Section 7.2. Setting Goals


7.2. Setting Goals

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life (Signet) is a classic book on time management. The book brings out the necessity of listing your short-, medium-, and long-term goals, and encourages you to categorize them into A, B, and C priorities, with A being the highest priority.

Let's do just that.

Take a big sheet of paper and divide it into six sections, as shown in Figure 7-1 (people with lots of goals or large handwriting might want to use multiple sheets of paper).

Figure 7-1. Goal planning sheet


You're going to fill in each box with a list of life goals in that category. You can add additional timeframes if you feel your goals are grouped differently.

Now spend some time listing your goals. To help you get started, here are some guidelines:


1 month

Typically these are the smaller projects on your mind. Completing projects that have started, replacing a piece of equipment, and so on.


1 year

These are the bigger projects. Often they include various reorganizations you'd like to make, both technical ("replace current directory service with a single-sign-on system") or organizational ("reorganize group into customer-focused teams").


5 year

These are the biggest projects, often including life-changing goals such as career moves ("get an MBA and move into management") or life changes ("get married").

Don't worry about their order or whether your goals are good enough for anyone else to see. Just list them. I'll wait.

Really. I'll wait. Don't continue to the next paragraph until you've completed your chart. Not in your head, but on real paper.

You didn't list them did you? You figured you'd come back to this chapter some other time and fill out the table. All the exercises in this book have one thing in common: they don't work unless you do them. So now pull out a sheet of paper and start writing!

I'll wait....

Really....

Are you back? Good.

Now go back and make sure each goal is measurable. Could another person examine the situation and determine that the goal has been met? Can you use numbers or tangible results as evidence of completion? Review your list now and make sure. Again, I'll wait.

Next, for each goal, work out which are As, which are Bs, and which are Cs. As you absolutely must do, Bs are the next most important, and Cs are the good ideas or "would be nice" items that are low priority. This is similar to the priority scheme used in Chapter 4.

Go mark them now. I can't stress enough the importance of doing these exercises as you come across them.

That wasn't as easy as you thought, was it? Did you want to mark everything with an A? I know I did. Prioritization can take as long as, or longer, than writing the initial list.

You might also want to write "lifetime goals," such as where you want to be when you retire (both geographically and financially). Due to the way compound interest boosts investments, the sooner you start your financial planning, the better.





Time Management for System Administrators
Time Management for System Administrators
ISBN: 0596007833
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 117

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