7 Goal Setting Activities

Today was a Guelph day. Making sure I am on top of things for upcoming travel.

I spent some time this weekend on Goal Setting. Goal Setting is a bit of a hobby for me. I sometimes worry I spend too much time planning and not enough time doing. While doing this Goal Setting, I came up with 7 Goal Setting Activities:

1 – I like to keep a central list of goals. Everything I want to do, be, experience etc. Then all I do is to add to this list whenever something interesting comes up.

2 – Of course there is the old faithful = SMART. All goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timed. On the Timed, I like to add deadlines to all goals and subgoals (see 4)

3 – My favourite goal setting exercise takes 40 minutes. Take 4 blank sheets of paper. On the top of one write “values”, on one write “what do I want to do, be or experience in this lifetime”, on one write “What would I do if I have 6 months to live”. On the last one write “goals this year”. And you guessed it – spend exactly 10 minutes per page. The final sheet becomes your goals.

4 – I like to add the reasons for attaining a goal (and the reasons why not attaining it is bad). The more clear I am on the reasons, the more drive I have to complete the goals. At this point I sometimes add rewards or punishments to accentuate the results I get from goal attainment.

5 – Break down the big goals into smaller subgoals. This makes the goals less daunting, easier to start and easier to move forward on.

6 – Choose only 4-5 goals to work on at a time. I have a rule that I only leave goals on my immediate list if I am prepared to spend one hour per week on them. If I am not willing to do this, how much of a goal can they be.

7 – Review goals daily. I like to look at my goals daily since this tends to focus me on what are important things to work on today.

After all that thought on goals, I did not come to the clarity I want on my current goals. I do know I want to move strategy up my list so hence the post on gorilla vs. guerilla. I do know some minor activity area that need polish but these do not rate as goals.