Goals Are for Professionals

If you aren’t in business don’t bother writing goals.

When I type the search term, “time management” I come up with results for professionals and for students.  The same is true for “goal setting” and when I get to “productivity” I am squarely in the realm of professionals.  But what about everyone else?  What about your home life?  What about moms and individuals who don’t fit into those categories.  Clearly, goals are for professionals and unnecessary for the remainder of the population.

Even within the realm of my own business I have asked for goals and simply received vague sentences, if even that, about improving performance or increasing client work.  So, goals are set for businesses for students working on school performance, and for new year’s resolutions. Or vague goals are set. I often see goals that are set that are not specific or clear.  Things like ‘lose weight’ and ‘get organized’.

What if you arranged your life, all areas of it, around goals?   And what if those goals were clear and actionable? AND, what if you accomplished them?  How would that feel?  How would your life be different?  Can you imagine having a defined direction and purpose that you were acting on?  You need not be a professional to set goals or limit productivity and time-management concepts to work or school.  And amazingly enough, applying these ideas will not limit your creativity.  On the contrary, people who are organized find a freedom to create  in the space that is opened when they become more organized.

Setting Goals is Organizing Your Time Around the Direction You Are Heading

Goals can be as simple and small as, “I will brush my teeth this morning for 2 minutes starting at 6:00am” to as grand and big as, “In the next 5 years I will save money for the downpayment on a house by setting aside $500 per month.”  Both goals fit the SMART model of being:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Actionable
• Realistic and
• Time Sensitive

Even still, sometimes creating a SMART Goal is not quite enough.  You need to put that goal into action.  There are steps that you can take to ensure that the goals you set for yourself are fail proof.  Do you know what they are?  Post a comment to continue the conversation…

Or find out more at Dreams to ACTION! on Saturday, February 22, 2014

Here is my goal:  In the next 6 months I will help 10 people understand their goals, create actionable steps and achieve those goals.