Essential practices of smart goals and planning

Essential practices of smart goals

Essential practices of smart goals.

A checklist for effective planning.
The dos:

1. Trust the process. Go through the planning process. Use it.
2. It’s a skill so it takes practice and discipline.
3. Be crisp. Everyone around you will appreciate your conciseness in what you want and expect, including yourself.
4. Use a trained coach or partner to go through the process and keep you honest. It’s easy to let yourself cheat and skip ahead. A trained partner, coach can keep you on track. The best in world in sports, music, business use coaches, mentors. Why don’t you?
5. Face realities clearly. Don’t lie to yourself. Easier said than done if you are good at it.
6. Allow white space in the process. Give yourself time buffers between projects and tasks. This allows the situation to sink in, time to plan your next steps, and time for the unexpected.
7. Accept mistakes, take your lumps, and move on.

The don’ts:

1. Avoid history lessons. Learn what went wrong and right and move on. It’s a waste of time to rehash the past.
2. Fears don’t help. Really, they simply don’t help.
3. Blaming others doesn’t help. Goes without saying.
4. “Just the facts ma’am” Stick with the facts like Sergeant Joe Friday.
5. Don’t put up with vague goals from yourself or anyone else. Get crisp.
6. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to take on and executing vague goals.

Traps

1. No matter how tempting,avoid jumping to tasksbefore their time, before the planning is done. When building a deck, to go buy lumber before you know what exactly you’re building and how much you need is a waste of time and money.
2. If goals, rewards, consequences come and go frequently, you were sloppy with your prep work in your goals.
3. Fixed, handed-off plans are useless. They are not well thought out each new day as new situations arise. Constant planning is required, as if you are in a tough, competitive playoff game. The game is not scripted.

Additional guidelines

1. Be prepared that obstacles will come and go fast and furiously. Goals will not come and go if they are well aligned and thought out. However the obstacles can seem chaotic at times. Keep these separated in your mind. It helps to not feel so overwhelmed.
2. Well planned goals and execution in a gpostth environment is messy. Things change.
3. Create a not-to-do list. Those things that are not essential to achieving your goals.
4. Planning is a daily activity. Use 30 minutes the beginning of each week to plan your week, 10 minutes a day to plan and revise your day.
5. Communicate your goals constantly, especially to your team. Get them in view to yourself and those who will affect the goals or be affected by them.

Assume Time is not really an obstacle 9 times out of 10 there’s too many non-essential tasks you feel you must do. Find what’s essential and determine your “not-to-do” list.Lack of crisp goals can take up as much as 2 hours a day in useless activity.

“Dominate your life with Focus, Decision and Execution.”