Goal Setting

Most of us who are busy from morning to evening will be shocked to learn that 80% of what we do, does not contribute to even 20% of what we want to achieve. We are busy doing nothing. We, as human beings have to perform multiple roles. These roles are not confined to workplace only but extends to our personal life and social life also. If we fail to perform any of these roles, we will become unhappy. If our personal relationship with our spouse is not good, it will get reflected in our performance at workplace which will effect our career ultimately. Conversely, if we spend too much time in our workplace, we will be left with little time to spare for our spouse at home with the result, our relationship with spouse will get effected. This is a vicious circle. We have only 24 hours at our disposal. The point is how smartly we invest this time in doing multiple activities. Broadly, speaking, if you draw a full circle and call it as the wheel of life and divide the circle into various segments, each segment representing a particular sphere of activity say Career, Personal life, spiritual life, social life, Healthcare etc with you at the centre, you will note that if you try to expand any one segment across the wheel, it will cause shrinkage to another segment automatically . What is required therefore is not to lean too much on one particular sphere of activity at the cost of another but to do balancing act and give equal importance to each sphere of activities . Goal setting is the first thing that should be done because that will give you the sense of direction. If you do any activity without setting the goal, you will soon lose the interest and will never be able to complete it. You must set at least 5 goals in each sphere of activities. The goals set must be SMART goals meaning they should be S(pecific), M(easurable), A(ttainable), R(ealistic),T(imebound). After the goals are set, you define major milestones with list of activities under each milestone. Milestones will help you in knowing whether you are right on track or you have gone off the track and hence will give you an opportunity to correct yourself before it is too late. Having done that, you list down the obstacles that will come in your way hindering the progress of work and how you are going to overcome the obstacles. Now, you are ready with complete roadmap on how you are going to achieve the goals. On a day to day basis, you will be doing many other activities which do not contribute anything to achieving short term or long term goals as defined by you. These activities are not priority areas for you and can be delegated to somebody down the line. Prepare ‘to do list’ on a daily basis which is in line with goals set and check at the end of the day how many of them you have completed. If any of the activity is left unfinished, try to complete it on the following day. This habit of yours will focus on doing core activities which will ultimately lead to achieving the goals set. Working smartly rather than working hard will give you cutting edge over others. You don’t need to be miles ahead of others in competitive environment. The winning horse in a jackpot is only a fraction of a second ahead of the horse who comes second.