12 Steps to Goal Setting

Answer the following questions/steps and you will be well on your way to achieving  your goals.

Do this for every goal you have.  

• Be realistic.
• Limit the number of Active goals (write all goals down, classify what is now vs. someday maybe)
• Prioritize your goals.  Your Tasks will also prioritize accordingly.

Goal Setting:

1. Clearly Define the GOAL (What is your success statement?)
2. Why is this goal meaningful (Purpose)?
3. When will this be accomplished? Set a Deadline!
4. What are my action steps? - yes define them. List the everything that you need to do to make this goal a reality.
5. Who is involved? - Understand your resource requirements.  Who do you need to work with to accomplish your goals.
6. Who will hold me accountable? Share your goal with them, as well as the expectations and milestones.
7. How will I define Success?
8. What Tools Do I need? Define "things" you will need to accomplish this goal.  This goes along with the resources required.
9. When? Set a TimeLine
•   Start Date
•   How Many Hours of focus per week?
•   Add to my Time Budget
•   Under What circumstances beyond completion will I stop?
10. What Milestones?
•   Chart your progress (set your milestones and understand the time frames you expect to achieve them)
•   Weekly review
• Progress notes weekly
• Review your Action List and assess new and validity of old
11. How will I reward myself for completion?  This goes beyond your purpose, and applies some basic risk reward definitions.  If the goal is a big one, what is your reward?
12. What is One Step I can Take in The Next Five Days to initiate This Goal?

Using Colors to make your Calendar more efficient

I have worked with multiple calendars over the years and the one thing that gets very difficult to manage is over crowding in my calendar view.  Those of us with "normal" lives will be overwhelmed by all of the things that make their ways to our calendar.  When  you add Kids to the mix it's almost impossible to not get overwhelmed.  So,  When I'm managing projects and my life, I find it extremely helpful to use colors in my calendar and I think it will help you too.  

It has been proven that the human brain works much faster when dealing with images and colors versus the written word.  So let's do two things in your calendar to take advantage of our brain's natural ability to process vistual stimulas.

Define your colors by Categories:

When you're ready to assign colors to items in a calendar start thinking about how you organize your life.  Then start thinking from the perspective of how you want to view things.  How should things pop out to you visually based on similar colors.  Just like you do in creating metrics for projects or reports for applications.  Think about what you want your end result to look like when assiging details to the items that go into that result.

So as an example if I have a weekly status meeting that is in regards to a particular project I would think about using the same color for all of the meetings or items that are associated to that project

In the same sense I will look at recurring items vs. One off items with different shades as well.

So if I select a darker color for particular project, then within that I might use a lighter shade of that same color to represent one off (non recurring item)  Depending upon your preferences, which is easier to read and stands out better.  Thsi will help you  in a weekly view to see which schedule is not usually in your calendar and where your focus is being applied.

In the below example you can see that I've chosen darker colors for my one of meetings and lighter colors for my recurring meetings.  *note that this is Outlook view, you can do the same thing in Google Calendar as well as most calendar applications.  You can rename any color category to your liking...

Now the reason I chose a darker color for one off vs. stand alone items is they stand out more.  So the lighter shade represents something that is on a recurring basis the darker colors something to pop to make me remember that I need to do that is not something that's on my regular schedule.  This has nothing to do with reminder pop ups and such, just a visual way to view my calendar.

Assign your Categories to your appt's:

Now that you have decided on your color scheme you can assign colors to your individual and recurring calendar items...

Once that is done, your calendar will start to look like this:

On a personal note, I do the same thing with my kids. Each get's their own color and shade according to child and activity (or sport) ... :)

vs:

I hope this helps you with your productivity and the organization of your Calendar.  Until Next time...

This Blog is also posted on the PlanNet site: www.plannet.net 

The art of task management. How to categorize tasks:

One of the things I'm always looking at is the number of things I have to get done in a day. If I were to look at all the things I need to get done, I would absolutely pull my hair out and become very frustrated. So to be the most efficient with my time I find it much better to group things together that I can accomplish. Where I am during the day and the things that I can get done based upon where I am or even what I'm doing. As an example, if I think of something that I need to get done, I am going to add it to my list of things to do. When added, I categorized into four particular groups (Area, Category, Owner and Context):

Area - Area represents the "Why" of this task. What is the area of focus? Why am I doing this? What is the impact? as an example I look at things such as career, personal growth, family, finance. These are the areas of my life that this task could impact.

Category - Category represents the "Type" of task that this is. As an example, a task could fall into these categories: Health and Fitness, Leisure, Sales, Project Management, Mentoring, Research, Marketing, Education, Administration, Review time. So this particular qualification of the task helps group it according to the functional area of my life that I might be looking at. The categories are important because they will match my time budget categories.

Owner - Having an owner represents "Who" will be doing this task, who owns this task. As an example usually I will be the owner of the task. However, sometimes a colleague or a subordinate will own this task. This helps me track and make sure that if things are owed, or I'm dependent on tasks that I do not own, I know who to go to for status.

Context - "Where" Having a context is the same thing as where will this task be accomplished. It is important to not have too many contexts. However, making sure you have enough to cover the different areas in your life.
As an example, I do my task at the following:
computer, phone, computer and a phone, The office, When I'm alert, When I'm tired, etc....

Adding a context to your task will allow you to further group your tasks based on these contexts that you define. So I can be more effective. I'm only working on tasks to further that apply to specific context or area that I'm in now, and I'm not wasting my time thinking about tasks that can't be done. One big time waster is reviewing tasks you can not do any ways.

The next challenge is to take all the tasks and make sure that you're able to sort them according to these different areas and categories. Depending on how you want to view them and this is why the review time is done. As an example, if you want to use Excel, every task would be listed on a separate row in the columns would match these groupings, Area, category, owner, context, task description and due date. I use a different product for this. However, it's easily done Using pen and paper for this solution. You might even have a notebook based on the different types of categories in tabs or sections according to your particular areas, categories and contexts.

Well, that's it for today, I hope you have a great productive day.

Until next time

How Review time affects your mood!

Do you feel like some days you're in a great mood and others you frustrated, or you feel like nothing is getting done?

Well, I have a suggestion for you, and ask that you make sure that you are doing reviews. In my time management work sessions, I always state that part of your time scheduling should include review time. It is very important. Having review times accomplishes a couple of things for you.

1. It shows you that you can accomplish tasks even though you may not enjoy doing them. However, they move you toward your goals and that in and of itself gives you a great amount of pleasure from the knowledge that you're moving toward your goals.  So in turn, you will be in a good mood.  Moving forward is always a positive thing. It certainly beats moving sideways, not at all, or worse yet, backwards.
2. The second thing that reviews do are they keep you on track. They make sure that the tasks that are still open match the direction that you're trying to move in.  You will also shed some light on tasks that might not apply to your current goals. Therefore, you should delete them and remove them from your vision and goal sets as it is just wasting your time.

So in closing, make sure that you review every day just five minutes of your time in its can help you be in a great mood.

Have a great day and until next time...

I will be speaking at the Orange County PMI users group meeting in Feb.

Expect between 1 and 2 hundred folks. The topic will be Time Management for the project manager. I will post location and time details as I find that out...
Here is the link to the PMI Site : http://www.pmi-oc.org/
February Dinner Meeting
Tue., February 9, 2010
5:15 pm - 6:00 pm Resume Reviews (Board Room), courtesy of Technisource
5:30 pm - 9:00 pm Dinner Meeting
Wyndham Orange County
3350 Avenue of the Arts
Costa Mesa, CA 92626


Hope to see you there!