Goal setting — or the lack of goal setting — is a hot topic in today’s IT professional community. Many of us just get up in the morning and make our way to the office and tackle the first thing that appears in our inbox or the take care of the user who screams the loudest. Here’s how to break out of that pattern.
Have you ever said to yourself: “I got nothing done today that I wanted to” or “where did the day, week, month or year go?”
This alarming trend is happening across the business world. But when you set goals, you have a road map to live by and a clear view of your final destination (not to be confused with your final resting place). Through goal setting, the loudest user doesn’t monopolize your day and you have the ability to accomplish what you want in your life.
So stop. Before you answer the help desk line with an irate caller on the other end, take the following steps:
- Think about where you want to go and what you want to accomplish in your life.
- Determine who is going to help you achieve your goals.
- Consider this key word: Accountability. It is useless to set goals and then have no one to hold you accountable for pursuing and achieving them.
All IT professionals must have a peer group, mentor/coach or success partner that holds them accountable.
Contributing blogger Stuart Crawford provides mentoring services to Microsoft Small Business Specialists across the world. He has also written multiple books on goal setting.
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This is a huge trend that the majority of people in our business environment are grappling with. Having the web streaming an unlimited quantity of interesting info at you everyday doesn’t exactly help you to focus, and the pace of business is faster than ever.
I’m not a “gtd junkie” as they call them, but I can say that since I discovered the “getting things done” methodology for time management, it’s helped more than anything else. Easy to get lost in though; I always recommend just read the first 125 pages of the first book “Getting Things Done” and focus on the basics.
What gtd boils down to is putting all of your stuff - your projects tasks, goals, etc - into some kind of database, then managing it systematically and regularly. It also recommends a set of behavior changes and rules. And example is the 2-minute rule, anything that takes less than 2 minutes to do, you do on the spot (harder to do consistently, than you might think!).
Anyway there is no perfect solution for THIS one!
-steve