Setting Goals: Long Term and Short Term Goals

One of the key ingredients for successfully managing your time is identifying your goals. Goals are what will keep you motivated and focused – both essential to being productive.

What do goals have to do with time management?

When you have determined where you want your life to be in one year – or five – or even 20, it will have an impact on what you do TODAY. A person who dreams of being a lawyer will not have much success obtaining that goal if they don’t first make the time to fit studying and school into their schedule today.

Many long term goals will have short term goals that lead to them. Not only does this make practical sense (ie: getting accepted to University is a shorter term goal than becoming a partner in a law firm) but it also helps you from becoming overwhelmed or loosing sight of your goals.

If you are trying to manage your time it is because you recognize that there is a limited supply and it is all valuable. While responsibilities at work and home may be what dictates how you plan your day, shouldn’t all (or most) of this time work in harmony with your goals? This may mean some big changes, or it may just mean adjusting some things in your routine.

When you start planning your time with a goal in mind it is easier to appreciate the benefits of what you are doing and prevents you from getting caught up in time wasters – activities that use up your time but are ultimately unprofitable either in money or your personal life.

Choosing Goals Wisely

If you are currently making $5/hour and can’t cover your bills you may decide that your goal needs to be making more money. Take some time to figure out exactly what you’d like to be doing with your life. Acknowledge that this may mean spending time getting an education rather than taking on another low paying job which will fill your financial needs but keep you in a cycle of working endless hours to make the money you need.

Or maybe you find your work time is eating into the time you want to spend with your family. That family will grow and move away so what you do to make more time for them is important NOW. Identifying these goals will help you make decisions to make better use of your time.

Setting Long Term Goals

Before you say “my goal is to retire to the Caribbean” it is important to take stock and analyze your situation from a different perspective. While you may truly be able to retire to the Caribbean, HOW will you do that? A new job? A higher income? Less responsibilities?

Long term goals are excellent motivators. They help you see beyond today’s work and remind you that there is a greater purpose for the time you are spending today. If you find a task tedious you should think about how doing it fits into your goals. Making your daily tasks become choices can ease some of the burden because we are in control of our day rather than having it control us.

On the other hand, if we realize many of the time consuming activities we do have no bearing on reaching our goals perhaps we have to take them out or at least reduce the time we spend on them.

Your long term goal may be to spend more time with your family. Make your goal specific and give it a date to be accomplished. Perhaps you determine to work part time. Write down the date this will take effect and put it on your calendar. It may be that you anticipate it will take two years to achieve this goal. Pick a date and put it where you can see it every day.

Now you must set short term goals…

Setting Short Term Goals

Your short term goals will relate to your long term goal.

Continuing with our illustration of working part time you may decide that you must first complete certain projects you have already committed to. You will also need to be more selective about what assignments you can handle or need to ask for an assistant so you can focus on the main business and get help with minor tasks.

You may set a date to stop working overtime. You may set a date to ask for contract work instead of salary. You should plan activities that are spent with family and no work interruptions. Whatever your goals they should be clear steps to achieving your long term goal: spending more time with family.

These short term goals will help you measure your progress towards your long term goal. They will shape how you plan your time and clarify the VALUE of your time. Make your goals specific and give them a date to be completed.

6 Steps to Creating Achievable Goals:

With every goal you must follow the 6 P’s:

Prioritize: You may have several goals. Prioritize them on your list.

Positive: Use positive language. “I will …”, “I’ll be…”, “I’ll have…”

Precise: Be precise. “I will have supper with my family three nights a week” rather than “I will be home earlier”

Performance: Measure your performance. Set time for starting and completing your goal. “May 1 – I will be home at 5:30 three nights this week”

Practical: Make your goals practical. Do you have the control to make this work or do you rely on other people to meet your goal?

Personal: Is this goal a personal goal or someone else’s desire for you?

Time management is easier when you can motivate yourself and judge the value of your time. If your goals are based on someone else’s desires (if your mate wants you to work in a steady job but you want to be self-employed) you will find it difficult to manage your time due to lack of motivation.

Creating an Action Plan

Your action plan will have a great deal to do with your day to day scheduling.

Now that you have made yourself conscious of where you are headed (long term goal) and have set up guide posts (short term goals) it will merely mean implementing an action plan to get your time on track.

Use your short term goals to implement your action plan. If you are not making radical changes but are just trying to take the stress out of your day you will find the time you took to think about your goals may be enough to keep your priorities in order.

