Category Archives: Productivity

Making Goals SmartER

I’ve already made a number of posts about making goals SMART; but I read recently on businessball.com a reference to SMARTER goals.

The SMART bit was basically the same as I’ve already described, which left me wondering what the ER was. Well the E stands for Ethical and the R for Recorded.

The Ethical bit I’m not convinced by. As I’ve also said in another post; your goals are ultimately defined by your values. Now if you have the values of, say, a bank robber then you’re goal may be to rob a bank. Not very ethical; but the SMART part still works very well for this goal as it does for any other.

Maybe the E should stand for Enthusing. If the goal doesn’t fill you with enthusiasm then you have to ask yourself, “Why am I setting this goal?”.

The R for recorded I’m much more in favour of. This means write your goals down and record the steps you take in achieving them. Not only does this give you a record of what you’ve done but every time you write about your goal you’re reinforcing it in your mind.

So make your SMART goals SMARTER by adding Enthusiasm and Recording them.

(By the way if yu want something digital to record them in then I’d not hesitate to recommend The Journal from David RM Software).

Achieving Long Term Goals

Many goals we set are relatively short term. Things like; wash the car, dig the garden, bath the kids. These everyday tasks may not seem like goals; but they are none the less. Anything we want to achieve is a goal to be attained, these are just short term goals that don’t need a lot of planning because, for the most part, they make up part of our daily or weekly routine.

Then there’s the long term goals, those things that are going to take months or years to complete. This is where we turn our dreams into reality by setting our dreams as goals. How do we manage these long term goals?

How many of you have set a goal for, say, 12 months time only to realize in 11 months that your target is only 1 month away and you’ve nothing done? What feelings does that engender in you?

Long term goals require more organization to ensure they get done, and the longer the time scale the more organization that is required.

Let me give you an example. Suppose you’re going to reach retirement age in 15 years and you’ve a goal to retire to a cottage by the sea. That’s a pretty long term goal; how easy would it be to set that goal, write it down, and then recall at your retirement party that you had some dream of retiring to a cottage by the sea?

Long term goals need organization if they’re to become reality!

In my next post on goal setting we’ll look at how that organization works. In the mean time here’s an exercise for you:

Make a list of your dreams. No, not the sort you have while your asleep, the dreams you have for your life. To this list add anything you already have as a long term goal – that is anything you’ve set a target date of over 6 months to achieve. This will become the basis for achieving your goals!

Realize Your Dreams

Do you day dream?

Do you day dream of walking down deserted golden beaches under a tropical sun?

Do you dream of buying a new car, or a house with a nice view?

Do you dream of a rewarding career helping others?

Well stop dreaming and write these things down! If you’re serious about wanting these things then these aren’t just dreams; these are your goals!

Many of us go through life dreaming of how things could be different; but unless we make those dreams real they’re very unlikely to happen for us.

Start today. If you don’t have a list of your dreams then write one today.

Make it a goal for today – don’t write them on the back of an envelope; try and find a note book to write them in. It’s the first step to making them reality!

Goalpro6 Reviewed

For many years Goalpro (version 5 and then version 6) was the bedrock of my personal productivity system. The software provides facilities to manage everything from goals down to tasks and time too; but there are some facilities lacking and I feel the product has reached its end of life.

Review of Goalpro 6
Rated as 3/5 on May 23 2007 by David Hollingworth

3/5

Thumbnail of Goalpro6 screen shot
I came upon Goalpro (5 as it was then) when I first started to look for some software to manage my personal productivity. At that time many software packages only offered a very simple to-do list with limited or non-existent nesting of tasks. So I was very impressed with Goalpro’s feature list which allowed me to set goals, break these down into tasks and then to schedule these tasks in a built-in calendar that synchronizes with Outlook. It seemed to have everything I needed.

When you first start the program you’re introduced to the subject of goal setting through a Goal Setting Wizard. This takes you through the stages of setting goals and the defining the support structure for the goals. The support structure includes defining the tasks that will accomplish your goals and also adding a rounder definition of the goals by identifying the challenges and resources that will be required if you’re going to achieve your aims. Finally you can add personal and corporate mission statements and values to your plan.

Having set up your goals using the wizard you’re free to add or modify these at any time using an outline tree of all of your goals and tasks. As part of your daily routine there’s a configurable set of reports you can display or print, a management screen that displays tasks that have passed their due date and a very useful “Sufficient Support” wizard.

