Effective Goal Management

Where Do I Start?

Sometimes completing projects can be stressful. You might feel overwhelmed at the thought of tackling various obstacles, and not know where to begin. These steps are designed to give you effective goal management and will help you organize your goals, be it a personal goal, a career-related goal, or a collaborative project.

The best way to achieve your goals is to break them down, just take a moment to organize your thoughts.

• Define the long-term goal.
• Consider short-term goals that could help you achieve this goal.
• Reflect on what obstacles that will prevent you, and other collaboratives, from achieving these goals, be it a mentality block or materialistic obstacle.
• Review your notes, consider if these goals are realistic, and give them an ideal timeframe to complete them.

Once you create your long-term goal(s), it’s time to consider a variety of factors. What are some obstacles that you will face? How can you break down your goal into smaller goals? Is this goal achievable? How long will it take you to achieve this goal?

Going In-Depth With An Example

Let’s practice with an example, maybe you want to renovate your bedroom. The long-term goal would be to redo your bedroom, but what are some short-term goals that can help you achieve this? You can make one goal to write a list of the tools you need, create a schedule to help you figure out what days are going to be best for construction, pick a date to remove the furniture in the room, another day to redo the ceiling, walls, floor, and so on.

Consider the obstacles, maybe you don’t know a lot about the tools you will need, you are on a tight budget, you don’t have a lot of time in your schedule, and so on. Write those down, and think about how you could implement steps in your short term goals to help you lower these barriers. Maybe you contact a friend who has more experience in renovation, or you wait on the project for a little while longer to save some more money.

The next step is to create a timeline for your goals. How long do you believe it would take you to complete the projects? Maybe you only have one day off a week to work on the bedroom, so you estimate that doing research and collecting the tools will consume one day, so it will be one week until you complete that goal, two weeks to finish the next short term goal, repeat, repeat, repeat. Make your goals and timeframes realistic.

The rest of the magic is the dedication to stick to your plan. You can use a variety of tools to help you stay organized on your goals like the example above, writing in the goals to your daily tools like a calendar, journal, and a variety of phone apps.

If You Are Working With Others:

Consider using a template when writing your goals, or another tool that will be easy to send via email or print off for your collaborators to look at. Showing the organization of a project will help them feel less anxious, and give them a clearer picture of the big picture.

If you know who your team is ahead of time, you could try distributing the short-term goals to your team. Consider this possibility when creating your short-term goals, see if any of your short-term goals will need to be delayed or can work simultaneously. For example, if you need money to buy the tools for the project, then the other goals will probably have to be put on hold. After that, you can have one person work on a smaller goal like removing furniture from the room while another person collects the tools for your project.

An Additional Note For Freelancers:

If you are creating goals for a freelance job, a trade secret in the freelance world is to estimate the time for a project to be complete, and then add an additional 30% onto that timeframe. So if you believe that a project will take you 6 hours, you would tell the client it will take you 8 hours. This allows for you to play catch-up for those unexpected issues that come up, and if you are doing a job for another person it either means you covered yourself or the client will be thrilled that you are finished early. If you decide to use this method for yourself, you may find less anxiety or self-criticism by giving yourself a little more time to help get the project done and keep a positive attitude.