Setting and Achieving Goals

Time is the great equalizer. Whether you are smart or dumb, ugly or beautiful, you have the same 168 hours each week that everyone else has. How you spend that valuable commodity determines the quality of your life just as surely as if you walked into a department store and ordered it. Time is more precious than any possession.

The irony of that prejudice is that good time management is a key--a key to achieving goals and enjoying life. The beginning is simple, a promise to yourself to be honest, and the first stage is the willingness to differentiate among fantasies, dreams, and goals.

I may fantasize that I am a rock star, adored by millions, or I may dream that I’m Donald Trump making million dollar deals. This latter dream usually involves rewards but not the work itself. Fantasies and dreams are alike in that they are always effortless. No work, no struggle, but instantaneous Fantasies and dreams help us to escape. Escape can be good entertainment, but goals are the markers on the road of accomplishment.

Set Goals

Goals are those accomplishments that we deliberately set out to achieve. They may be small and simple: I'll do the dishes tonight. Or they may be large, complex, and long term: I want to enjoy my work and do it well, or I want to create a family based on love and respect. We may choose goals in every aspect of our lives: personal, social, academic, occupational, athletic, and spiritual. A broad goal, such as good health, may spawn many smaller goals, such as maintaining a regular exercise schedule, eating a healthy diet, and getting regular medical checkups. Some goals are behaviours we want to decrease or increase or maintain.

New Year's resolutions -- those wild promises we make to ourselves after the indulgences of the holidays--are rarely kept, for we try to change too much too quickly. The truth of the matter is that if we want to change a behaviour permanently we usually have to change it slowly. Changing a behaviour requires some discipline, but not the amount most people imagine. The way to change a behaviour slowly is to make a small promise to ourselves, keep it, and reward ourselves. A typical example would be a CBA who has decided to go to work at 8 A.M the next day. He knows he needs to go to work to get paid, so he promises himself that he will go to sleep by midnight. He sets the alarm for 7 A.M. and places it across the room. When it goes off, he reminds himself of his promise and why it is important. As he's getting ready, he compliments himself on his behaviour and tells himself that going to work is important.

How we spend the minutes and hours of our days determines what we accomplish. Thinking about changing behaviours in our lives will not actually change them. Only actually making the change does. Talking about our weight while we are eating pizza does not cause weight loss. Exercise and a sensible diet will control our weight. Those links from behaviours to accomplishments to goals are crucial. Do our behaviours and accomplishments lead us to our goals or away from them?

If your current behaviours will not lead you to your goals, try the following three steps for two weeks. This time management system is not a jail.

Write down three goals you want to accomplish this year. You may want a raise, a date with the redhead that you pass every morning, or a better relationship with your family. Your goal may be large or small. If your life seems out of control right now, write down one goal for this week. What will you have to do to accomplish that goal?

Key Behaviour
Isolate the key behaviours for your goals. Work related Key behaviours may include going to work, paying attention and taking notes, reading new information, learning new applications etc. Personal key financial behaviours include planning a weekly budget, paying bills on time. Key personal behaviours include handling business details such as insurance and car inspections promptly, keeping your personal space neat, getting adequate sleep.

We lie to ourselves about key behaviours. They are often boring and mundane, and we want to delay them. Actually, we want someone else to do them. We want them to disappear. So we lie; we say that we will do it later, after the party or the movie. Tomorrow. Those lies usually result in poor effort (lower grades), late payments (penalties), and lower self-esteem. The more lies, the greater the amount of chaos.

Those lies are part of a larger behaviour pattern called procrastination. We may procrastinate in just one area of our life such as studying or that pattern may permeate the entirety of our life. Procrastination occurs when we deliberately choose to delay or omit a behaviour that we believe we should do. The reasons are legion. The most common cause of procrastination is our unwillingness to recognize and to pay the "price tag" for an outcome we say we want. An example would be that we want a 100% on the next Quality Eval, but the price tag is that we have to ensure all information is covered in the NORM Model, attend POD sessions, read the QuEST Connection Newsletter, attend coaching session with both my manager and my QuEST Coach, get outside assistance with behaviours I need to change, etc. How much do we really want that 100%? And then there is no guarantee that we will make it; that work just gives us the opportunity to achieve that grade. Any goal can be subjected to that kind of scrutiny. Price tags are usually much higher than we want to admit. We always look for a bargain; witness the current spate of television ads about weight loss without effort or denial.

There are more serious causes of procrastination. We may be so overcommitted that exhaustion engulfs us. We may be so bound to the conviction that what we do should be perfect that we are afraid to start, for whatever we accomplish it will not be perfect. We may be rebellious, even to the extent of rebelling against ourselves and our own goals. We may be afraid to succeed because our families or significant others have told us we are failures and we believe them. We may feel more comfortable with failure than with success. We may be depressed emotionally and feel so "dragged out" that we cannot start any new behaviour. We may be lazy and simply unwilling to work.

If procrastination is a characteristic of your life and you dislike the consequences of it, then take some time to reflect on why you do it. The suggestions that follow will help you overcome a mild case of procrastination, but if your behaviour stems from serious causes and is engulfing your life, then seek professional help. Procrastination is a learned behaviour; you can learn not to do it. You can learn to set your goals, plan your actions, and accomplish those actions in a timely manner.

If you want to change how you manage your own behaviours, then select a goal that is important to you. Write down the key behaviours for that goal. Which ones are you currently doing? Which key behaviour would you like to change? Focus on it. What can you do to increase the likelihood you will do that behaviour?

Make a Plan

Make a plan to make that key behaviour a habit. When a key behaviour becomes a habit (a behaviour we don't have to think about), we benefit. We are doing the right thing without a struggle.

Imagine a student in a freshman math class. She wants to make at least a B and realizes that a key behaviour is completing the homework problems on time. Her class is Tuesday--Thursday, and she often does her homework late on Monday and Wednesday evenings. By that time, she has forgotten what went on in class, and the problems seem overwhelmingly difficult. Two key behaviours for her goal would be to do the homework as soon as it is assigned and then review it before class. Her plan to make those behaviours habits is simple: On Tuesdays and Thursdays after history, she walks to the library and picks a quiet place to study. (She has set the video cassette recorder to record her favourite soap.) It has only been two hours since the math class, so she still remembers what went on in class. She starts working on the homework problems. If she gets confused or stuck, she takes a short break and then attempts the problem again. If she still cannot do it, she leaves it and attempts other problems. After working on several others, she again attempts the confusing one(s). If she's successful, she completes her work and goes home. If there are unsolved problems, she goes to one of the campus learning labs and requests help. Several days later, she takes thirty minutes before math class to look over the problems and quickly work one or two. She's ready for class. After two weeks, it's automatic for her to go to the library after history class. The habit is in place.

Two habits that can transform the quality of your life are simple and powerful. When something needs to be done, DO IT. Do it right away. Don't put it off. You will just think about it and feel guilty. The longer you delay, the guiltier you will feel. Whether it is getting out of bed and getting cleaned up or picking up the trash or reading the chapter--just do it.
Give yourself ten minutes. If you get up ten minutes earlier in the morning, you won't have to rush. If you leave for work or an appointment ten minutes earlier, you arrive on time, regardless of traffic or parking. That extra ten minutes reduces stress, and it also reduces the likelihood that you will make a mistake because you are hurrying. That extra ten minutes adds quality to your life.
Your TM and your QuEST Coach are your supervisors. They evaluate your performance, and your performance record is your transcript. Your transcript reflects your cumulative performance and is an accurate indicator of how well you have mastered the use of time. When you master time, then you are a professional.