productivity

Setting Effective and Respected Goals

Goals are not given enough respect. We treat them as an afterthought, or as a basic overview of what needs to be done.

But what if true commitment to success came from those goals? Under that viewpoint, would you give a bit more time to setting goals?

Like a throwaway comment, goals are generally boring lists (e.g. read Chapter 12, draft introduction, check Internet, compare lecture notes, etc.). These lists are usually vague in scope, regardless of whether or not the goals have an achievable target.

But a marker of true success may be as simple as having a well-structured goal. With this in place, reaching the goal may be the easy part!

I have made 3 observations of those who consistently set effective goals and go on to respect those goals:

1. Be exact

Photo by notsogoodphotography

The trick here is to understand what you need before you begin working toward the goal. Firstly, you cannot set a vague goal like “Research Essay Topic” even if you think you know what that means. Without an explicit goal, you have the space to change goalposts when you can’t be bothered to step up a gear. Secondly, an exact number or reason gives your goal a proper shape. When you don’t set out the specific nature of what you intend to undertake, your goal is just a fidgeting blob of pointlessness.

2. Make the goal a proper challenge

Photo by vrogy

A teacher mentioned a very good point to me recently. Imagine giving a young child a box of balls and a hoop…

Now, if you put the hoop a few feet away, tell them to start throwing the balls into the hoop, and then walk away from the situation, it’s not long before the child gets bored after a few tries and makes up a completely different game (like “let’s chuck the balls at passers-by” for instance). Sure, lacking a solid goal here may help the imagination, but it’s a poor strategy for achieving anything specific.

However, if you issue a challenge to the child to try and get 5 balls in the hoop in a row, there will be a lot more mileage in the game. By setting an effective goal, it holds the interest and gives motivation to succeed.

3. Don’t overcrowd with simple tasks and regular work

Photo by Denislav Stoychev

Goals should not be lists or an issue of tasks. If you like to write to-do lists, it’s wise to keep them separate, even if there is an apparent overlap or if some issues are direct repeats of the other list (hey, you get to cross out more than one thing when you’re done…now that’s productivity!).

The reason for this is to highlight the difference between what is truly a goal and what you would be getting on with anyway.

List too many goals and it becomes a list of tasks. Therefore, a clear set of goals should never stretch to more than a few points.

What methods do you use to make sure you achieve your goals?

Ignore clutter at your peril

old_things

An untidy environment may appear fine to you on an everyday level, but you may not realise that it likely gets in the way of further development.

Cleaning that mess out of the way could notch you up to a higher gear and take you into a more confident realm. Even if you don’t care about mess, or if you think you have an ‘ordered mess’, the mental difference is shocking.

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7 things I’ve learned now I’m a Dad

Yes, so I have a son.

While you rarely see many mums and dads on a university campus in the UK, it’s apparently quite a common sight in Iceland:

“…in Iceland, even at the business-oriented Reykjavik University, it is not only common to see pregnant girls in the student cafeteria, you see them breast-feeding, too. ‘You extend your studies by a year, so what?’ said Oddny. ‘No way do you think when you have a kid at 22, “Oh my God, my life is over!” Definitely not! It is considered stupid here to wait till 38 to have a child. We think it’s healthy to have lots of kids. All babies are welcome.'” – From The Observer Magazine, May 18th 2008

Anyway, I wanted to impart some of my findings over the last couple of weeks in which I have been a father.

It’s funny how much goodness you can take away from a tiny little human being that isn’t able to do much yet:

Row Toes

1. Focus Focus Focus – A baby doesn’t know what is going on when it is first born. The child could hit itself on the head with their arm, but they haven’t got any concept that it was their own arm. Or their head, for that matter.

Yet despite this lack of self, babies love to look around and see the bold shapes around them, the light and dark. They like to hear new noises, as well as familiar ones, like Mum’s voice.

Babies focus so intently that they put us adults to shame. All a newborn can see is a haze of shapes, simple colours and light. It’s a confusion of newness. Yet they take every last drop of information in with such deliberate regard that it should make every one of us consider just how much we are focusing on our goals ourselves.

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The brilliance of calm urgency

Today has been fun.  I was rushing about from one person to the next, attempting to set up an urgent meeting between extremely busy people.

I wouldn’t usually consider that as fun.  And it wasn’t easy, but – with a little help from my friends – I did it.

This was only one of my tasks for the day.  The backwards and forwards was taking place at speed, causing change every few minutes.  Despite that, I still had to complete my daily tasks and respond to new jobs, phone calls, and so on, as the day went on.

In a rush, but so calm and flowing too... (photo by vgm8383)

Still doesn’t sound much fun, eh?  But as I walked back up the stairs for about the millionth time (give or take a few…), it became apparent to me that I felt serene; I was calm; I was happy.  Yet this peace was coming through my sense of urgency and it even helped boost my productivity.  When I stopped for a moment to assess how much I had achieved in the day so far, I realised that many other tasks had been completed that I would usually expect to take longer.  And this all happened while I was busy with a more pressing task.

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