This is post #5 in the Goal Setting Series. Next: When To Review
Here’s where it gets tricky. If you are like me and already have a full schedule with a job, kids and all sorts of other activities, the last thing you want to do is add more stuff to your calendar. However, if you really want to reach your goals, they have to be in your face on a daily basis. What do most people look at every day? Their calendar. ;) So in order to make our goals “in-your-face-can’t-help-but-make-them-happen”, we’re gonna need to integrate some sort of calendar.
What Kind Should I Get?
Get a Google calendar – there are no other options. I’m kidding. There are all sorts of really good calendars out there. You can use a monthly calendar, a day planner – whatever you are comfortable with using. Again, make it fun and be sure it’s something you will enjoy using. It can be on paper or a digital system – the format really does not matter. Simplicity is best.
Paper or Plastic?
As a self-proclaimed geek who spends 80% of her time at computer, a digital calendar works best for me, but I could just as easily use a paper calendar. The digital calendar syncs to my iPhone so I always have it with me. Choose whatever is convenient for you to look at and write on. If technology feels clumsy for you or you don’t access your computer all that much, then go for paper. Your calendar is a critical tool, so take some time to think about what you really want and how you will use it.
Oh and the catch here is that you only get ONE calendar. Yup – just one. So if you’re fairly mobile (most folks are these days) then make sure it is something you can put in your purse or at least carry with you from home to work or to the gym, etc.
Ok I have a calendar, now what?
The first order of business is you. You are priority. You are going to make a few commitments to yourself. How many times in a day do we make appointments and commit our time to being with other people? Why not make appointments with yourself? Aren’t you just as important? The items we are about to add to our calendars are essential.
Setting Those Due Dates
If you read Timing Is Everything, you’ll recall the importance of setting a due date for tracking your progress and to keep from overcommiting yourself. The first step is obviously to put the due date on the calendar. Go ahead and do that. See? Wasn’t that easy? But wait…there’s more…
Setting the end date really isn’t helpful if your due date is for December and it’s January. The due date serves as a reminder, but we need to see some progress before then. You can’t expect to start and finish a yearly goal on December 31st.
Setting Benchmarks
For every goal you set, you also need to break it into smaller chunks. Most goals are accomplished by doing a little bit at a time over and over again until you reach the target. It’s kind of like weight-lifting. You start out with smaller weights and do them repeatedly until you’re ready for bigger ones and then you increase the amount every so often until you reach the target weight you want to lift.
With goals, we can use time intervals as our benchmarks. A simple scale I use is this:
- Yearly Goal: break down into quarters and months, and possibly weeks
- Quarterly Goal (90 days): break into weeks
- Monthly Goal: break Into weeks, then days
You can use your best judgment for each goal. So for each one, you will set up benchmarks to mark where you should be for comparison against where you actually are. To clarify, I’ll use an example from one of my 2008 goals to create one new Girls Can’t WHAT? design a week.
The goal is actually to create 50 designs (hey I get vacation time, too!). So I broke that down into quarters, then months. I complete my work week on Fridays, so I picked Fridays for my end dates. You will find the following entries on my calendar (I listed it in outline form here so you can see the breakdown):
12/31/08 – Design 50 New Girls Can’t WHAT? Characters
- 3/28/08 – Design 13 New GCW Characters
- 1/25/08 – Design 5 New GCW Characters
- 1/4/08 – Design 1 New GCW Character
- 1/11/08 – Design 2 New GCW Characters
- 1/18/08 – Design 1 New GCW Character
- 1/25/08 – Design 1 New GCW Character
- 2/29/08 – Design 4 New GCW Characters
- 3/28/08 – Design 4 New GCW Characters
- 6/27/08 – Design 12 New GCW Characters
- 9/26/08 – Design 13 New GCW Characters
- 12/31/08 – Design 12 New GCW Characters
I know that summer and winter are busier times for me so I am going to use my “vacation” time during those quarters. Each of the dates above are set into my calendar on their given date. When I do my weekly planning each week, I will scan my calendar and be reminded to keep working towards this goal. Depending on where I am at with the goal, I schedule an appointment with myself to complete a new design. In this case, I know about how much time I need to draw a new design and process it into my shop, so I usually schedule two 4-hour blocks into my week for this activity.
But I don’t have that kind of time!
Eight hours is a pretty huge chunk of time and if you do that even with smaller chunks of time, adding several goals to your calendar can really eat up your week. This is why I suggest starting small and only picking 1-2 goals to start. My current goals list has less than 15 total and a few of them are integrated (meaning they feed off one another – like sales dollars and marketing statistics) so time served in those areas moves forward on more than one goal. These are also my “work” goals, so time spent on them is part of my working hours anyway, but having the scheduled time helps me say “no” to other options that could steal time away.
I’m easily distracted
Let it be known that I am not a big fan of living by a schedule. I’m a creative type who often prefers to go off on a whim and do whatever my brain cooks up. This is not a bad thing. There are days where I might get inspired and come up with 2-3 designs instead of just one. So what? That just puts me ahead of the game! Remember, goals are things I really really really WANT to do so it’s not hard for me to be motivated to reach them. As long as the work you are being distracted by is pushing you towards the things you committed to accomplish, then they are worthwhile distractions. You don’t have to to live and die by the calendar. It’s just there to remind you of what you pledged to do at an earlier time. Use it in that way – as a system of reminders – not a taskmaster with a whip ready to take you down if you get the flu and take a few days to recover.
Negotiating
Personal appointments are to be treated with the same integrity as appointments we would make for work meetings, birthday parties, etc. Are they set in stone? YES! However, we all know life is unpredictable. What happens when you can’t make a doctor’s appointment? You call and reschedule. Same for your appointments with yourself. If you have to miss one, just reschedule. You aren’t allowed to completely break the date, but you can renegotiate the time frame.
The Alternate Method
If blocking time on a calendar makes you shudder at the thought of a hard commitment, try working with a list. You still need the calendar, but you won’t need to worry about time slots. Each week as you review your schedule, your current workload, family events, etc., mark down which of your goals you need to work on and list them on specific days of the week. No time commitment – just write them down. When the day approaches, start on the task. No time frame – just start working on it and see how far you get. Regardless of whether you spent five minutes or five hours, you’ve at least made progress.
With this method, you can learn what kind of endurance you have for your various goals. We can always guess at how long something will take, but we can never be 100% certain of the true amount. Sometimes, the best we can do is just to start moving and see how far we get. Often, that leads to pushing farther than we thought possible. It’s much easier to go with the momentum than it is to start up again after you stop. I use this method quite frequently and I almost always end up pushing myself farther just because I started the task and I get on a roll to keep pressing forward.
Here my favorite calendar and list-making tools:
What will you be using?
This is post #5 in the Goal Setting Series. Next: When To Review
