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3 Steps to Setting and Achieving your Goals in 2013

January 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

A Recipe to Keep your New Year’s Resolutions

(click below to view the video or read on if you’d prefer!)

Hello and a happy and prosperous 2013 to all! For many, January is the month of so-called "resolutions". And yet, I just read that one in four New resolutionsYear’s resolutions are broken in the first week, that is to say 7 days – at most – since they were made. Impressive! That is to say: impressively depressing!

So how can one do better and keep to more New Year’s resolutions in 2013 of course but also for the following years? Here is a small recipe with just three ingredients that will allow you to make the right New Year’s resolutions for you and to stick with them. I have been using it for years so I know it works!

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Career Tips, Change, Resilience, Work Objectives Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Stretch to Impress!

September 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

End the Year on a High Note by Delivering on a Stretch Objective!

(click below to view the video or read on if you’d prefer!)

In my last post, I recommended you proactively take stock of where you are at with respect to your work objectives for 2011. Even if you had a midyear performance review, I hope you gave the ’3 list’ method a go. Not only will it serve you well when the annual performance appraisal process kicks off in a few weeks but being clear today about where you at with respect to your 2011 objectives will make it possible for you to precisely focus your energy for the last 3 months of the year.

If you missed my article on the ’3 list’ approach to work performance self-assessment, you can see it here.

Now you’re got your three lists, there are two main scenarios:

  1. You’re doing well. In this article, we’ll work on this assumption and look at making use of your restored energy to lift the bar a bit higher and thus end this year with a flourish!
  2. It’s clear that you won’t be meeting all your objectives for 2011. This delicate situation will be the topic of next month’s series so you can still have a decent yearend evaluation.

If you’re doing well with respect to meeting your 2011 objectives, this quarter could simply be about making sure that you steadily complete all outstanding tasks by their due dates. While you should clearly do this at a minimum, it is possible that you may also have the opportunity to raise the bar and exceed your objectives. You could set yourself one or more stretch objective. [Read more...]

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Where Did Your Day Go?

March 14, 2011 by 1 Comment

Good Things Come to Those Who Manage Their Time

(click below to view the video or read on if you’d prefer!)

 

Do you recognize this little guy?

This is of course the famous White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland .

The White Rabbit is always running behind. Do you know what it feels like? This constant rushing – from one task to the next? Are you often late, running behind for meetings?

Do you often find that the day is gone, it’s 6pm or 7pm, or even later, and you haven’t done what you planned? So you have to work late or you bring work home during the evening or even during the weekend?

Is it because there is just too much to do?  Too many things to fit into the day and too little time to do them all?

Now do you recognise this other little guy?

Just as famous as the White Rabbit: it is the ‘headless chicken’! Do you spend your days in a flurry of activity and yet you don’t feel you’ve achieved very much? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Time Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To Achieve your Objectives, Stay Connected, Confident and in Control

February 21, 2011 by 2 Comments

The Secret to Achieving your Objectives is Staying "in the Zone"!

If you practised setting goals the SMARTEY way, I hope you found it helpful in getting clear about your goals, both in your head and in your gut so that you felt energised about starting to work on making your goals happen.

In my experience, the SMARTEY way of setting goals is not just a memorable acronym for a useful process, it is also key to staying motivated to make steady process on your goal and do whatever it takes for however long it takes until you achieve your goals.  

And this is because using the SMARTEY method gets you to a special space of comfort around your objectives from which you can draw strength and motivation until you succeed. I call that place the "zone" and when you are in the "zone", you:

  • stay Connected to your goals,
  • remain Confident about your success and
  • retain Control over your objectives.

Let me illustrate how staying in the "zone" will help you achieve your goals as well as share the pitfalls of not being Connected enough to your goals, not feeling Confident enough to achieve them and not being in Control enough. [Read more...]

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How to Set Yourself Objectives — the SMARTEY Way

February 1, 2011 by 3 Comments

Why you want to set yourself objectives at work using the SMARTEY method

Once you have identified a personal goal or a work objective, it will make all the difference how you actually articulate it so that you are clear about your target and you feel energized to keep working towards it until you finally get there.

I want to show you how setting so-called ‘SMART goals’ can help you do that. There is no official definition of this very famous acronym so this is my reading of it but I hope it will be helpful to you.

  • ‘S’ is for ‘Specific’.

Let me illustrate this with an example: let’s say you set as your goal: "I want to lose weight". Now how what about if you said instead: "I want to lose 10 pounds between by the end of June"? What is the difference between these two sentences?

Simply put, the main difference is that, with the second sentence, you have told yourself what things will have to look like so that you can know that you are losing weight. So being ‘specific’ when setting an objective is about answering the question: "what does my objective look like for me?" and fleshing out what starts off as a vague discomfort (here around the current weight) or a loose aspiration into something tangible and therefore real. In that way, your goal goes from one which is shared by millions to one which belongs only to you.    

When you have a specific target, you are clear about what it is in your mind but you also feel it in your gut. A sense of capability emerges; you feel that you will be able to achieve your goal! This is why I also think that ‘S’ stands for ‘strong’ because when you set a specific goal for yourself, you will most likely feel imbued with the strength to pursue it! [Read more...]

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What Are Your Objectives for 2011?

January 31, 2011 by 1 Comment

Back to basics: what is a goal anyway?

The start of a new year is typically a time when goals are at the forefront of many people’s minds. But January has come and gone so: did you set New Year resolutions? If so, did you make a start? And how about at the office: have you started to work on your objectives for 2011?

In my experience, setting goals is not always easy so, in this post, I want to reflect on what a goal is.

For me, the ‘G’ of ‘goal’ puts me in mind of the ‘G’ in ‘gap’.

In that sense, you can visualise achieving your goal as simply a way of filling a gap between where you are now and where you have identified you want to be.

Or who you are now and who you want to be. Or what you have now and what you want to have.

That gap can usually be expressed as ‘more’ or ‘less’ of something in your life.    

For example, after celebrating the arrival of a New Year, many of us might want to lose a bit of weight. So let’s look at the goal of losing weight and let’s rephrase it as "I want to weigh less" where ‘less’ is the goal to bridge the gap between your current and target weight. [Read more...]

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