someone successful?
I came to the conclusion that continuous action in the right direction was the solution. My mother always worked hard, but she worked hard for everyone else. She never worked hard to better her own circumstances. She worked her full time job, saved as little as she could, until the next problem would arise and everything was lost. She wasn’t taking the right actions. You have to be focused on what you want, figure out a plan towards that goal, with the main focus point to learn as much as you can along the way. Take continuous action with this ambition, and watch your life unfold the way it should.
Here is my plan, that I use for every goal I make. I give it to you in hope that you will use it to unlock your full potential. Success Demands Action. Using this plan for your dreams and goals is the first step. Go through the ten steps below to accomplish any goal. Make yourself a Success binder with tabs for each step. Will you take action?
1. Make the Choice
Get clear on what you want. True success does not happen by accident. You have to choose to be successful. What’s your choice? Will you take the action necessary to reach your goal, at all costs?
If your answer is yes please use this affirmation and read it out loud each morning before you wake up and each night before you go to bed.
“I (Your name) promise myself to take continuous action every day to achieve my goals and dreams. Each day in every way I am becoming more and more successful. My Success is simply just a matter of time. I have made the choice to be successful. I am taking action.”
2. What’s your purpose?
Why do you wish to accomplish this goal? There needs to be a purpose other than just wanting to make a boat load of money.
Answer these questions and go over them at least once a week.
What can this goal do for others?
How will accomplishing this goal change my life?
How would this goal leave the world a better place?
3. What are you good at?
I believe that everyone has certain gifts. Make a list of all the things you are good at that relate to your goal. Be specific, state how each one of these talents will help you reach your goals.
4. The one hour Success System
This process is designed to calm, enlighten, inspire, and heighten your imagination. Starting out each day right, is key to making each day successful.
Daily One Hour Success System
- 10 minutes of eating fresh fruit and stretching.
- 10 minutes of reading daily Self Improvement topics.
- 20 minutes meditating.
- 20 minutes writing your thoughts in a journal.
5. Make A Time Line
Break your main goal down into several smaller goals and pick an exact date when you plan on accomplishing each goal. Being specific and precise is key. I would break your goal down into 5 small goals. The last goal of the time line being your main goal.
6. Why must you achieve this?
List all the material reasons why you want to achieve this goal. Be as greedy as you would like.
7. What would happen if you did not achieve this?
Make a list on all the reasons that you do not want to fail. Go over this list often. List how the goal will benefit your life, and how it will burden you if you don’t. We all have neuron pathways that are created based off of our current beliefs. These pathways create impulses that create how we act underneath our conscious mind. When we change our beliefs we change our neuron path ways. One of the easiest ways to change a belief is by associating pain with that belief. Make sure you list all the reasons you want to achieve your goal, and all the reasons why your life would be painful if you do not.
8. Seek Out Smarter People
We cannot possibly be a expert in everything. Successful people leave clues. Seek out other people who are successful that can help you along the way. Leverage other peoples knowledge to help increase your circumstances.
9. Exceed Expectations
Always give it your all, one hundred and ten percent. Don’t tell the world what you can do, show it.
10. Develop the Action habit
Make a plan each night for the next day. Manage your time well, and you will make the most out of each day. The more action you can take each day, the sooner you will reach your goal.
Become Process Driven
(Admin’s note: Though the article is about reaching sales goals, it applies very well in other types of goals in general.)
Are you hitting your numbers? How many follow-up calls did you make today? How much good volume did you book this month? How many leads did you run this week?
These questions are relentlessly driven into our heads and for good reason. Like many sales professionals, there’s often pressure to reach quota or a certain level of acceptable performance. While having a monthly sales goal keeps your eye on the prize and your focus on the end result, it may actually do more harm than good.
I often hear salespeople say, “Results aren’t showing up fast enough.” At the end of each selling month, frustration and stress/overwhelm run rampant as salespeople scramble to do their best to close sales and meet their numbers.
If selling is transference of feeling, imagine the feeling that you’re transferring to your prospects? The stress of having to close more sales and the anxiety you’re feeling inadvertently puts undue pressure on every prospect you speak with, fostering an unhealthy relationship from the start.