If you find that you need to refocus on your goals you will need to give each short term goal a date to start or complete – write it down.

Within the time frame of the goal write down the actions that need to be taken to realize the goal. If you have discovered from the exercises above that you need to hire an assistant this may mean putting out an ad, reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, hiring and training. Each task must be assigned a time to complete.

The action plan combined with a focus on goals will help you appreciate the overall effects of valuing your time. In this example you will realize that even though you may need to use MORE time this month by interviewing and training an assistant – your GOAL to spend less time on minor tasks is being accomplished. At this point your time is valued comparative to your goal. In a month you will be spending less time with minor matters even if it requires more work at the early stage.

Resources

Part of your Action Plan should include a summary of the resources you need to meet your goals. An assistant is a resource, more education is a resource, a supportive mate is a resource. List the resources you need to obtain and include them in your action plan – when will you get them and how will they be obtained?

Review and Update

While writing goals down is an effective tool for managing your time you will still need to review and update them occasionally.

Perhaps you encounter an unexpected obstacle on your way to meeting your long term goal. Reassess and determine if you can adapt your action plan. If you cannot adapt your plan you will need to consider why the plan went off course – did you have less power to control the situation than you thought? Were you unaware of some of the resources you would need and their cost or time obligations?

Use this new information to reconsider your goal. Is it still attainable or do you need to adjust it – either by lengthening the time or changing the outcome – and devising a new action plan?

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Scheduling: Making the Most of Your Time

Before you determine that you can’t live by a schedule, consider what happens when you don’t…

The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule is a common ratio used to determine performance versus resources. It is a general assumption that we use 80% of our resources (time, money, skill) to achieve 20% of our performance. The opposite is also true – we use 20% of our resources to achieve 80% of our performance.

It is impossible to suggest that any person can be 100% productive for 100% of the time. We all have our most productive times of the day, activities and abilities. By using the processes outlined earlier you should be able to pinpoint the most productive times of the day, the most valuable use for your time and your priorities.

Now you need to recognize that to use your time to the fullest you want to find ways of increasing that 20% to 30%, 40% or even more. When you identify the most productive times of the day and schedule your top producing activities into those times and make that task a priority you’ve already reset your thinking and will be working smarter – not harder.

The ‘To-Do’ List

The ‘To-Do’ list is not just for list making junkies. If you find that tasks are not being accomplished on time or even forgotten you need a ‘to-do’ list.

How detailed you make the list is up to you but every task that is given to you should have the following recorded with it:

When does it need to be completed?

How long will it take to do?

How important is it?

When will I do it?

At the end of day make a list of tasks that need to be accomplished the following day. Prioritize them according to importance. Give each task an earlier deadline and 50% more time to complete than you think.

As soon as you start your work day you will know exactly what needs doing and when. If you have booked some uninterrupted time you will have no problem accomplishing your highest priority tasks. Tasks that do not get completed will be reassigned for another day, delegated to someone else or removed from your list.

Get in the habit of creating a ‘To-Do’ list each day. It may be easier to keep this on your computer or PDA so that you can easily re-schedule activities without writing them over onto a new sheet.

Prioritizing

Not every task can be competed in a day. Your schedule will just become another ‘task’ in your day unless you learn to prioritize. Prioritizing ensures that what NEEDS to be done is done.

When you are handed a new assignment you should immediately put it on your ‘To-Do’ list. Number the tasks on your list so that number ‘1’ is most important and work down from there.

Take your top three priorities and schedule them into your weekly or monthly planner. Write down your deadline (always a few days early!) and block off time to get it done. If it requires collaboration with others, schedule that too. You may have to make some appointments when you know where you are at with the task but it is important to write something down so that you don’t overbook.

After the top three priorities have been given their spots in your schedule start adding the others. Schedule the most important tasks first. Keep your schedule with enough time to manage day-to-day activities like reading email and returning phone calls. Plan on 50% more time to finish each task than you think necessary.

Each day will now have a list of scheduled activities that take into account the priority of individual tasks. Use this to create your daily ‘To-Do’ list.

Scheduling Low Priority Tasks

As you see your schedule filling up with high priority tasks you will need to make some decisions about your low-priority tasks.

If you have scheduled low-priority tasks into your day but have had to move them onto the following day’s to-do list they will quickly become bigger and more of a priority as you continue to put them off.

