Our lives are getting more complex every day. Anyone who wants to succeed and compete must learn how to manage time effectively and become more productive. One of the most important tools in time management is to understand what you really want. Suppose you learn skills or discover tools that let you become faster. Now, if you don’t know where you are going or what you want, it is likely that you will be going fast in a https://npfinancials.com.au/ direction that will not necessarily benefit you. It seems that knowing your goals can significantly help you to avoid wasting time and become enormously more productive.
Extensive research in this area shows that people who have goals, especially strong goals in the earlier parts of their lives, can become significantly more successful in life.
Goal setting is a skill and like all skills it must be mastered by practice and persistence. Consider the following goal; “I want to become rich”. There are several problems with this goal. What does it mean to be rich? When do you want to become rich? At what point would you declare yourself rich? What happens then?
Just about everyone likes to be rich or richer. However, history shows that those who go on to become rich are those who set themselves very defined and specific goals that was nothing like “I want to get rich”. In fact successful people usually have some other goal and they get rich only indirectly as a result of getting to their goals (obviously we are ignoring getting rich randomly such as winning lottery).
To set appropriate goals and improve your time management, you need to follow five golden rules:
Rule 1: Define SMART Goals
SMART is a handy acronym that beautifully captures the essence of goal setting. It stands for the following:
- Specific. Your goal must be well defined. Example: “I want to earn £100,000”
- Measurable. You need to be able to measure your progress towards this goal. This allows you to know when you get there or if you are going wrong. Example: “I want to earn £100,000 a year no later than in three years time.”
- Achievable. You must feel and believe that you can actually achieve this goal. For example if you set your goal as, “I want to go to Mars”, then it is possible that this will never happen. Set a goal that you can see yourself getting there.
- Realistic. The goal must be realistic and logical. This is particularly important as you set various goals for yourself. For example, if you commute to work by car and set a goal as, “I want to cut my travel time by 30 minutes” and another goal as, “I want to cycle to work”, then you may not be able to achieve both if the cycling is going to take longer.
- Timely. The goal must have a well defined time stamp. You should know how long you have to achieve it and also how it fits with your other goals. Reme