The irony is, this constant push to reach sales numbers keeps you hooked on the goal, diverting your efforts away from refining the selling process needed to generate more business. The quandary then becomes, “I’m too busy to work on my process. I have numbers to meet!”
Consider this paradox; the result is the process. In other words, what if you shifted most of your attention away from your goal or the end result and onto the process?
After all, what’s the point of eating a bowl of chocolate ice cream; to get to the end or to savor every bite? How about the goal of a self-care or an exercise regimen? Unless you’re in it to compete professionally, it’s to maintain a level of health, vitality and personal satisfaction.
The same holds true for measuring productivity, maintaining your peace of mind and experiencing a sense of achievement at the end of each day.
After all, you don’t do the result; you execute the process, which produces the result as a natural byproduct of your efforts. That’s the paradox. By honoring the process, you can enjoy the benefit of knowing that you will attain your goals, since it’s the process that will get you what you want. (Imagine building a house without a blueprint!)
To generate better results, you’re either changing what you do or changing how you think. To continually exceed your sales goals and better manage your mindset, change your thinking to become process driven rather than result driven.
Ask yourself, “Do I have a (sales, prospecting, follow up, time management, customer service) process in place that I can trust?” When you look at your daily schedule, does it outline the specific and measurable tasks and activities you need to engage in that will move you towards your goal?
Chances are, salespeople who are solely focused on the end result don’t have a process they have faith in. As such, they concentrate more on trying to control the outcome; pushing for what they want rather than managing their process. After all, you can’t trust and manage the process if you don’t have a process in place to do so!
Trying to achieve more without a process to guide you would be equivalent to driving from New York to California without a roadmap while wearing a blindfold. Not only can it be stressful but you’re bound to wind up somewhere else other than your intended destination.
Schedule a time with yourself to develop your process for attaining each goal or task that needs completing so that you can see the path you will be traveling on. Look back on the successful sales you’ve made as a starting point for developing your process. For example, if you’re looking to generate a certain number of sales each month, what activities do you need to engage in on a daily basis to do so? What skills or tools need further development? (Ex: Introductory cover letter/ email + prospecting and voice mail approach/template + frequency of calls/follow up = process driven.)
Once you have outlined a path and a success formula to follow (X # of calls produces X # of prospects which produces X # of sales), allow the doing or the process to be the reward and where the pleasure resides, not just the end result. This way, you can be responsible for your future goals without having to worry about them. If you continue your quest with your eyes focused on the finish line, you’ll miss out on the journey. Therefore, be careful not to hook yourself onto the future so that you can enjoy the process of reaching your goals today.
Knowing when enough is enough each day and the specific activities you need to engage in provides you with the freedom to trust the process you’ve put in place. After all, there’s always more to do. There’s always more that can be done at the office, at your home or in your life; another call that can be made or another email that can be read.
Exceeding your monthly sales quota will be the result of the cumulative efforts you make and the activities you engage in every day. When you’re mindful of the process, you now have the opportunity to recognize and celebrate your accomplishments on a daily basis (even the little ones) rather than pushing for or waiting until the “End.” (And when does that happen?)
Four Time Management Rules
Are you having trouble getting everything done? Are you looking for a better way to manage your time? Are you a slave to time? Here are four simple and useful rules to manage your time more efficiently and effectively.
The first three you might have heard of already and then I added one for good measure.
1) Pareto’s Principle - 80% of the outcomes result from 20% of the causes.
Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, noted that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He developed this principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.
You waste your time on useless activities! If you are reading this, you do! You have the plague. We each have our own black hole of time: TV, video games, the internet, social media, email, fantasy sports, telephone, socializing face to face (old school), etc. Most of it in the name of entertainment. You name it and you have a rationalization for it. Whatever it is, it’s holding you back from doing what you really need to be doing. What do you need to be doing? What is it that needs to get done and you don’t have enough time for it?
