1472. How To Set Goals For The Life You Actually Want. It’s a commonly accepted sentiment that setting goals will lead you to success. Many of us believe life will be better by reaching those goals, so we make our plans, put our nose to the grindstone, and work our butts off until we’re there. Many high achievers I’ve worked with over the years reach their goals, but they end up missing their lives in the process--and not in a trivial “I’m-working-too-hard-to-have-friends” kind of way.
No, they reach their goals and discover they were the wrong goals and the wrong path to get there. No one taught them how to set goals that would give them the life and the career they wanted. Here’s how to set the right goals for the life you actually want: 1. Stop Setting Goals for the Wrong Reason The first step to setting goals that will bring you an awesome life is to stop setting goals that will bring you a sucky life.
Most goals are about a destination. 2. Instead of setting life goals, think about setting a life direction. Ask yourself: Now set your goal. One Key To Achieving Goals? Ditch Deadlines, And Make Your Mental Map. If you want to get better at, well, almost anything, it helps to turn to a team that's made it their life's work to break big dreams down into day-sized goals: Everest, the achievement app. What Everest is brilliant at is taking unruly dreams and disassembling them, so that people can assemble them, step by step, day by day, with their actions.
In this way, achieving a goal is really about knowing its anatomy, as COO Katherine Krug tells to us over email: The first step is to build a bridge between where you are at this very moment and where you want to be in the future. Map out all the things that need to successfully happen to get where you want to go. Write it down or truly visualize it. Now that you have a mental map, your long-term goal doesn't live in some distant future space that you cannot imagine.
That's gorgeous: the long-term goal doesn't live in the distant future, but in the present. Why you want a schedule, not a deadline Again, Clear: The schedule is your friend. 4 Lean Strategies You Can Use To Innovate Your Life. Wouldn’t it be great if we could extract the strategies that go into developing the world’s greatest technological advances and use them for our own personal development?
The most common methodology used today to bring about these advances is the lean innovation strategy. When Eric Ries released his book The Lean Startup in 2011 his approach to product development created a global movement. Everyone from startups acquired by Google to corporate giants like General Electric and Dropbox have adopted it. Here are four tips for innovating your life by going lean: 1. When Apple first thought of the iPod, Steve Jobs didn’t specifically set out saying he wanted a device with a stainless steel back, a navigating scroll wheel, and storage for your entire music library.
As humans, we often disregard our long-term goals because we want immediate benefits for our actions. Like Apple, your vision is the most critical part of achieving what you want in life and enjoying it along the way. 2. 3. 4. Positive Thinking. Stop negative thinking with James Manktelow & Amy Carlson. Quite often, the way we feel about a situation comes from our perception of it. Often that perception is right, but sometimes it isn't. For instance, sometimes we're unreasonably harsh with ourselves, or we can jump to wrong conclusion about people's motives.
This can cause problems and make us unhappy, and it can lead us to be unfair to others. Thought Awareness, Rational Thinking, and Positive Thinking are simple tools that help you turn this around. Introduction A commonly accepted definition of stress, developed by Richard S. In becoming stressed, people must make two main judgments: First, they must feel threatened by the situation.They must judge whether their capabilities and resources are sufficient to meet the threat.
How stressed someone feels depends on how much damage they think the situation can cause them, and how far their resources meet the demands of the situation. Using the Tools Thought Awareness Rational Thinking Tip: Prioritization. Making Best Use of Your Time and Resources Learn how to prioritize, with James Manktelow & Amy Carlson. Prioritization is the essential skill that you need to make the very best use of your own efforts and those of your team.
It's also a skill that you need to create calmness and space in your life so that you can focus your energy and attention on the things that really matter. It's particularly important when time is limited and demands are seemingly unlimited. With good prioritization (and careful management of reprioritized tasks) you can bring order to chaos, massively reduce stress, and move towards a successful conclusion. Simple Prioritization At a simple level, you can prioritize based on time constraints, on the potential profitability or benefit of the task you're facing, or on the pressure you're under to complete a job: Prioritization based on project value or profitability is probably the most commonly-used and rational basis for prioritization. Prioritization Tools. Maximizing Productivity by Getting In Flow.
