My Weekend Ritual Part 3 – Goal planning

Courtesy Emil .
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This is a third part in my series on my weekend ritual and how I maintain my health, money and time. Here is part 1 and part 2.

Time.

Possibly the grand daddy of all resources – the hardest to get back, the hardest to measure how much you have.  

And that’s why the most important part of my weekend ritual is my goals check in.
A lot of my system draws from Michael Hyatt’s Best Year Ever. I found this was a very useful book and highly recommend it (if money is an obstacle, check if it’s available at your local library).

Goal Pitfalls

Personally, I have really struggled with goal setting. It took me many years to feel (somewhat) competent at setting goals. This is for a number of reasons.

First of all, its sometimes hard to distinguish which goals to manage. I think this stems from the fact that the definition of goals is pretty vague. Just look at this dictionary definition for instance – the end towards which effort is directed. The end towards which effort is directed?! Aren’t I doing that every second of my life? Examples include:

• consistently breathing
• remembering to lock my door when I leave home
• buying food so I have something to eat.

Truth is there are lots of “goals” in life that you are continually doing, accomplishing and kicking ass at without any management. A lot of them are simple and managing them is about as productive as trying to count every grain of sand on a beach.

Another issue is how often to manage your goals and what level of management or elevation. Inappropriately micromanaging your goals not only lowers the efficiency of your goal management but can also demotivate. For instance, if you have a big goal, which will take a long time, has inconsistent and slow progress (such as starting a blog), checking your progress daily is like watching paint dry or a mountain erode. You can quickly lose interest if you look at your goals with the wrong elevation and wrong frequency.

Finally, just like money, there is the emotional aspect of goals, especially for big important goals. The purpose of “goals” is logical and rational, to efficiently spend your resources and clearly quantify your progress… and yet… they are filled with emotions. This is because we sometimes strongly emotionally invest in goals (“it’s my dream to be a rock star!”), we entangle our identities in our goals (“I’ll become a famous celebrity to get the approval I crave!”) and judge ourselves according to our perceived success (“Man, nobody likes my music, I am a failure”). Therefore, its important to manage the emotional aspects of goals just as much as the logical aspects. Ignore the emotional aspects and they will sabotage and hijack your goals. Harness them properly and they will propel you like wind in your sail (even though anybody who has sailed can tell you, the wind will still sometimes still be uncooperative).

Handling Goal Pitfalls with a Goal Check

I use a goal check-in process to handle these issues. First, I divide goals I encounter in my life into 3 categories:

• small stuff – simple activities that need no planning (e.g. grocery shopping).
  Usually tasks and small stuff will find you.
• tasks – 1) everyday goals that you need to track but are not challenging and/or complex (e.g. booking and going to dentist), 2) small tasks need to complete “big goals” (e.g. register for online course).
• “big goals” – these are big because they are complex, challenging or outside your comfort zone (e.g. starting a business, learning a language). As mentioned above, a great framework for developing “big goals” is Michael Hyatt’s Best Year Ever.

As you think up or discover goals, divide these into the 3 groups above. This allows you to manage the goals you need to manage and forget the rest (remember, you don’t need to remind yourself to keep on breathing!).

Second, the weekly goal check-in regulates the time, elevation and frequency of checking goals. A weekly goal check in reminds you of your big goals and tasks without unproductively re-evaluating and changing them every week.

Finally, the weekly goal check-in reminds you of your motivations for the big goals and also highlights the small, but vital progress your are making. It helps remind you why you took on the big goal in the first place and that even if progress is slow, you are still making progress.

How to do Weekly Goal Check in – Prep

First, set up documents to capture your goals:

• small stuff – don’t require anything, you are handling it now
• tasks – I place these in a matrix, organized in different areas in my life and time periods

• “Big goals” – this consists of my “big goal”, my deadline or number of times to accomplish it, motivations and tasks to accomplish big goals

• “Random Info Notes” – This consists of a list to capture information you encounter everyday that is relevant to your goals and tasks – progress, information, new ideas. This can be a notebook, note app, etc. (in my case, I use evernote).
• Weekly Review List – This is a list containing 3 items – 1) “Weekly Big 3” – 3 tasks to accomplish over the week for your goal, 2) “Daily Big 3” – up to 3 tasks to accomplish during the day, 3) “One-off tasks” – standard and one-off tasks to be accomplished not related to big goals

With these documents in hand, I do my weekly goal check in.

How to do Weekly Goal Check-in

1. Check my email account – removing junk, and responding as necessary. I also capture any relevant actions items or ideas that will be needed for goal planning and tasks in the random info notes, tasks matrix or big goals list.
2. Review my calendar month before, the upcoming week and the coming month – Again, I check if there are any events that involve planning and capture any necessary in the tasks matrix or big goals list.
3. Review my random info notes – these notes go to different spots including task matrix for tasks in the future, weekly review list for tasks to do this week.
4. Review task matrix – find items that should be added to weekly review list.
5. Review “big goals” and motivations – add 3 weekly tasks for achieving your goals in weekly review list.
6. Review all the tasks you have on your weekly review and estimate the time needed – then estimate the amount of time you have over the week.
7. Postpone tasks – if you don’t have enough time to do all tasks.

The Biggest Benefit of All

I found it challenging implementing my weekly budget and goals check in. It took some time for me to become proficient. I often tried systems, borrowed different aspects till I finally found something that work for me.

This system may completely, partially, or not work at all for you. The key is to try and keep what works for you, but above all persevere in finding a way to consistently and regularly manage your health, money and time.

Yes, an obvious benefit to having a weekly ritual is more health, money and time. However, equally important is peace of mind – mental capacity to take on the world and focus larger and longer-term things.

Health, money and time issues can quickly overwhelm us and short circuit our higher-brain functions – taking us to a more fearful and limited place, like a scared mouse. A study found that financial worries significantly shrink your cognitive capacity. This study tested both rural farmers in India and mall goers in the US, testing the correlation between financial preoccupation and intelligence – they found that the significant drop in IQ was related to financial preoccupation. Personally, I can relate to this myself as well. At one point when I was a student I was pretty broke and couldn’t even pay my cell phone bills. I couldn’t even bring myself to properly evaluate my financial situation because I was so nervous and frozen.

And I think the same is true for time and health is well. Think back to a time you felt overwhelmed with all the items you needed to take care of. It probably seemed difficult to step back and see a larger perspective. Same thing with health – think back to a time you were really sick – its hard to focus and think.

That’s the beauty of the morning ritual. It can’t work miracles and suddenly turn around a bad financial or health situation, but at least it can get the monkey of your back and in front of you where you can see and deal with it – with that comes some peace of mind, and yes, a little more cognitive space to take on life.

Do you have any weekly productivity rituals? Let me know in the comments below.