It might even be work. You have too much urgent work to get your important work done. The question is, “Are you doing the right work?” Enter Vilfredo Pareto. Look at your work like you are making a budget. Where are you spending you time how? Where do you want to spend your time? There are elements of your work which contribute to outcomes. Some elements contribute to positive outcomes and some contribute to negative outcomes. Using Pareto’s Principle, 20% of the elements you already do reap 80% of the benefit. And 80% of the elements you work on reap 20% of the benefit. Why are you wasting four-fifths of your time for 20% of the benefit? Couldn’t you spend some of that time doing more beneficial work?
Check yourself out. Do an honest assessment of how you spend your time. See if it isn’t true that you spend 80% of you time getting 20% of the results. Turn that around and do 20% of the effort and get 80% of the results. The following three rules will help with that.
2) Drucker’s Declaration - Do first things first and second things not at all.
Peter F. Drucker was a writer and management consultant. His books and articles explored how humans are organized across the business and government.
“First Things First” is attributed to Stephen Covey. Before Mr. Covey, Peter Drucker was advising his clients and readers using the above adage. But even before Mr. Drucker, a famous efficiency expert, Ivy Lee, advised Charles M. Schwab, CEO of Bethlehem Steel on improving his personal efficiency and the efficiency of his staff. Lee suggested, “At the end of each day, write down the 6 most important things to be done the next day and number them in order of importance. Do the tasks from the most important to least important. After you’ve finished a task, cross it off the list. Any unfinished tasks are rolled over to the next day.” It’s very simple and effective.
Drucker’s Declaration is a more elegant synopsis of Lee’s advice. Once the first things are taken care of, you can move onto the second thing, which is now in first place.
The power of this incredibly simple technique is doing the “To Do” list at the end of your day. Assess the priorities for the next day and put them on your list. Otherwise, you will be reacting to urgent issues that are bound to pop up during the day, instead of dealing with the important ones you already decided upon.
Doing this “To Do” list will result in doing the 20% that counts the most.
3) Parkinson’s Law - Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
Cyril Parkinson was a British naval historian, an author of some sixty books and a scholar in public administration. You remember cramming. How about last minute term papers? Sometimes it worked well. That is a precise demonstration of Parkinson’s Law. You could have started and finished it sooner, but there were the inevitable delays.
Parkinson’s law is a symptom of not following Pareto and Drucker. If you are not following the two previous rules, you wait until the last minute to get your “real” work done? Your wasting 80% of your time on unimportant things is the root cause of the time mis-management disease.
The cure is making shorter and shorter deadlines. Don’t wait. Get it done and move onto the next number one item on your list. Procrastination ties these last two time management rules together. It is also a symptom of time mis-management. Procrastination is characterized as ineffective, useless delay. The delay is due to some apprehension, fear it won’t be right, or it won’t be good enough or not seeing the way clear to completion. Whatever it is, it paralyzes us to listless inactivity.
Assuming you have set a tight deadline, the cure is to ask for someone to help you over this hurdle. That’s right, ask for help. When did you get too old to ask for help? Ask someone who can encourage and support you to complete this work on time. Someone may be able to clarify the path ahead or show you the next step to take. Progress is made, very often, in small steps, but progress is required.
And one for good measure
4) Campbell’s Commandment - Done is better than perfect.
Thomas Campbell is a very successful manager at a prominent transportation company. His adage was very encouraging as well as motivating.
Many are plagued with perfectionism. Some wear it like a badge of honor. Nevertheless, perfectionism is another delay tactic. Perfection is reserved for a Deity. We mere mortals will have to settle for excellence. And even excellence takes time. You won’t get it right the first time or maybe the first ten times. All you can do is your best with the information you have available, finish it and leave it open for revision when you get better information.
This is not an opening for shoddy work. Do you best while complying with Pareto, Drucker and Parkinson and keep working on it making it better each time. If you wait for perfection, you will get perfectly nothing done . . . perfectly. Progress is always preferred over perfection and usually required.
Make some progress. Get something done. Otherwise, you are right where you are now, fretting about all the time that is being lost and nothing is being done.
Any one of the Four Time Management Rules will move you ahead to accomplish more. Pick one that will work for you and try it out. If you can do it for 21 days, it will likely become a habit. If you like that one, try another and another. Remember “do is half of done!”
