On paper. Physically writing stimulates neurology. This then gets embedded into the subconscious.
---
And some tidbits on goalsetting which I'd have liked 15 years ago...
Goals are
- SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, Time-bound)
- written in present tense.
- stated in the positive.
- attached to an identity, or 'self-image'.
- expansive.
"I will own 30 apartments" (future tense) ->
"I own 30 apartments." (present tense) ->
"I am the owner of 30 apartments." (identity) ->
"I am the owner of 30 or more apartments." (expansive)
"I will quit smoking by July 31." (future tense) ->
"I quit smoking by July 31." ('quit' is negative)->
"I am free from cigarettes by July 31."
More important than the outcome, is how you see yourself. If you couldn't imagine yourself as a person achieving the goal, then it won't occur.
Who do you have to become, to achieve the goal?
Never leave the scene of plan without taking action.
After setting a goal, at least 1 crumb-sized action must be taken immediately. Who could you message, call, email...?
I use paper too, and have designed a small notebook around this idea of longer term goals with "crumb-size" daily actions: https://twentyweeks.com (shameless plug for my side project)
Daily stuff, I use breeze.pm, which is a bit like Trello except has swimlanes. For current stuff I have a board separated into three swimlanes - client work, my work and personal. These are separated in columns - this week, today, doing, blocked and done. I'll add to and move between columns as necessary.
I keep pretty high level (like I don't want a million tiny tasks), but everything that's listed has to be accomplished within a few hours or a working day at most.
Anything there over a week, or not getting done is moved to a 'longer term' board, which is more of a brain dump of ideas and things I'd like to get moving on at some point. Basically I want my to do list to be current and not a bucket list.
I keep the 'stuff in play' Breeze list pinned next to a Google Calendar window. GCal has dates of everywhere I need to be and dates of everything I need done in different colours.
I think I could still be more efficient, but this works pretty well for the time being.
For 'reach' goals, I've separated the year into 4 quarters of 12 weeks with a week off between each one. It's easier not to lose motivation over 12 weeks. I have a BitBar plugin that shows me days gone and days left in the quarter. Before each quarter I'll write down what I want to achieve and then how I intend to do it. After 12 weeks I'll review and revise. Most of these can be tracked with something like HabitBull - "I want to lose 5kg this quarter, I'll visit the gym 3 times a week". Then just tick as you go. If you don't hit it, figure out why and what to change next 12 weeks.
I use org mode for both regular work as well as one off targets. Org mode allows me to clearly bucket tasks into what is scheduled and needed by when, tag related tasks together but define them anywhere, also allows to define subtasks and track task progress in terms of sub tasks. It allows you to see your agenda on a configurable time period, and can also equally support GTD. Personally I find it to be a really nice place to dump all your thoughts and with trivial effort get them organised in a nice to see and search format.
I take a video of myself each morning talking about what I want to get done that day. At night I watch the video, take a mental note of what I need to work on the next day based on what I did and didn't accomplish that day. Repeat.
Simple interface where you set your "habits" and how frequently per week you expect to do them. (E.g. exercise 4x per week, eat healthy 6x per week). Then you simply check off each day whether it happened. The analytics makes it clear if you are doing the right thing. Really good.
I'm putting together https://habitrabb.it as an alternative to Loop but addressing some of the issues people in Play store were complaining about. Still a WIP but Android version will come out soon and I'm currently in the process of majorly reworking the UX.
Essentially the difference is people sometimes complained of losing a lot of data because no cloud backups and no iOS version hence i'm doing web+android+ios. Also a lot of people wanted to be able to track doing habits multiple times per day or track some specific metric (30x pushups) which I've chosen to implement. Small things like that but they add up.
I actually switched to this a couple months ago, mainly because I was using other habit-tracking apps that only allows a certain number of habits available for free.
I didn't even know about the statistics, as I just wanted a way to check yes or no and see the past week to see if I needed to change things from week to week. Knowing I can see the trends changes everything... I think I'm going to need to add a few more things to this because this could be extremely helpful for me with several things. It was helpful enough just seeing week to week at a glance, but being able to see trends and long-term progress is great.
For personal projects and goals I keep a couple of index cards aside - one I used for GTD - 2 columns on one side (Next Action and Inbox/New Items) , 3 on the other (Waiting For, Projects, Someday). And then another index card or two for notes and sketches. I find it good to limit them (and keep just three folded in half in a back pocket) , otherwise I end up dragging around a stack of cards and not using them. If I limit them but replace as needed, I seem to use them more and keep them to hand.
I redo my GTD card weekly and drop stuff off every time that I 'thought' I wanted to do but just the act of writing it down and reviewing shows me it is not a priority. For a while I kept my old cards, but now I ditch them.
