Kerenza Faram, the author of several informative articles on self-improvement says, “Setting goals give you short-term and long-term motivation and focus. They help you maintain focus on acquiring the required knowledge to help you plan and organize your resources and your time so that you can get the best out of your life.”
Kerenza explains that, “By setting clearly defined short term and long term goals for yourself you will be able to measure your progress and achieve personal satisfaction once you have successfully achieved those goals.
Monitoring your progress will also enable you to actually see the stages of completion and further help you realize your goals. Your self-confidence and level of competence will also improve as a result, because you will be much more aware of your capabilities as you complete and achieve your goals.”
Most pundits on goal setting agree that a process of self examination comes before actual goal setting. I mentioned in the blog entry prior to this one that I attended a Franklin Covey time management training class at the beginning of the week. The course title was, FOCUS – Achieving Your Highest Priorities.
The course involved understanding of how your time is (or could be) used (in a time matrix illustration), then what Franklin Covey terms to be the Productivity Pyramid, and lastly the application of a personal planning system. That system could use their version of an all-in-one Day-Timer, a PDA, a computer, or a combination of each. (Besides the primary paper and pencil binder format, they have a Microsoft Outllook add on program for computers).
What I wanted to refer to here is their concept teaching devise termed the “Productivity Pyramid”. The foundation of the pyramid is, “Identify Values” then moving higher up the pyramid, “Set Goals” followed next higher by “Plan Weekly”, and at the top, “Plan Daily”. Their introspection stage before establishing goals requires you to come up with a list of the things you value most (Values) and then to support each with a clarifying statement.
Elvis Presley is quoted as saying, “Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave ‘em all over everything you do.”
An example Value given is “Teamwork”; the clarifying statement is, “I work collaboratively with others and positively contribute in a way that will help my team move forward.”
If you want a more folksy and analogous process for creating life goals, you might take a look at “Goal Setting - Powerful Written Goals in 7 Easy Steps!” by Gene Donohue. However, if you are interested in a more academic examination of the subject of Goal setting or Goal-setting theory, I would recommend reading Wikipedia’s description.
It is not surprising to me that when you boil it all down, everyone has pretty much the same concept of Goal-setting, the difference comes in the way they package it for sale. So, there is no excuse for not setting down your life and work goals because you don’t like or find cumbersome someone’s process.
Remember, “People with goals succeed because they know where they're going.” (Earl Nightingale)