The concept of Support in Goalpro is that every goal and sub-goal must have a number of tasks assigned to it in order to achieve the goal. By default, when you create a new goal, it is set requiring at least two sub-goals or tasks. If a goal doesn’t have the required number of supporting sub-goals or tasks then the Sufficient Support wizard will flag this goal as requiring attention. You then have to create new tasks for the goal or reduce it’s required support. This is a great way of ensuring that all goals have a valid next action assigned to them.

There’s various motivational tools built into Goalpro including a chart that shows how efficient you are at maintaining your Goals support, completing tasks on time and doing your daily reviews. It’s a great boost to get those lines up to 100%. You can also create goals that are activity based, like “Run 2 miles a day” and then track your progress against your targets.

As well as the whole goal and task setting and scheduling side of things Goalpro also has a built in journal with topics and a very useful scratch pad for doing brain dumps. Items in the scratch pad can then be highlighted and turned into goals or tasks at the click of the mouse.

Goalpro6 has a great many things going for it and there’s not much I don’t like about it. One of the things it definitely lacks from a GTD point of view is that there’s no contexts. Tasks are just tasks and there’s no simple way of splitting them according to where they can be done. Whilst you can filter the task list by major goal you can’t filter the tasks by context.

Another thing that’s a bit of a turn off for me is the rather cludgy interface; it really doesn’t look like a modern Windows application. It works OK; but I don’t find it very appealing to look at. It’s also very restricted in terms of data interchange between applications. You can synchronize with Outlook OK; but there’s no import / export features to exchange data with tools such as MindManager or even MS-Project.

Another mark against Goalpro6, and this is a big issue for me, is that there doesn’t appear to be any on-going development. This version has been out for some years now and even though there’s been a couple of maintenance releases in that time there’s not been any new functionality added to the product. Based on what I’ve seen I have to ask myself, “Has this product reached the end of its roadmap?”.

The final criticism I have of Goalpro6, and I feel this really underlies the previous point, is that I reported a very annoying bug that causes the application to crash whenever I lock my desktop. You don’t loose any data because everything appears to be saved as you type it; but it’s still very aggravating to have to restart Goalpro every time I leave my desk unattended, which is pretty often each day.

All round it’s a very useful tool and stood me well for a long time and I’d probably still be using it today if there were better import / export facilities, the user interface was nicer and I thought the product was going somewhere. However, based on these criticisms, I can only give it three stars.

LouderVoice Review Tags: , , , , ,
,
Rate this review at LouderVoice

Beyond SMART Goals

You know, making goals SMART doesn’t make them happen. A great deal more effort needs to be put in before a SMART goal becomes a realized goal. However there are some things you can do to bolster your SMART goals and shorten the odds that you’ll achieve them.

  1. Compelling Reasons. What are the compelling reasons for you to complete this goal? Write them down! If you’re struggling to think of some compelling reasons then take a step back and ask yourself, “Why am I committing to this goal if I can’t think of any compelling reasons to do it?”.
  2. Additional Benefits. Under this heading list all the additional benefits you’ll accrue by achieving this goal. For example the additional benefits for my weight loss goal would include:
    • More of my clothes will fit
    • I’ll have more energy
    • It will ease my hiatus hernia

    to name but a few.

  3. Challenges To Be Overcome. Get these out on the table right up front, don’t let them lurk in the background waiting to leap out and trip you up. By identifying the challenges up front you might recognize early on that extra steps will be required to get you to your goal and you can plan for these now.
  4. Resources You’ll Need. Again identifying the resources you’ll need to accomplish your goal as early as possible will give you the opportunity to build these into the plan and avoid nasty surprises later.

This upfront planning is well worth the effort. It helps integrate the goal into your subconscious and identifies things early on that might otherwise knock you off course. By getting a grip on them now it will boost your confidence in your ability to achieve that goal.

The "A" in SMART

You’ll probably know by now that the “A” in “SMART goals” stands for Attainable. In other words a goal must be attainable for it to be worth pursuing.

The examples I gave of unattainable goals were things like taking lunch on Pluto or becoming the next king of England. These were deliberately extreme examples; but when we get closer to home where do we draw the line between what’s an attainable goal and what isn’t. If we decide a goal isn’t attainable then are we just making excuses and holding ourselves back?

Let me give you another example. Suppose you’re a high level executive and you’re considering setting a goal; “Become a CEO within 12 months”.

  • Specific – yes,
  • Measurable – yes
  • Attainable – I’ll come back to this
  • Relevant – yes
  • Timely – yes

So that just leaves attainable. At first you think this goal is relatively easily attainable; until you realize that it will take you away from your wife and young family who need your support. Eventually you come to the conclusion that this goal isn’t attainable because of family pressures.

