The Sisyphus Comments

Achieving Your Personal Goals – Part I

Feeling overwhelmed? Is your stress level bouncing off the scale? Do you feel like you have so many things to do that you don’t even know where to start? Maybe it’s time to get your time under control.

Remember when you were in school and you didn’t finish a homework assignment? After you blamed your dog for eating it and ran out of dead relative excuses, the fall back excuse was that you just didn’t have time to do the assignment. Of course the standard teacher response was, “We all have the same amount time in a day and everyone else was able to finish their homework. You can tell me that you didn’t make it a priority but don’t tell me you didn’t have the time!” Now that you are in the working world, sometimes you may still feel like you don’t have enough time to complete your assignments. The question is what are you doing with your time. The best way to find out is to keep a time log for a week. If that sounds a bit overwhelming, try logging all of your activities for just two days. You will probably find that you spend a lot of time on unproductive activities. By unproductive, I mean things that do not help you move toward accomplishing your personal goals.

While we are on the topic of personal goals, what are your goals? Have you taken the time to write down your personal goals? Your goals are like the end destination of a trip. If you don’t know where you want to go, it is very difficult to lay out the route and to know when you have arrived. Most self improvement experts will tell you that it is very important to write down your goals. When you reduce your goals, to-do lists and problems to writing, it helps you to clarify the issues and to develop a plan of attack. One of the pillars of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” process is to develop a reliable system for documenting the tasks that you need to complete, in both your personal and professional life. Don’t try to remember the things that you need to do. Think of your brain as a cheap computer with a finite amount of storage space and a very poor storage/recall system. Just like using a poor computer, you are destined for a crash if you try to store your goals and to-do lists in your head. Besides, there is something very satisfying about crossing off completed tasks – it makes you feel like you are making progress and not just spinning your wheels.

Completing tasks is really great but most of us would be better off if we focused our energy on “starting” tasks. Confusius said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Whether you are talking about a major work project, a home improvement project or obtaining a college degree, the hardest part is often just getting started. So get started on the tasks that will help you achieve your goals.

See this stuff is simple, isn’t it. Well it would be if life would just quit getting in the way. Have you ever started your week with well defined goals only to have some unexpected interruption throw a monkey wrench into your plans? Guess what, the same thing happens to everyone else, nearly everyday, so don’t let an unexpected disruption throw you off course. Plan for disruptions by scheduling some time cushions into your day. When an unexpected challenge arises, deal with it and then get back to doing the important things.

In Part II of this series, we will help you choose the personal information management system that is right for you and will help you achieve your personal goals.