This article is written by Udemy instructor Emilie Schrevens-Wester and is part of The Entrepreneur Masterclass.
Ah, goals. Everybody knows they should use them but most people do it wrong. Let’s dive into some types of goals and how to get them done. Small reminder before we keep going, this is what SMART goals stands for:
SPECIFIC
MEASURABLE
ACHIEVABLE
RELEVANT
TIME-BOUND
1. Creating career/professional goals
First off, it’s perfectly fine to establish career goals by looking at what others did before you. You need to make sure it’s all compatible for your situation, adapt the goals if needed and let’s get going.
If you want to start fresh, keep reading!
In your career, there are a lot of goals you might want to achieve. It could be getting a promotion, getting a higher paying job, maybe being friends with a lot of people to advance your career. Let’s break that down into doable goals that will actually have meaning (and are measurable):
2. Learning hard and soft skills
Maybe what you’re lacking at work can be solved with a four hour course. Whether it be mastering Excel sheets, learning to be positive, likable or being an effective leader. Ask around “what did you wish I could do better when working?”, maybe everyone will give the same answer, maybe you will get pointers about things you didn’t even think of.
Check with the management if they’d be okay for you to take courses while at work. If not, make a small sacrifice and learn things at home on your own time.
Not sure where to go? Just ask your management if they have some Linkedin course they’d like you to take.
3. Improving your productivity
This can mean different things depending on what your job is. If you work in customer service, you can aim at improving at different daily tasks: taking more calls/cases, having a higher satisfaction rate, selling more (if you do outbound calls), starting a project to help productivity at work, etc.
If you work in a supermarket, your goals could be to serve and help customers the best way possible, making sure that the shelves are clean and organized, and being proactive about missing products or other requests from customers.
I cannot really speak on key performance indicators for other professions, but you should be able to think about it yourself if you’re in this industry.
Multi-task has been proven to be a little bit of a bullsh*t concept over time. It’s actually not productive to try to multitask if you don’t master the skill.
Think of Henry Ford inventing the assembly line. Instead of having 10 people knowing how to build a car from scratch and working on their cars solo, he changed it up and got 10 people doing one task each. When one was done, the next person would do the next task. Same thing! Either you are medium good at a lot of tasks, or you are an expert in your regular task, but you can’t be an expert at all the tasks. That’s why this model worked so well in the car industry, it’s better to have 10 experts at their own little task than 10 guys who know how to assemble a car but cannot do every task perfectly, for obvious safety reasons.
Get rid of what distracts you. Obviously do this on the things you can control. If a colleague is annoying you and distracting you, getting rid of them permanently will land you in jail.
Make sure you eat and drink before working so you don’t start getting distracted because you’re hungry or you want to check what’s in the fridge for the 5th time today. Keep a healthy snack and a bottle of water on your desk so you don’t have to go walk in the kitchen/cafetaria and lose your focus.
If you’re sick, rest or slow down on the daily workload. No need to exhaust yourself or show up at work to share your sickness.
4. Figuring out how you manage things
This is both for your work and personal life. Once you figure out how you manage your time, energy, and even how you interact with others, you will be able to set more specific and efficient goals.
5. CLEAR goals
Somebody probably wanted to make a new way to set goals and also spell out a word, that’s why we have CLEAR goals. It stands for:
COLLABORATIVE - you’re gonna get it done with other people
LIMITED - Cut in doable chunks for easy managing
EMOTIONAL - Linked to you and other collaborators on an emotional level
APPRECIABLE - Cut in doable chunks so you’re happy when you finish one chunk
REFINABLE - Goal can be adapted in case there’s changes
Not sure who invented that but props to them.
6. Creating personal goals
For personal goals, I usually choose to get inspiration from the Panda Planner. I set daily small goals, weekly medium goals and big monthly goals. For example:
Day goals: Write 5 pages of my course
Week goal: Take 3 courses on self-improvement
Monthly: Make $500 in course sales.
It helps me figure out what to do and how to set the next daily goal. If today I did well and already wrote 5 pages and took 1 course, then I know that tomorrow I can focus on writing my course more than taking the 2nd course of the week. My monthly goal is there to remind me daily that I need to do short tasks to get new students to sign up. Sort your goals by priority, using the Eisenhower Matrix for example:
If you struggle to keep up with your goals, find a trusted friend or colleague that will check up on you and question you when you fail to hit your goals. Having another pair of eyes to check how you’re doing is not a bad thing.
If you get discouraged, take a break, sometimes, things don’t work and it’s okay. Breathe in, breathe out, look at what can be improved and try again.
7. Gamify your goals
Whenever I need something done, I gamify it with rewards (my hobby is gaming so my rewards are about gaming). Writing 5 pages a day is my normal goal, I reward myself with one hour of gaming for getting it done (the normal amount I play daily). If I work hard and write more, I get more gaming time, or other perks, like allowing myself to order food, or work on a different type of task the next day.
コメント