I use a combination of a mental/back of index card kanban board for purchasing goals (a cadence of what I can afford to save/spend, leading me along a list of prioritised items I want <or don't want by the time I can buy them in cash usually>) - been thinking about making an app for it for a while, but beyond my skills.
Right now I have two or three 'main' hobbies - paddle boarding, brewing beer and cycling. While I have a good salary, we have 2 kids and a single income, so things I would have just bought without thinking just a few years ago, now get thought about for a good while before pulling the trigger. If anything I'm happier this way. I stops me buying 'hobby crap' that I never use, and gives me time to find the best item I'm looking for (is it worth buying that huge saucepan cheaply, or waiting to get a better one? Or second hand?)
Semi-Related: How do you come up with long-term-goals? Owning a car in the Bay is worthless, real estate is too expensive. Traveling the world is nice, but it might get boring after some years.
I kinda like my work and my life, but I feel like I should have a big future goal.
Get married? Have kids? Reach a higher position? Join your dream company? Climb Everest? Do 10 pullups? Learn french? Help kids in Africa? Donate a million dollars? Tip someone a hundred that needs it? Donate 100 books to a library? Fly an aircraft over the Atlantic? Write a book? Get famous on social media?
1. Pick an unobtainable goal. I had a big goal that I achieved and the sense of diretionlessness was real. Some people say it's better to have a goal you can never finish like "meet as many artists as you can" or "end hunger" as it'll continue to be your guidepost in life.
2. Enjoy the process. If you're working just to get to your goal and you achieve it, you'll have a few moments of bliss when you do and then it will fade. If you enjoy the process itself rather than just the end result then you can experience bliss more often.
I can see what you mean and you won't have that itch scratched until you find what drives you. I'm an outdoorsman myself, but a few goals I have are building a rally car initially purchased under $1000. You would be able to teach yourself some mechanics without breaking the bank. That skill will transfer to many things. I can't stress the kind of debugging it takes to work on a car. It's debugging code in hard mode because to 'test' your code you have to buy a part. Forces you to really think about things.
You could also start hiking taller and taller mountains. 14k or higher is where it starts getting fun. The mountains get as high as you want.
Learn how to ride a motorcycle. Super useful if you live in CA. A lot of people think its too dangerous, but honestly a little danger is good for the bones. We put ourselves in too many bubbles. The long-term goal could be to ride down Baja.
Have you tried to pick up cooking? Make advances recipes? You could have a goal of cooking for a huge party and everyone being amazed at the food.
Owning a car in the bay allows you to get to some of the best hiking / running trails in the world! Get a car, then get outside! (or just do whatever makes your happy :)
A collection of google drive documents. I went through the process of deciding on Core Values (viz. the Integrity Report that James Clear does), and life time goals. Now I set yearly/monthly/weekly/daily goals that wrap up into larger scale projects. One useful process has been period reviews (daily reviews at the end of day, etc), where I'll check how well I did with regard to my goals, and whether I'm living with integrity (according to my explicitly set Core Values). During these reviews, I'll make note of the next level up, e.g. during monthly reviews, I'll check my annual reviews and update them as necessary.
I use a Trello board for my 10 year goals. Lists are:
1. Primary Goals
2. Secondary Goals
3. Immediate Goals
5. To-do this week
6. Daily
I started it at the end of 2015 so there's a card in primary goals list for each major thing that I would like to have accomplished (or just continued to do) by the end of 2025. Each primary goal gets its own label and a checklist of what specifically accomplishing that goal means to me.
Secondary and immediate goals are how I broke down the bigger goals into smaller, more manageable parts. For example, one of my primary goals is "Health." So a secondary goal might be "rock climb twice per week" or "research ways to improve my memory". Every card in every list has a label/labels that relate them back to a primary goal.
The weekly and daily todos further break everything down into things that I can focus on in the next day or week.
Here's what I learned:
- For all of 2016 (the first year) I would update this Trello board religiously every day with my weekly and daily todos. I found that I actually didn't enjoy doing this. While things were getting done, they didn't seem to be things that were that important or impactful. I stopped doing this so I could completely cut out those last two lists. Now I re-visit the board every so often when I feel like I need a reminder or what past-me thought was important. Sometimes I update the primary goals (I've only added to this once and never removed from it) and more frequently I'll decide that a secondary or immediate goal didn't make sense so I'll get rid of it or add a new one. The whole process is much more free form and I think that works better for me.
- One of my mantras that has come out of this exercise has been "don't do something for just one reason." The things that I tend to enjoy and accomplish successfully are ones that have multiple primary goal labels on them. Sometimes they only have a loose relation or benefit but it's still more compelling to me because if it turns out one of the benefits doesn't work out the way I planned then there's still a reason to be doing this thing for another reason.
