I’ve done a few reviews of Goalpro versions over the years and so I was interested to find out just what the new GoalPro 7 had to offer.I used to be a daily user of GoalPro up until version 6. It managed all my work and life goals and I was a great piece of software in those days, even if the user interface was a little unusual.
Since then I feel that the software has completely lost it’s way, and version 7.0 only reinforces this view. So many of the brilliant features of earlier versions seem to have been dropped from this version in an effort to "streamline" (aka "dumb down") goal setting. These include:
- Infinite number of sub-goals. I don’t know what the limit is; but youcan bet someone will hit it.
- A full scheduling calendar. I used to be able to drag tasks from the task list and drop them on the day and time I was going to work on them. That functionality has been dropped.
- Specifying the number of support items required. I found this essential as a check that I had all the required support in place. If I knew a goal needed 6 tasks; but I’d only assigned 5, then I knew I had t revisit that goal and work out what was missing. This really helped prevent things from falling through the cracks.
- The scratch pad. Again this was really useful for brainstorming a goal and then creating tasks and goals from the resulting list. Another loss.
- Outlook sync. I could keep my goals and tasks scheduled in Outlook by syncing the two products. This was invaluable in a business environment with group collaboration – when someone on the team wanted a piece of my time they could see at a glance what aspects of the projects I was working on and when. In version 7.0 I’d have to do all that scheduling manually.
Goalpro 7 seems to have reduced the product to the barest minimum amount of functionality required for a Goal setting program. The user interface has been tidied up a good bit; but at the sacrifice of most of the features that made this software very useful. A great dissapointment.
Rated 1/5 on Feb 7 2010
Goal setting is one thing; but actually achieving those goals is often another matter. A large part of successfully achieving a goal is the ability to measure your progress against that goal, hence the M in SMART goals.
One way to get these measures is to use Key Performance Indicators….
When we set a goal it has to be a challenge. A goal that’s set too easy has little motivational impact; there’s little reward from achieving something that’s very easy and so there’s not much to motivate us.
On the other hand setting a goal that’s too hard is also demotivating. If we don’t believe we can achieve a goal then we won’t put any determination into getting them done.
Setting a goal is therefore a balance between setting it too easy and setting it too hard. This is where the A (Attainable) in SMART goals comes into play. We have to believe we can attain a goal and yet not set that goal too easy; it has to be a challenge.
How do you know when you’ve set a goal that’s too easy or too hard? Leave a comment and share your experiences.
In my last posting on attaining goals we looked at maintaining an All Projects list and a Current Projects list. However even my Current Projects list is too large to be easily manageable with eight projects on it, six of which are active.
To be really productive you have to be focussed and this means concentrating on one project at a time. Every time you switch projects it takes some of your productive time to get into the mind set for that project, pick up the tasks and get yourself organized. All this is time that is not actually moving the project forwards. If you spend your time doing a bit here and doing a bit there then you’ll make little progress across a broad spectrum of projects. This can rapidly become demotivating as seemingly little progress is made on any front.
With the index card system it’s easy to maintain the focus. Every morning, as part of the morning routine, review the Current Projects list:
- Has a waiting project become active? Then mark it as active.
- Is an active project now waiting for something? Then remove its Active sticker
- Which project is needs to be focussed on now? Mark this project with a different colour.
Here’s my Current Project list for this morning:
This immediately puts me into the mind set I need to do focussed work on this project and makes the project stand out from the rest. Every time I glance at the Current Projects list I know just where I must focus my attention. Once I’ve completed all the tasks I can on this project then I’ll move the Focused Project sticker to the next most important project and start to focus there.
Soon we’ll look at breaking goals and projects down into the individual tasks needed to get them done and looking at how these fall into the organization structure.
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