My argument here is that this goal, and many like it, are attainable if we’re willing to pay the price. The price in this case is spending time away from the family.

In fact almost any goal, even the daft ones I mentioned above, are attainable if you’re prepared to pay the price.

So where does that leave us when trying to assess attainable goals? We need to decide:

  1. How badly we want the goal
  2. What the price will be of attaining the goal
  3. Are we willing to pay that price?

If we are willing to pay the price for attaining the goal then we must recognize that this is our choice! If we’re not willing to pay the price to attain our goal then, again, this is our choice. In exercising those choices we are empowered to shape our own future.

Choose What To Do

A recent article from Mark Forster came up with a useful idea for those of us who tend to get distracted away from the items on our to-do list by other less productive pursuits.

Mark suggested that rather than use a time log, to record everything we’ve done; use an “event log” to record everything we’re about to do.

What advantages does this have over a time log? Basically if you have to stop for a second and write down what you’re about to do before you do it then you have to make an active choice as to what it is you’re going to do. So when I complete this posting I might write down:

21:57 – surf on over to gamestar

and I must just stop and think, “Hang on, I still need to sort out the laundry. Gamestar will have to wait”.

You get the idea? I’ve made an active choice as to what I’m going to do rather than just let the fancy take me where it will.

In the next day or so I’m going to give this a try and I’ll report back how I got on.

The Little Steps

I was listening to the radio this evening, with it being Saturday the football results from the UK were on and I heard one of the commentators refer to the “gigantic step” one of the clubs had taken today.

That got me thinking. You know we all expect instantaneous results these days. Look at the Internet, instant information, instant purchasing power. We want to buy something, we don’t have to save for years we can get instant credit. Heck, even my porridge is instant these days!

We live in a world were we want it and we can get it now. Or do we? If we have a goal then our underlying belief maybe that this too should be instantly attainable and when it’s not we may loose heart, loose focus, loose direction. However we have to remember that it’s the little steps that take us steadily forwards and that will eventually lead us to our goal. Those little steps that we take every day are the ones that will eventually lead us to success.

That gigantic step the club took was a gigantic step out of the relegation zone. Perhaps if they’d been taking little steps all season they’d not have been in the relegation zone today.

Be Careful What You Wish For

After all this talk about loosing weight last weekend I contracted a virus that had some unpleasant gastric side effects. This is the reason the blog has been so quiet this week.

I’ve not weighed myself yet; but I’ll be darned disappointed if I get on the scale tomorrow and I haven’t lost anything at all. Mrs. H commented this afternoon that if I lost any more weight of my face I’d look dead! Nice!

Now I’m not really suggesting that my desire to loose weight triggered the earlier unpleasantness; but there is still something to be said for being careful how we envision our desires and goals. For one thing the sub-conscious doesn’t understand the word “not”. So if you say, “I will not smoke”, all that gets through is the, “will smoke”. Not the desired effect at all. It’s far better to say something like, “My life is free from the need for cigarettes”.

Missions and Values

Recently I wrote about the importance of making goals SMART and that the R meant Relevant. For example my walking goal is relevant to my goal to loose weight whereas a goal to buy a new car isn’t (currently) relevant to any of my other goals. Hence it’s not on my goals list at all (currently).

But what about those “life” goals, the top level goals like; “own a house by the sea”, or even, “loose 23lbs weight by Christmas”. What must these goals be relevant too in order that we buy into them?

The answer is that our top level goals must be relevant to our mission and our values. In fact these two items provide the context for all our goal setting so it’s important that we understand what our mission is and what our values are.

Our mission and values are the things that drive us, the reason why we get out of bed in the morning, the things we are passionate about. They define us as a person and state what we stand up for and, by writing them down, we can look at them and say, “Yes! This is me, this is what I care about”.

Stating them in writing also gives us a clearer picture of the framework in which we’re setting our goals. Our mission and values set the boundaries for our goals and gives us an opportunity to see the big picture. How are our goals contributing to our mission? Do our goals fit with our values?

Finally here’s my personal mission statement as an example:

To be a creative and compassionate person. To achieve self-fulfillment through the pursuit of understanding, the love of my family and the respect of all. To have control of my own destiny through acknowledging that the causes I make today shape my future. To maintain a healthy and emotionally balanced lifestyle between self, family and work. I will maintain my family and my self through my efforts to help others to expand their lives and reach their goals.