Still an ongoing experiment but I'm generally happy that I'm doing it.
I also use a trello board. I have one column for each year, plus a wishlist column with short/mid/long term goals and a separate column just for travels that I want to do. Once a task is completed I mark it with the green label. If I just don't care anymore about something or I "fail" the task, then I mark it in red.
I find this setup quite helpful for:
- breaking down huge goals (such as learning a new language)
- having short/mid/long term goals all available at a glance
- giving priority to stuff I'd otherwise keep procrastinating (I tend to procrastinate for weeks or months doing several things until I put everything in one checklist at the top of the current year column and power through them all in a short time)
- giving myself some perspective and appreciate all the things achieved in the past months/years. Things that were once just dreams or seemed very hard to achieve are now the normal day-to-day life and it's way too easy to undervalue them.
I use the board in a positive way, in the sense that I don't see deleting tasks or failing to achieve something as some kind of failure. I only celebrate the green "done" labels.
I also use a Kanban board mine however keeps track of completion on books and courses. I suppose a ten year goal would be a good idea along with yearly.
I don't. Live is hard enough without you constantly pushing yourself and giving yourself a bad conscious for not reaching your goals. Relax, kick back and just do what you feel is fun.
Eh I once heard someone make a distinction that I like between 'what you enjoy' and 'what makes you happy'.
A somewhat boring example is it's unlikely you enjoy doing your university exams, however your state of happiness after completing your degree will be higher than if you had instead done something more enjoyable with your time (e.g. play video games).
I did that this weekend. It was also hard to kick back and relax when I wanted to work on my goals. That was very conflicting, but I'm starting to see the value of slowing down a little bit.
I find that organization helps me accomplish much more; taking the time every Sunday to plan out my week makes focusing significantly easier and more productive.
For standard tasks, I use Excel to track my weekly tasks. I prefer Excel compared to a web application because it's just always open on my laptop: https://imgur.com/a/bp2sJYY
- I break them down into priorities (Low - Absolute), class (blacked out column, I use the names of my two orgs), category, and a target date I set at the beginning of the week.
- Anything not completed transfers over to the next week and is reassigned an appropriate priority and date.
- Started this level of detail in Jan. 2018 and have been very happy with it.
For larger, more complicated projects I use a top-down approach I call strategic planning. I wrote a detailed article on the approach here: http://bit.ly/2zWlARj
I have four types of notes: personal, work, learning, and health. For each type of note, I have a short term and long term list of tasks.
All tasks in my short term lists should be cleared within 1-2 days. This includes everything from paying bills, doing a few online course lessons, committing a PR or two, running 5 miles, purchasing something online, etc. I also include a few habits in this that I try to build, like "daily affirmations". The key is to make these as bite-sized as possible.
My long term TODOs are essentially a backlog dump that I pull from when I need to refresh my short term TODOs. Many of these are fuzzy ideas that I haven't broken into actionable steps, like "learn docker", "plan europe trip", or "hack on X". Some of these are small tasks that I just haven't gotten around to doing, like "add expenses to tax return", but at least its written down somewhere. I groom this every now and then.
I have a third type of note -- daily accomplishments. I essentially just bullet everything I accomplished that day outside of routine chores like "cook dinner" or "call parents". I archive this daily. I get lazy and don't fill this out 80% of the time.
Not sure if this is the best system, but it sure beats my old system of having a giant list of TODOs written on a piece of paper
One of my goals this year is to be better organised at tracking my goals :) so far I haven't got around to it.
In all my note taking I try and keep things plain text. I have a folder for the year with a file called goals.txt with a list of everything I plan to achieve. I then have a done.txt file with everything I did achieve, divided my month. This is because life invariably throws things at you which were not on your initial plan, but are worth remembering that you did
I do something similar but not very structured. I've got a few questions:
* Do you represent the alignments (e.g. goals aligning to values) in the board somehow, or is that you just in your head?
* Do you track progress on 2-4, or just on the actual execution of habits? If so, how?
* Are the values (3) just a subset of (4)?
Not really a solution, but a problem that I have (which this thread has actually given me several new ideas to try fixing) isn't so much organizing or tracking my goals, it's that even when I get them organized, and plan out my days (not excessively, but a handful of easily achievable things I want to do in a day or week) I find that I don't have the drive or motivation to accomplish them half the time.
Getting home from work exhausted, not from stress exactly, but from just being focused and working for the whole day + commuting + going to the gym, makes it hard to find the energy to do the things I WANT to do. So I end up going for the easy thing, which is browsing HN or Reddit, watching TV, playing video games. I do enjoy those things, but feel like I waste time when I do them.