Maximizing Productivity Through Improved Focus © iStockphoto/beklaus What is focus? Let's take an example. Have you ever seen a hassled mom trying to get her young daughter to leave whatever she is doing and do something else? It's a common enough sight: young children can get so wrapped up in whatever they're doing that it takes a lot of persuasion to get them to switch their attention. This ability to focus totally on one thing comes naturally to young children, but it's one of the biggest challenges that most of the rest of us face.
Some people, though, seem able to focus intensely on what they're doing, and perform exceptionally well as a result. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who first described the concept, suggests that this state of being able to achieve total focus applies to almost every field of activity. Creating the Right Environment Flow is easiest to achieve when: ... for the complete article: Mind Tools Club members, click here. Join now for just $1, first month. How to be Organized. Taking Control of Your Day Learn how to organize yourself. Time is really the only capital any human being has, and the one thing he can't afford to waste. – American inventor Thomas Edison Do you waste much time during your day due to disorganization? Perhaps you spend 5 minutes searching for a misplaced file, another 5 looking for an email detailing an important meeting, and perhaps 10 minutes more finding today's to-do list, lost in the piles of papers on your desk.
Before you know it, you've spent an hour throughout the day looking for things you can't find. And that's just one day! Imagine how much time you're losing each week, each month, and each year! Many people struggle with disorganization. In this article, we'll look at some strategies for getting organized, so that we can start living and working to our full potential. Organizing Best Practices Use a notebook – One strategy that many organized people use is to work with a notebook. Start by clearing everything off of your desk. Treasure Mapping. Visualizing Your Goal for Greater Achievement Make a picture of what you want. © iStockphoto/heidijpix When you want to achieve something really badly, have you ever tried closing your eyes and imagining yourself "there"?
You touch it, feel it and see it clearly. You scan every detail in your mind's eye. This is a powerful and important technique for motivating yourself and building the self-confidence needed to achieve your goals. Yet when you open your eyes, the vivid image starts to fade, and it can take real concentration to recreate your visualization each time you want some inspiration. What if you could keep hold of that vivid image and refer to it when ever you need a little motivation, or a reminder of what you are working towards? It’s a very simple but effective idea: Treasure Mapping involves creating a physical representation or collage of what you want to achieve. Using the Tool What will I see when I have achieved my goal?
Key Points. Personal Mission Statements. Defining Your Goals You can achieve your goals in a focused way by writing a personal mission statement. © iStockphoto/StuartDuncanSmith One of the most important things that corporate leaders do is define their organization's purpose, and identify what they ultimately want it to accomplish.
They communicate this information in corporate mission and vision statements . These set a clear course for the organization, tell employees how they should focus their efforts, and prevent people going "off mission". If mission and vision statements are so important to organizations, why don't we spend any time creating them for ourselves? In this article, we'll look at the benefits of creating personal mission and vision statements. Why Create Mission and Vision Statements? All of us have very different ideas about success. Shaping this goal into a mission statement helps you keep it at the front of your mind, and helps you focus your energy and resources upon it.
Note: Mission Versus Vision Tip: Beating Procrastination. It's Friday afternoon and the clock is ticking. You're working furiously to complete a task before the five o'clock deadline, while silently cursing yourself for not starting it sooner. How did this happen? What went wrong? Why did you lose your focus? Well, there were the hours that you spent re-reading emails and checking social media, the excessive "preparation," the coffee breaks, and the time spent on other tasks that you could have safely left for next week. Sound familiar? If so, you're not alone! Procrastination is a trap that many of us fall into. In this article and video, we look at why it happens, and we explore strategies for managing and prioritizing your workload more effectively.
Do you choose more enjoyable tasks over high-priority ones? Is Procrastination the Same as Being Lazy? Procrastination is often confused with laziness, but they are very different. But giving in to this impulse can have serious consequences. How to Overcome Procrastination Warning: Tip: Key Points. Pareto Analysis. Using the 80:20 Rule to Prioritize Avoid the "law of diminishing returns. " © iStockphoto/tom_fewster Imagine that you've just stepped into a new role as head of department. Unsurprisingly, you've inherited a whole host of problems that need your attention. Ideally, you want to focus your attention on fixing the most important problems.