One way to prevent this is to use the ‘one more task’ philosophy. Every day try to do one more task than you planned or scheduled. One more phone call or 10 minutes filing will keep these tasks from becoming daunting.

If that is not working you may determine that these activities need to be delegated. Valuing your time requires decisiveness. These tasks keep your work moving along and if they are ignored it can cause a huge interference. Think of looking for a file when a client calls and you see that it is in a pile of 50 others. You will be loosing the effects of time management by not dealing with these issues right away.

Action Plans

Action plans are not to be confused with ‘To-Do’ lists or schedules. Action plans are the itemized tasks you need to follow to complete a goal. You completed this activity in an earlier chapter.

Sit down and determine what actions are needed to accomplish your goal. Who do you need to meet with? What resources do you need? Where do you have to go?

The Action Plan will be a crucial tool for your scheduling purposes. If you have not planned your actions your schedule may be flawed if you did not make time or plans to accomplish the goal.

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Special Tips for Family Time Management

The goal oriented process of time management works equally well in family time management as it does for work related time management.

How can you adapt these processes to the unique needs of family time management?

Get Everyone on the Same Page

You won’t be able to manage the family’s time if you have one or two members who won’t cooperate. Sit down with everyone and explain that everybody is busy but we will all be happier and get more of what we want if everybody can work together.

Make sure that everybody sees the benefit – meals won’t be so late and appointments won’t be missed if everyone does their best to keep to a schedule. That means that school appointments and extracurricular activities MUST be put on the schedule as soon as they know about them.

Respecting each other’s time will mean that everyone gets a fair chance. If schedules overlap it is time to reorganize or eliminate activities.

Make it Fun

Planning is easier when it’s fun. Get a large wall calendar or a laminated blank calendar and put the dates in. Get everyone together and assign a colored marker to each individual. Have everyone write their activities and times on the calendar (or have them tell you while you fill it in).

Every time a new appointment is made the family is required to mark it down or tell you so you can fill it in. This will prevent double booking the car or a parent’s time and the colored markers will identify if one person is demanding more of the family’s time and resources than the others.

If you are a parent and you see that your children’s schedules are packed with extra curricular activities it might be wise to limit them to once or twice a week. This is especially true if homework and projects are interfering with sleep, meals and other family time.

Teaching your kids to keep a balanced schedule not only promotes good time management habits they will need in college and work life, but it impresses on them that taking care of responsibilities and spending unstructured time together is part of a balanced life.

If everyone is dashing off in different directions all the time put meal time into the schedule as well as a family night. Both children and adults can then plan their activities in advance so that most nights the family can be together for at least a part of the evening.

Lists…so you don’t forget!

 If you have the room, make a note on the calendar of the items needed for each activity or appointment. If there’s no room you can list the activities elsewhere along with the needed items. Keep it next to the calendar and you can quickly see what needs to go with whom.

Remind each person the night before to have the necessary items ready – sports equipment, musical instruments, documents, etc.

Lists like this can also be used to make weekly meals run on time and with less stress.

Have each person tell you a meal that they enjoy. Put it on a Master list of meal ideas. Leave the list on the fridge or somewhere that the family can add on to it when they think of something.

Later, take the list and create a shopping list for the meals. Each week you can choose the meals you will make for the week and will already have a list of all the ingredients you need to make them. Take the list with you when you go grocery shopping and not only will you know what you’re making each night but you’ll be sure to have all the necessary ingredients to make it.

Spending a little time preparing will help you keep organized and prevent you or other family from forgetting items and appointments – a real time waster.

Household Chores

Just like work the home has many tasks vying for your attention: dishes, laundry, meal preparation, vacuuming etc. Use the same prioritizing process as outlined. Make a ‘to-do’ list. Prioritize the list (laundry needs doing every week, daily bed making can sometimes go undone). Schedule the tasks on your calendar so small tasks don’t become overwhelming ones.

On your ‘to-do’ list put the top priorities for the week. Daily jobs should also be listed according to priority. While you may let one or two daily tasks slip if it becomes a regular habit you’ll need to determine: delegate or remove?

If you delegate you should decide if a family member will do it or you’ll hire the job out. If it’s remove perhaps the job can be done less frequently (maybe the carpets don’t need vacuuming EVERY day). An undone task will drain you mentally. Decide if and how it’s to be done and move on.

