The most important thing about goals is having one
- Geoffry Abert
Your change efforts will only succeed if your goals reflect your personal priorities and needs and are at the right time. Discover your goal in three steps:
1. Create 2.Reduce 3. Select.
The following tools will help identify ideas for potential goal topics. This is not a how-to for writing a SMART goal nor a SMARTer goal. This is the step BEFORE the SMART goal. This is the step you need to take to select the goal, to identify which is the right goal for you to work on right now.
Step 1: Create
The objective here is to come up with a list of 10-20 potential goals. Don’t worry about making them SMART at this point, just capture your ideas.
Option A: Brainstorming
For those of you who have no problem identifying your goals, do it! Write down those 20 or more goals. Now go to step 2. For the rest of us there are often so many things we want to do or change that there is no one thing that comes to mind. Take Jill for example. Jill has always been interested in many things. She likes to discover and learn new things but then easily gets bored and moves on to the next. Her family and friends often call her ‘Jill of all trades’ (no kidding). When she wanted to work with her coach, the coach told her to select just one goal (a wise coach). The reason for selecting only one goal is that it increases your chances of successfully implementing positive change. Jill did not know how to select just one. She couldn’t even begin to write down a list of goals. So she and her coach used a different approach.
Option B: The Wheel of Life
This approach breaks your life into different areas (sometimes roles) to help conpartmentalize the goals. Draw a circle on a piece of paper or whiteboard. Now divide that circle by drawing lines like spokes on a wagon wheel. In each section created by the spokes, write in one area of your life (or role you ‘play’). For example you may have family, friends / social, work, finance, health, and so on.
Now ask yourself these questions for each area / role:
- Where are you now in this key life aspect?
- What type of person do you want to be in this area?
- What type of things can you do to reduce the difference?
- What things do you like or dislike in each key life aspect?
Jill reviewed each category in her wheel and listed several goals for each.
Option C: More or Less
Another brainstorming tool includes simple list making but approaches the list by answering the following questions:
- What am I tolerating in my life/work?
- What am I missing in my life/work?
- What do I want more of/less of
Gtdagenda
If you'd like a tool for setting your goals, you can use this web application:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, and a calendar.
Syncs with Evernote and Google Calendar, and also comes with mobile version, and Android and iPhone apps.