Section 7.5. Revisit Your Goals Regularly

7.5. Revisit Your Goals Regularly

What you have now is a good start. However, you need a way to make sure you keep with the system. On the first day of the month, every month, take a moment to plan your goals. Close your office door (or go to a quiet place) and do the following:

• Goal review. Review and update your goal list. Cross out any completed goals. If you've jotted down any new goals since the last goal review, decide if they still sound like good ideas. If they do, prioritize them. Evaluate your prioritization of existing goals vis-à-vis the new goals you've added.

• Step review. Review and update your next steps list. As steps are marked "done," schedule later steps into your to do lists, as before.

Over time, you'll get much better at figuring out how to schedule the next steps into your calendar. I try to sprinkle them into Mondays so that when I plan my week, I can make room for them, sliding them to a better day if needed.

How can you remember to do this? Set a repeated event in your PDA called "Goal & Next Step Review." Have it repeat on the first of every month or the first Monday of every month. Now you'll always have a reminder to do this process.

If you use a PAA, set up a sheet of "repeating events" that is reviewed at the start of each month. Every time I load the next month's worth of page-per-day sheets, I go through the "repeating events" sheet and use it to mark the various goal steps in my calendar.