7 Tips You Should Know If You Find Goal Setting Doesn’t Work
1. Goal setting is a skill that can be learned and must be learned
We humans are goal oriented creatures. We seldom do something for no reason at all. And the reasons behind our behavior are usually where our goal lies. Regardless whether we realize it or not, we are setting goals and working on them day in and day out, no matter how trivial they may be. It is worthwhile to learn how to be more effective in setting and reaching goals and getting the real results we want. To achieve success in almost anything we do, we not only need to get better at goal setting, but we really must do so.
2.Goal setting is a process, not a thing done in a few hours
Many people tend to think of goal setting as a sort of session or activity that is done in a few hours time when we sit down and think, and maybe write down our goals, and perhaps make some kind of plans. But this is a poor understanding of truly effective goal setting, because it fails to realize what it involves AFTER that initial session is over. The things you do after that session is far more important than whatever you do during that session, because what you do afterwards is what’s really required for making a goal happen.
Just like taking a vacation in Hawaii. Sitting down and spending a few hours to make plans for the trip is only the very first step. We can’t expect it to be the whole vacation if we simply leave at that step and do nothing next. After we make our plans, we need to follow up and execute the plan, such as buying flight tickets, preparing for the trip, going on the plane and getting there, spending our days on the island, and coming back home. That’s the whole process. The same is true with goal setting.
3. Partial success is still better than no success at all
The number one frustrated thing that we feel about setting a goal and trying to reach it is that we fail to reach it. That’s why most people say goal setting doesn’t work. For example, we set a goal to lose 10lb. After 2 months, we find that we didn’t reach that goal, and we only lost 2lb. Or, suppose we set a goal to increase income by $2000 per month. After six months, we find that we only managed to increase it by $200 per month.
When we look closely, it’s true that it usually didn’t work in the way we wanted, but still it worked at some level, resulting in some progress, some success. It is just not exactly what we initially expected. But, to think rationally, wouldn’t you agree that it’s still better than no success and no result at all? Wouldn’t losing 2lbs, having $200 extra money per month, still be good for us, still some success?
4. Take small incremental actions to accomplish big goals
Goal setting makes sense and is worth the trouble only if we use it to achieve big goals, goals that when accomplished, can make real difference in our life. Goals that can take our entire life into whole new levels.
However, usually those kind of big hairy goals may often seem very difficult, if not impossible, to reach, especially when we look at them from where we are now. That’s when we need to find ways to put things into perspective and make sure we’re not easily discouraged. Most importantly, we must learn to not quit so fast.
The only meaningful, realistic and sustainable way to accomplish big goals is through taking small steps. How small a step should be? It depends on your goal and yourself.
What I find useful for determining this is to see if I would get discouraged or frustrated by taking this one step. If I did, then it means that step is still too big for the current me. I will need to further break it down, until after taking a small step, not only do I feel relaxed and confident, but also motivated to take another step. That’s when it’s the right step size.
Of course, after taking a few steps, we would often find it easier to take a little bigger step.
5. Build habits and adopt systems to work on goals automatically
Sticking to a worthwhile goal usually takes a lot of effort, especially the mental discipline, or willpower if you will, to stay on track. Be it willpower or mental discipline, we human beings have only so much for dealing with all the things we want to accomplish.
That’s why you see President Obama can’t quit smoking, Oprah can’t keep her weight down, even though they may have tried many times. It could be that they may have used it all up for other things that they are so successful at.
We need habits and systems to guide our actions so that we don’t have to exert so much mental energy to keep track of everything. A habit is like a powerful mental “engine” that drives us to operate many many things completely on automatic pilot. When we have it, we simply do whatever needs to be done, without giving it a single thought, which means energy. When we save energy, we will have more for handling other more challenging tasks.
6. Incorporate learning and education in your goal setting process
We seldom get to accomplish a stretching goal without having to learn something and improve ourselves first. We often need better skills in doing certain things, more knowledge, more understanding about the subjects relevant to our goals.
We often have to become a different kind of person in order to achieve certain kind of goals. If we are not that kind of person, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for us to reach those goals that seemingly can be easily achieved by certain people.