If your children are old enough to help out use the colored marker system to ‘book’ them for meal making, dish washing, garbage collecting etc. Plan a reward at the end of the week for those who accomplished all of the tasks. While your children must learn that helping the family is not a favor, they respond as we do to rewarding tedious work with small bonuses.

Using the Goal system, choose a family goal – perhaps it’s a new DVD player or a trip to the zoo. Put the reward on the schedule with a big sticker or other eye-catching marking. Your children are sure to see it every time they look at the calendar. If they complete all their tasks without nagging for four weeks in a row – the trip to the zoo. Three months – new DVD player.

Don’t forget smaller goals. Each week can mean that if the kids do all their chores THEY pick the movie, if they don’t than YOU do. Everyone still benefits but they get more of what they want when they stick to the schedule.

Organizing Makes it Easier

If the clothes don’t fit in the dresser do you expect them to stay off the floor? The same is true for toys, shoes, dishes, videos and other items. If you are spending time moving piles from one place to another, stacking items or manipulating them to fit into their storage area, you are wasting time.

Can’t keep the kids coats off the floor? How have you arranged for them to put them away? Hangers in tall closets may not be enough, providing hooks at their level can make it easy and fun for your children to hang up backpacks, coats and other items like the dog leash.

Art materials, mail, toys and shoes do better in bins. Lining up items or arranging them in piles is time consuming and usually doesn’t get done regularly. Stop frustrating yourself by providing ‘homes’ for these items. A bin for each person’s shoes lined up under a bench makes it easy for everyone to find what they need (and put it back).

A small basket for mail gives it a ‘home’ so that school notices and bills don’t mysteriously disappear. Art supplies and small toys can be put in labeled bins making them easy to find and a snap to clean up.

Think about areas in your home that cause the most frustration and determine if you are spending too much time maintaining them. Is there a way to make household maintenance less stressful and time consuming for everyone? Spend the money and take the time to organize it – it will be well worth it.

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More Than a Schedule…Final Thoughts

Goal setting, action plans, to-do lists and schedules will all combine to help you make the most of your time. But there is something else you need to do…

You must commit.

What does commitment mean? It means that you WANT to take charge of your time. You value the hours in a day and you want them spent in the most productive way possible. It means that you will get your work done early and produce better quality. You will spend your time as YOU decide and your personal life will be spent with focus on your family and friends instead of your work.

Here are some ‘Success’ Secrets…

Value Time:

Don’t waste your time or others. Don’t wait around or pursue time consuming activities that give you little benefit. Don’t let phone calls and visits interrupt your work flow.

Prepare and Plan:

Nothing wastes time like lack of direction. Plan your goals and activities and prepare others for your expectations. Expect delays and plan to have extra time to accommodate them.

Know Your Work Habits:

Find out when you work best. What activities affect how productive you are? Watch for and get rid of habits that are unproductive. Delegate or remove tasks when needed.

Be a Problem Solver:

Complaining wastes time. Find a solution or find help and get it done.

Get the Hard Work Done First:

Don’t procrastinate. Start with the difficult work first so you can relax with the easy tasks. Work that remains undone will drain you of energy and slow your progress.

Review Your Progress:

Compare what you have done with what you planned to do. What worked? What made you feel good? What could have been done better?

And lastly, remember that busy does not equal productive. You don’t just want to get the work finished you want to have it done right. You don’t need to complete EVERY task, just arrange that they be dealt with by someone or decide that they do not need doing. You will be judged on how well and timely your work was done, not by how many hours you worked.

Time Management Sheets

Use the following forms to follow the outlined procedures.

ACTION PLAN:

State your long term goal and follow with your short term goals and the task necessary to complete them. Give definite dates and times to start and complete. List the resources you will need to accomplish them.

Use your action plan to schedule the tasks needed to accomplish your goals. Review it to determine if you are meeting your goals or have allowed other activities and tasks to take over your time.

ACTIVITY LOG:

Use one sheet per day and log for one week the daily activities you do and how you feel. List the START times of each activity and write down a new start time each time you change activities.

While you do not have to state your mood for each activity try to establish a pattern by listing at least every hour how you feel: tired, hungry, excited, stressed etc. The more detailed your log the easier it will be to see patterns emerge.

ACTION PLAN

Long Term GOAL: ___________________________________

Short Term Goal-A: ___________________________________

Short Term Goal-B: ___________________________________

Activity Log

Week of:___________________________

Day:_________________

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