I’ve heard it said that “Goals without dates are simply dreams.” I believe that. Looking back over my life, I’ve realized that I’m wired to have a gazillion ideas about a gazillion different things but have struggled to prioritize them and “birth” them into my world. As I mentioned in the last post, it has only been until recently that I’ve been goal-setting and it’s helped bring to reality those accomplishments that I desired.
A note about Goals. You have to be able to control the goal. If you say, “I have a goal of increasing our customer/congregation base by 25%,” you’re in for a let down. The reason is you can’t control if people like your product or church. But you can say, “I have a goal to make 25% more people contacts this year.” That’s measurable. That’s a goal!
Here is one of the methods that I use for goal setting. It is from speaker/author Brian Tracy:
1 – Decide what you want. What do you really want for your life this year? To influence a certain people group? To climb a mountain or run a marathon?
2 – Write it down.
3 – Set a deadline. Remember that a goal without a deadline is only a dream. If the goal is huge (e.g. write my first novel), then set sub-deadlines (e.g. finish one chapter per month).
4 – Brainstorm a list of everything you can think of that you could do to accomplish this.
5 – Organize the list. What is the sequence (i.e. what has to come first, etc) and what is the priority (i.e. what is the most important item on this list?). Accomplish that first.
6 – Do something. This is the most crucial of the list. “Simple action gets things done. Focused action changes the world!” (I just made that up. Feel free to Tweet it :))
7 – Do something everyday.
Monday, I’ll give you an activity to put these 7 steps into play for 2012 and let you know some of my goals.
Peace
Todd Stocker 