7. Enjoying the current step is the best way to reach your goals
Sometimes we may not know exactly what we should do, or how we should do it to reach a certain goal. But one thing for sure is that we must stick to the plan, take the next step, and find ways to actually enjoy it. Like climbing a high mountain, we don’t need to always look far and up, and keeping telling ourselves how far away we are. The best strategy is simply focusing on this single step and enjoying it. Before we know it, we are already at the peak.
Using Backward Planning to Set Goals
If your goal is to become an account director within the next five years, where do you start your planning process? Or if your team needs to redesign the company’s organizational structure, where do you begin?
In planning, most of us would usually start building our plan from start to finish. What do you have to do first, second, third, and so on? And by what date does each step need to be completed? This is a solid form of personal goal setting that works very well.
A New Approach
However, there’s another simple but lesser-used method of goal setting that can be equally as powerful.
It’s called backward planning, backward goal-setting, or backward design, and it’s used quite often in education and training. The idea is to start with your ultimate objective, your end goal, and then work backward from there to develop your plan. By starting at the end and looking back, you can mentally prepare yourself for success, map out the specific milestones you need to reach, and identify where in your plan you have to be particularly energetic or creative to achieve the desired results.
It’s much like a good presentation, when the presenter tells you where he’s headed right at the beginning. Then, as the presentation unfolds, it’s easy for you to follow the concepts and think critically about what’s being said. If you have to figure out the main points as they come, your energy is often used up by just trying to keep up.
The Backward Planning Process
Here’s how it works:
- Write down your ultimate goal. What specifically do you want to achieve, and by what date?
Example: “By January 1, 2015, I will be the key accounts director for Crunchy Chips International.”
- Then ask yourself what milestone you need to accomplish just before that, in order to achieve your ultimate goal. What do you have to do, and by when, so that you’re in a position to reach your final objective?
Example: “By September 30, 2013, I will successfully complete the executive training program offered by Crunchy Chips International.”
- Then work backward some more. What do you need to complete before that second-to-last goal?
Example: “By March 1, 2013, I will submit my application for the executive training program, outlining my successes as a key accounts manager, and I will be accepted into the program.”
- Work back again. What do you need to do to make sure the previous goal is reached?
Example: “By January 1, 2013, I will complete my second year as a key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will earn the prestigious Key Accounts Manager of the Year award.”
- Continue to work back, in the same way, until you identify the very first milestone that you need to accomplish.
Example: “By January 1, 2012, I will complete my first year as a key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will be rewarded for my performance by gaining responsibility for clients purchasing over $10 million per year.”
Example: “By January 1,2010, I will be promoted to key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will have responsibility for clients purchasing over $1 million per quarter.”
When you read a backward plan, it doesn’t look much different from a traditional forward plan. However, creating a backward plan is VERY different. You need to force yourself to think from a completely new perspective, to help you see things that you might miss if you use a traditional, forward-looking chronological process.
This can also help you avoid spending time on unnecessary or unproductive activities along the way. Furthermore, it highlights points of tension within the plan, showing where you’ll need to be particularly creative to make the next step successfully.
Key Points
On the surface, backward planning doesn’t seem much different from traditional goal-setting processes. You start with a basic vision, and then you ask yourself what needs to be done to achieve that vision. You can read your plan from the beginning to the end, or from the end back to the beginning.
Backward planning, however, is more than reversing the direction of your traditional plan. It’s about adopting a different perspective and, perhaps, identifying different milestones as a result. It’s a great supplement to traditional planning, and it gives you a much fuller appreciation of what it may take to achieve success. After all, the more alternatives you have, the better your final plan will likely be.
Source: MindTools.com
New Feature: Habits linked to Goals
We have launched a new feature which allows you to link habits to any goals that you are actively working on.
This feature will help you better organize your habits. You may want to arrange the order of the habits by assigning which goals they belong to. On Habits page, they will be displayed in the order of the goals they are linked to, as shown in the screenshot below.
By default, those habits that haven’t been assigned to any goals will just show under the “Habits” heading.
Once you have assigned habits goals, on the Dashboard page, you may choose to show only those habits for a particular goal category.
We’re still working on the best way to integrate the habit strength with goal progress tracking. We have a few ideas about this. If you have any suggestion or feedback regarding this function, please do let us know.
