This post is about goal setting and how to get the most out of the goals which you decide to set.  It is the second part of my series on improving your productivity and liberating your life.  Freeing yourself from the 9 – 5 grind.  The first part can be found here.

Goal setting is important.  Very important.  Everyone should set goals in their life or they will just wander around aimlessly.  It is far better to set out to achieve something and achieve it rather than muddle around aimlessly and maybe eventually bump into something meaningful.

Goal setting isn’t really that difficult.  All you have to do is sit down and say “I want to achieve…” and then do it.  The key is to setting effective goals.  For me, I like to have 1 main goal in each area of my life that I am working towards.  I can’t tell you what your goal is or should be.  I don’t know you and it would take the fun of discovering it away from you.  I don’t like the timescale to be much more than 6 months for any long term goal.  On a daily basis I like to give myself no more than five goals.  Five goals a day is really pushing it too.  I ideally have one, two or three goals on any given day.

I decide my goals before I even get out of bed in the morning.  I try and figure out how I want to do each thing and then I get up and do it.  So, out of all the things I can get done, how do I decide what three things I want to do in the morning?

Important Versus Urgent

I do important things.  Important things should not be confused with urgent things. Urgent things are rarely important. Important things help me get towards my long term goals.  Urgent things are just things that need to be done. They don’t really help you with the big picture.  The big picture is the important thing.  It’s more important that you get your startup business running

Sometimes the urgent things need to get done.  That’s a fact of life.  Bills need paying, food needs buying, etc etc etc. Rather than procrastinating on the important things by doing the urgent things I’d much rather just get on with the important things. Important things are usually more fun too.  I find it far more enjoyable to write a blog post   I don’t yet have the money to pay someone to do the urgent things, but as soon as I do, I will get an assistant.  Things that could be done by an assistant are always unimportant.

In day to day goal setting, by focusing on what’s important rather than what is urgent and ruthlessly pursuing those goals and only those goals, you can achieve much more towards your big life goals, rather than spending your time messing around with unimportant tasks that just waste your time.  Time that could be better used doing important things or simply enjoying being alive.

Tips For Achieving Your Goals

Here are a few tips I found useful to help me achieve my goals for the day.

Eliminate dead time wherever possible.  It takes me over half an hour to walk to my office.  If I don’t need to be there, I don’t go. I have a little app called Papers on my iPhone.  I store all my scientific research papers on it so I can always check things out wherever I am.

Remind yourself about your goals.  There are apps available on the iTunes store for this but for me using the basic calendar app and re-occuring events is the easiest way.  I have a notification at 12, 4 and 8pm every day to remind me to be working towards my goals.  If I’m procrastinating,

Is this important? You should ask yourself this question all the time.  If something isn’t important, don’t waste your time on it. I have more reminders asking me if what I’m doing is important.  If it isn’t, the notification gives me the kick I need to work at something important.

Use the 80 20 rule I shared in this post here.  Remember that 80% of your value is created by 20% of your effort (or time) so whenever you’re making a decision, have this in the back of your head.  Is this replicating or improving on the 20% of my effort that is creating the most value?  If not, don’t bother with it.  Think of something else to do which will create more value instead.

The most value (in my opinion) in this post comes from two paragraphs.  The rest, whilst not padding, is useful but the main points of this post can be found with relatively little reading.  80% of the value of this post comes from 20% (or less) of the words I have written.

I’ve shared a few tips that help me in my goal setting and achieving those goals.  Hopefully they can help you if you’re having trouble setting goals or entertain you if you’re a bit bored.  This last series of posts was inspired by the work of Tim Ferriss.  His book, The 4 Hour Work Week,  can be purchased from Amazon, below this article.  If you buy through this link, I get a commission too, so what are you waiting for?!?

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