My goodness, these certainly are points to ponder. Like most people who own their own businesses, I a very "goal orientated" and again like most people who own their own businesses, those goals can and have changed on a daily basis.
The below advise to put the goals into some sort of order of priority is something that, quite frankly I have never done. The way that I find easier to do this type of thing is to have a 10 year, 5 year and then 1 year plan, and at this time I am referring specifically to the work arena.
Looking forward into my life and into the future for me, makes what I do and how I achieve those goals very important. So I take the most difficult of all and ask the question - what would would I like to be doing in 10 years time. Where would I like to be in terms of my business and what would I have liked to achieve. For me these are the 3 most important questions and they are listed seperately, with all the bits and pieces going on in rows beneath them.
Once that is complete, I tend to break it down and so here comes the 5 year plan. Looking at the 10 year plan, many of them are automatically achievable if certain of the other goals are met and brought to fruition, those do not get transferred to the 5 year list, but remain on the 10 year list. Again what is on the list is broken down into easier to achieve "bite size portions".
Again, once that is complete, I break things down and out of this the 1 year plan is born. As with the 10 year plan, many of the points on the 5 year plan are automatically achievable if certain goals are met and brought to fruition, those do not get trasnferred to the 1 year list but remain on the 5 year list.
I now have a list that is 'doable', even if it is somewhat daunting! Now for me, here comes the challenge. There may still be goals that are automatically achievable if other goals are met - these are split out from the others and listed to one side. The remainer of goals are then taken one at a time and what needs to be done to achieve each one is listed as a sub-heading under the goal to be achieved. These are then given a 'due date' by which they are to be completed - those due dates are diarized, and also put down into my year planner so that they can be seen at a glance. By checking my year planner on a weekly basis the task can be planned out into daily expectations and what I like to call "mini targets".
I now have a workable solution to something that at the beginning of the excercise, was a hugely daunting, frightning and quite frankly an over whelming task.
On a daily basis, use your diary, or a journal to record what you have done and what you have achieved or have not achieved and why. Apart from documenting your life, you are also cleansing your mind and settling emotions!
So what am I saying here . . . . Well basically it is this - If you want to be a success in life and/or in business, you have to have a plan! Issues need to be put into perspective. You need to achieve your goals, one little step at a time - remember the statement (I forget now who wrote it, but it is very true) that the greatest of journey's begin with a single step. Note it says step - not leap, or sprint or anything else that you may want to conjure up in your mind's eye.
At the end of the year, take your lists and look at what you have achieved. Now is also not the time to beat yourself up over what hasn't been achieved! I have no doubt that you have done this sufficiently during the course of the year. Remember daily goals have changed to accomodate ever changing needs and there are goals that have been achieved that were not even recorded or considered. Because of the changes there are also many goals that are now obsolete, so they now no longer feature.
Adjust your goals for the coming year. Take time out - I mean quality time with yourself, turnaround and have a look at where you were 12 months ago, what you have achieved and the journey that you have walked. Pat yourself on the back and give yourself credit for what you have done! Too often we are too busy bashing our own selves on the head because of what we haven't done, instead of congratulating ourselves and patting ourselves on the back for what we have achieved . . . more often than not with more tasks that had not been on the list than what were.
And remember . . . focus on the goal that is in front of you - don't gaze into the future and try and complete the 10 year plan in the 1 year space.
Regards
Nikki
08 January 2007 at 14h00
By now the party is well and truly over, hopefully the clean-up and hangovers are done, and we are facing the reality of 2007 with all its hopes and fears. Somehow, as the silly season party continues and the champagne and buzz takes effect, we become over-optimistic about all sorts of things.
The New Year feels, naturally, like the perfect opportunity to start over and change all those niggles, it gives us the chance to actually get what we want. But the truth is that there are only 52 weeks in a year. One of them is over already, and somehow time does seem to shrink as soon as we're looking back, instead of ahead.
It is very easy to end the holiday and immediately get back into the routine of normal work, without much thought to how quickly (or whether) we're going to where we want to be. While living by routine allows us to get things done without much thought to what should happen next, the downside is that we don't think about what should happen next.
Too much of a good thing is hazardous, even energy-saving devices like habit and routine are sometimes harmful. This is the first obstacle to settting goals for the year.
The next is choosing the goal you want. When we're faced with the question, "What do you want?" it is often very difficult to formulate an answer. The reason for this is that we are creatures of desire. We all want a lot of things.
Some of these ideas are wishes, others are needs, and there are dreams as well, dreams that are more or less achievable. But when we try to answer the question, "what do you want?" all of these come to mind: the urgent, the important, the trivial, and the work, love and home lives. And they all come to mind all at once.
To get any kind of meaningful and workable answer, we have to change the question. A goal implies a change of some sort, so we first specify that we are talking about change. This has already narrowed the frame of reference. Rather try to shape your question like the examples below:- What do I want to change in my work?
- What do I want to remain the same?
- What do I want to remain the same?
- Are there any behaviours that I am not happy with?
- How can I improve my home life?
- How can I contribute to my personal relationships?
- How do I want December 2007 to feel like?I
t is often helpful to add "negative point-of-view" questions, such as, "What is really damaging my health?" or, "What is stressing me most?"
Choose the right questions in order to be able to choose your goals. And once that have answered the questions, you can then ask yourself what needs to be done to change, eliminate or counteract the problem, and these actions then become your goals.
The final step in deciding your goals is to prioritise them. One of the reasons why we often fall short of our dreams is because life gets in the way and this tends to distract us. So look at the actions you have chosen and decide the following:
What non-negotiable for anything but a life-or-death situation?
What needs to be completed before you can even think of looking at something else?
What would be very nice to have, but will not affect your stress or satisfaction levels enough to make them worth the effort?
Very often, the answers we find are entirely dependant on the questions we ask. There are so many ways to frame even a simple question, and each change affects the perspective from where you start looking for the answers.
Tessa Silberbauer is a Johannesburg-based life management trainer.
For corporate or individual consulting or training, you can contact her on 083-310-0955 or livingskills@webmail.co.za
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