Setting Goals

Crow Peak summit. Chugach Mountains, Alaska (Photo credit: Paxson Woelber)

In the last posting I went over the essential elements of a good goal. Today I will go over how you go about setting goals and the different time periods affecting goals. This is the system I developed that works for me but you must find your own system but this gives you the essential elements. What is important is to establish a system that will work for you and one that will motivate you to continue with goals and make them a part of your everyday life.

Every little goal is a stepping stone to your big goals so I start off with the big goals, sometimes called you life goals or I have also heard them called your a life value statements. Sometimes these big goals will be a long range goals but most of the time long range goals are the final stepping stone to your life goals. These goals are often times the hardest to follow the rules of goals because they are so far out but are important because they create the big goal that the little goals lead up to.

I would not suggest trying to write down these goals in one setting, instead take some time, maybe an extended period of time to really figure out where you want to be in 20 years, 30 years or even longer. We have become such an instant gratification society it is often hard to think that far into the future so don't worry if you have a hard time coming up with them right away.

It should also be noted that these life goals will also be the most flexible and changeable of your goals. While you would like to think that once you set your goals they are going to be in stone and that is what is going to happen, but in reality there is many things that can change your long range goals. That is not to say that there is something wrong with your life goals, on the contrary they are an important element of helping you achieve but we change as people so our goals may change as well. There are many things that change our perspectives on life including finding true love, death of someone we care care about, or realizing that the goal is truly not what we are looking for. Just don't let these life changes stop you from setting goals.

Each goal under your life goals are stepping stones toward that life goal and that is why you want to start off with the life goals because the rest of them are going to work up to that life goal. The next set of goals is your long range goals. As mentioned above sometimes it can blur between your long range goals and life goals but long range goals should be goals that are longer than five years out that work toward your life goals. For example say your goal is to have substantial savings for retirement, a long range goal would be to have your mortgage paid off in say seven years which is a step toward that life goal.

Next up is your medium range goals which are from one to five years out. As you can probably figure out by now these medium range goals should be stepping stones to your long range goals. To continue the idea from the long range goals, a medium range goal could be to have all debts but your mortgage paid off in 24 months.

As you probably already figured out the next step is your goals of one year. I set these during the month of December for the next year although sometimes things can get added during the year. I then set monthly, weekly and daily goals. Your weekly and daily goals will most likely have items on there that do not directly relate to your life goals but are things you need to get done but in the long run will benefit you achieving your life goals. I will often end up with about 30 to 35 items on the weekly goal sheet although only a handful actually fit neatly into my life goals although any goal can indirectly be tied in.

On your daily goals you may want to try scheduling things by time in order to get everything done however that has not always worked well for me. I do better by just having my list of goals for the day and checking them off as I get them complete. What I will do is prioritize my goals for the day by listing them by A's for the biggest priority, B's for medium priority, and C's for the lowest priority. Being a C doesn't mean something isn't important but is not a priority. I then break down each letter by priority and assign them a number from one on. While these may seem like it would take a lot of time to do, time that you could be using to achieve those goals, I have found it takes only a few minutes and it allows me to prioritize my day better.

Now you have the basics of setting goals. As I mentioned before this is designed to be guide to get you started but you need to tailor the system to work best for your personality so that you will stay committed to make things happen.

Good luck and set some goals.

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The Elements of a Goal...Part 1

The Mid American Stock Car Series flagman waving the checkered flag at the end of a series stockcar heat race. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

goal (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

My last couple of blog postings talked about goals and the ones that I am trying to achieve this year so I decided that it would be good to go over what a goal is for those of you that are having trouble getting started or working toward those important things in your life. Today I will go over what a goal needs to contain and next time I will discuss the different types of goals and how to set them.

As I mentioned a goal must have some critical ingredients and I will discuss each one of these one at a time: specific, have a time limit, be written down, achievable and challenging.

The Year is Half Over...How are You Doing?

nanowrimo, day 16 goal (Photo credit: paloetic)

Hard as it is to think about, Monday will mark the half way point in 2014. While many people let it pass by without even thinking about it, I consider it a good time to look at what has been accomplished so far and what goals are you lagging behind in.

At the beginning of the year like every year I wrote down a set of goals. These are not New Years resolutions they are goals because the have the necessary qualities of a goal: specific, have a time limit, written down, achievable, and challenging.

I started the year with 18 major goals which all work toward my life goals. Then every month I set goals that work toward the yearly goals, weekly goals that work toward the monthly goals, and finally daily goals that work toward accomplishing those weekly goals. I will often end up with about 30 to 35 goals every week and will accomplish anywhere from at least 20 to often more than 30 of them.