Pareto Analysis is a simple technique for prioritizing possible changes by identifying the problems that will be resolved by making these changes. Pareto Analysis uses the Pareto Principle – also known as the "80/20 Rule" – which is the idea that 20 percent of causes generate 80 percent of results. Note: The figures 80 and 20 are illustrative – the Pareto Principle illustrates the lack of symmetry that often appears between work put in and results achieved. How to Use the Tool Step 1: Identify and List Problems Firstly, write a list of all of the problems that you need to resolve.
Step 2: Identify the Root Cause of Each Problem Step 3: Score Problems Key Points. Action Programs. Becoming Exceptionally Well Organized Bringing focus to the way you work. © iStockphoto/Krockodilius We all know how useful To-Do Lists are when we get started in our careers. However, To-Do Lists can quickly become overwhelmed when we take on responsibility for multiple projects – as many of us do when we become managers. One of the problems is that, for most of us, our To-Do Lists are not planned, focused, action lists. Rather, they are a sort of a catch-all for a lot of things that are unresolved and not yet translated into outcomes.
For instance, specific entries, such as "Call Tina in Sales," might exist along with vaguer aspirations, such as "Write marketing plan. " Another problem is that once you have more than, say, 20 entries on your list, it becomes cumbersome and difficult to use. This is where Action Programs are useful. Actions Programs also help you get into the habit of delegating jobs. Tip: How to Use an Action Program Follow these four steps to create your Action Program: Self-Motivation Quiz. Taking Charge of Your Goals and Achievements Find your source of energy. © iStockphoto Are you motivated to achieve what you really want in life? And how hard do you push yourself to get things done? Wanting to do something and motivating yourself to actually do it are two different things. So, what's the difference between those who never reach their goals, year after year, and those who achieve one goal after another? Often, it's their self-motivation.
Self-motivation is the force that keeps pushing us to go on – it's our internal drive to achieve, produce, develop, and keep moving forward. With self-motivation, you'll learn and grow – regardless of the specific situation. So, how self-motivated are you? The Self-Motivation Quiz Instructions For each statement, click the button in the column that best describes you. Your last quiz results are shown. You last completed this quiz on , at . Questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 still need to be answered! Factors in Self-Motivation. Productivity Quiz. Find out how you can get more done. © iStockphoto/pryzmat When we want to get more done, many of us simply work longer hours, move deadlines around, and multitask. Although these strategies can provide some short-term relief, they aren't sustainable in the long term.
Pretty soon, this approach becomes a way of life, leading to high levels of stress and eventually, poor productivity. Productivity is a measure of how much you accomplish – not how busy you are. The quiz below will help you to understand how productive you are. How Productive Are You? Instructions For each statement, click the button in the column that best describes you. Your last quiz results are shown. You last completed this quiz on , at . Questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 still need to be answered! This quiz highlights five key elements of working productively – organization, attitude, delegation, information integration, and effective use of systems.
(Questions 2, 5, 7, 10, 11) (Questions 9, 12) Decision Matrix Analysis. Making a Decision by Weighing Up Different Factors (Also known as Grid Analysis, Pugh Matrix Analysis, and Multi-Attribute Utility Theory) Learn how to use Decision Matrix Analysis to make better decisions. Imagine that your boss has put you in charge of taking on a new outsourced IT supplier. You've already identified several different suppliers, and you now need to decide which one to use. You could decide to go with the low-cost option. But you don't want to make your decision on cost alone – factors such as contract length, underlying technology, and service levels need to be taken into consideration.
Decision Matrix Analysis is a useful technique to use for making a decision. Being able to use Decision Matrix Analysis means that you can take decisions confidently and rationally, at a time when other people might be struggling to make a decision. How to Use the Tool While this sounds complex, this technique is actually quite easy to use. Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Tip: Example Note: The Boston Matrix. The Ansoff Matrix. Locke's Goal-Setting Theory. How Good is Your Time Management? The Wheel of Life. Is This a Morning Task? Improve Your Concentration. Motivating Yourself. Paired Comparison Analysis.
Effective Scheduling. Five Golden Rules for Successful Goal Setting. Personal Goal Setting.