Has this ever happened to you? At the end of the day your spouse or your boss asked you, “what did you do today?” and you had no answer. Of course it has. It’s happened to all of us!
It wasn’t that way when you started the day. You set out to do something good or important. In your efforts to search for a job or complete an important business project you threw yourself into it heart and soul. You were busy all day long and yet, at the end of the day (or week, or month) you wondered if you really accomplished anything important. How did that happen? You were busy, but not productive. One of the problems many of us face is that we don’t have a system for defining, achieving and measuring our effectiveness. We haven’t set specific goals for our business, project, or job search. Because we have not set specific goals, we don’t know when we have been successful at achieving your goals. . . or even if we HAVE achieved them. A professor of mine in business school famously said, “if you can measure it, you can improve it.” I wasn’t sure what he meant at the time, but as I have spent more time pursuing both life and business objectives I have begun to understand. Setting specific goals allows us to measure our effectiveness at our work. Having a system to measure the outcome of our activities allows us to improve on what we have done in the past or achieve want to get done in the future. Here are some tips that will help you develop a system for defining, achieving and measuring goals. Make time to set goals. It is said that every hour spent on planning saves 5-6 hours in execution. The simplest way to get something done is to set a goal to accomplish it. For your business you want to set chronological goals (annual, monthly, weekly and daily goals) as well as project goals. The same is true of your job search – and here’s an important hint: applying to jobs on the Internet is NOT a goal you should set for more than 30 minutes per day! Schedule time for planning and goal setting. I recommend you block out a couple of days each year for strategic planning and setting annual goals; a half day each month to set monthly goals and a few minutes each week to set weekly goals. Be sure to make your goals specific and achievable. Define clear objectives. Objectives are the steps required to accomplish a goal. They formulate your action plan for accomplishing your goals. Your objectives should be measurable so you know when you have accomplished them. They should be realistic and time bound as well. Keep track of your progress. What metrics or benchmarks will you use to mark your progress. Set the tracking mechanism up before you start, that way you will be able to prioritize and focus on the parts of the project or goal that are the most important. If you need to let something fall between the cracks, make sure it’s not the most important thing. Setting metrics and tracking your progress will help you keep the first things first. Make mid-course corrections as needed. Things seldom go exactly as planned. Life happens. Things break or need to be replaced. People get sick. Money runs out before the project is complete. The successful person is able to step back and make course corrections if necessary to accomplish their goals. In order to be effective at this you must focus on the ultimate goal or objective – not the action itself. Remember, it’s easy to forget your objective is to drain the swamp when you are up to your eyeballs in alligators! A mentor of mine used to say, “plan your work, then work your plan.” He was a wise man! If we follow that advice we will have fewer days (weeks, months, years. . . ) where we get to the end of the project and say, “gee what HAVE I accomplished?”
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