Dump the stuff

Clutter (Photo credit: spykster)

     In this months NW Examiner newspaper which covers the northwest section of Portland, my friend Kate Washington has a great article on how she and her husband had to downsize their stuff when they moved from a house in Washington State to a apartment in Portland's Pearl District. The newspaper is in PDF format and the article itself can be found on page 16.

June NW Examiner 

     I have to be honest and tell you that for many years I was a major extreme pack rat. I would keep every scarp of paper because I knew that I would need it some day or it might be valuable some day. Of course all those papers, magazines, books, souvenirs, post cards all started to pile up. Now this wouldn't be so bad if you lived in the same place for your whole life but I moved 5 times as a child and have moved 15 times as an adult so all that stuff can really add up.

     My first big change came in 2004 when my father passed away when stuff just didn't seem to be that important anymore. Then the week before Thanksgiving in 2005 my mother suffered a stroke and ended up in a nursing home where she passed away in May, 2007. My brother and I had to make a trip up to Spokane where my mother lived and clean out her apartment. While we put much of it in storage we still ended up taking a couple of truckloads of assorted stuff to Spokane's Waste to Energy plant to dispose of it.

     After she passed away it fell to me to give take care of what was left. When it came down to it none of the family wanted what they were giving in the will because it meant nothing to them. All that stuff that my parents had saved over the years had was of no value or meaning to anyone in the family. It was eye opening to see how stuff we treasured as being so special ends up being nothing but something that someone else will get stuck hauling away some day. While there might be a treasure or two to be found in someone's life collection, most of it is pretty worthless.

    It was also about this time that TLC's show Clean Sweep came on the air along with a similar show on HGTV which really brought to life for me how much crap I had. While shows like Clean Sweep were dramatized, it did show what can happen with the stuff has control of you instead of you having control over your stuff.

    Over the next few years I cleaned out a large amount of my stuff but some of it still lingered because I was going to sell it online and make some money off of it. Then a couple of years ago we rented a house that was the biggest house I have ever lived in and of course you have to fill it up so it doesn't look so empty right? While that may be fine if your planning to stay in a place for 20 years and even then it can be a dangerous trend, we very well could be moving by next June which will probably be into a much smaller space. Therefore we have started purging in order to get the amount of stuff down by the time June rolls around next year.

     If your one of those people that is drowning in stuff, get help now. It has been proven that clutter can have detrimental affects on your health and productivity. Don't leave it for someone else to clean up after your gone, take care of it now and make life more enjoyable.
  
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Your Never Too Old...

Images of custom amirugami, an amirugami graduate in cap and gown. Self-made. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Three years ago I made the decision to return to school which is never easy for someone that is not the typical college age. In fact during a three month period my wife and I adopted a sibling group of 4 children out of foster care, moved to Portland, Oregon and then I started back to school.

Being older than the average college student I was nervous that I would stand up but as it turned out for the first two years I was only the oldest person in a class one time, other times there was always at least one and usually more than one person older than me. This year as I pursue my Master's degree I am now the oldest in my co-hort and there is a person in the same program that started last year who is one year younger than I am so it is not too bad.

However, despite the difficulties of going back to school might be, I have my father to look for inspiration and the knowledge that you are never too old to head back to school.

My father grew up during the Great Depression. After the 8th grade he was forced to leave school in order to help the family earn money. He then served in the Army during WWII in New Guinea and most of his friends did not come back. After the war he started a family and became a carpenter. He went to work at F.W. Woolworth stores where his hard work paid off and he eventually became a superintendent overseeing opening, remodeling and closing of their stores in the western United States. It always bothered him that he did not graduate but it never stopped him from working hard and doing what he felt was best for his family.

He also dealt well with the unexpected. Just as he thought he was done raising kids as my siblings were adults or close to it, my mother ended up pregnant with me and he ended up going through it all over again, but we both survived.  

In 1999 he was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer but after radiation treatments it went into remission. During the period of remission he (with some convincing from my mother) decided at age 81 to fill that void that had been there for so many years and get his GED. It took a lot of studying over a few month period but in 2001 my father officially became a high school graduate. Once he was done with the high school diploma he was ready to take on college! However, in 2003 the cancer returned and this time it was Bone cancer which can be one of the most painful forms of cancer but he wouldn't suffer long as he passed away on January 4th, 2004.

Its been more than 10 years since he passed away but he will always be an inspiration for never being too old to accomplish something you dream of.