I have realized in the past several months the very common idea that getting started is the hardest part. Most of the time when I force myself to just start on something, I end up investing hours into it.
The other problem is that I want to do too many things, and often don't want to start on a side project, or practicing an instrument, because I don't want to do just one thing for the night and neglect other things, which leads to just doing nothing of value that I wanted to do.
I just try to constantly remind myself that if I spend an entire night practicing keyboard, it's a thousand times better than thinking about the things I want to do, and then browsing the internet all night.
To the original topic though: I use a combination of Keep, OneNote, and a Habit tracker to help. It's just the breaking through and starting on things that is the main issue for me. Thinking of trying out a kanban board to track personal goals though.
I found these comments on 1) Getting Started 2) Focusing on What You Really Want to Achieve 3) Avoiding What You Really Want to Achieve by Wasting Time / Not Getting Started as the most important and most challenging for me on this message thread.
Regarding the question... As a solopreneur, it is important that I create my own strong structure and discipline - I use a combination of methods to track my personal goals/habits.
First, it's the Coach.me App to track my daily habits/ritual - the core of all progress. I'll execute tasks that are routine for me, and its a reminder to focus on habits I am struggling with or striving to build. These change overtime depending on my goals (next piece).
Second, it's a series of planning documents that include a) mission, b) long-term goals/focus, c) short-term goals/focus and d) maxims/principles to live and work by. I keep all these in a folder in my desk below my pile of weekly business bills called: 'Focus / Structure'. I review it periodically on different levels of focus, and if I notice I am struggling with something, I'll keep a duplicate copy of the specific item that needs focus on my desk alongside my day-to-day work.
I have found it more effective personally to focus more on priorities and habits than SMART goals. To track habits and progress and notes on everything, I heavily use a tool I've mentioned before, which I wrote (after trying org-mode, collapsible outlines in other tools, etc). It uses postgres, and I hope that "sharing" data exchange features are coming (though it already does export to org-mode-like text, and to html). Best code is that in github, though a downloadable .jar is available. Currently keyboard and desktop-only (text-oriented). The most efficient/effective thing I have found for notes/lists/details of all kinds, and should be easy to learn to use, as all the essentials are on the screen. There is a tutorial.
By marking things done or "archived", it also provides a journal feature or personal log, of entries created or archived in any date range (defaulting to "yesterday and so far, today", to help with daily standup reporting).
I'm assuming by 'personal goals' you are referring to the category of goals for life-long-learning, and not "vacation at the cabin this July".
If that's the case, then for me this is the wrong question. To suggest I should try to organize my goals is similar to asking me to graph the neurons in my brain, or catalog my dreams. My objective is to "capture/track my ideas" and aspirations. I work to develop my practical skills for, writing, coding, drawing, reading, recall/findability.
Many ideas prove low-value, or impossible to realize. I simply work to find a way to effectively express my personal ideas in the highest fidelity. If I imposed organization on this mess, I would sub-consciously limit my expressions.
That said, if an idea proves to have merrit, then I devote my time towards definable projects. I hope to complete them in a timely fashion.
I'm not part of a leasure class. I have enough pressure at work, so I don't sweat it. That's my choice.
Large whiteboard with a 100 day mind map of goals. Daily journal structured to write out what I'm doing towards each goal that day, then daily 1 min video check in repeating those goals along with a general assessment of how I'm feeling/things I'm thinking about. Has been transformative to do things this way.
Over the past few years I've tried:
- Checklists, OKRs, Kanban
Currently, I use a goal system with 3 components:
(1) long-form essay writing to explore goals, desires, interests. I then capture this into a Google doc for the year and make it the Backlog.
(2) Google spreadsheet for logging, tracking and measuring progress.
(3) Periodic Reviews and retrospectives in the form of blogposts.
e.g. "I want to run a marathon" becomes a daily "Exercise" habit. It's good for both progress and logging; now if I want to know what program I was running on June 28, 2015 for example I just filter for Exercise and go back to June 2015.
It was originally a Trello board so it's got an obviously kanban-ish look to it, but it's got things built in to collect things like time spent on habits overall, streaks.
I'm still working on the best flow for longer-term projects and "negative habits" (i.e. losing weight, not compulsively using the internet).
[+] [-] bergerjac|7 years ago|reply
---
And some tidbits on goalsetting which I'd have liked 15 years ago...
Goals are - SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, Time-bound) - written in present tense. - stated in the positive. - attached to an identity, or 'self-image'. - expansive.
"I will own 30 apartments" (future tense) -> "I own 30 apartments." (present tense) -> "I am the owner of 30 apartments." (identity) -> "I am the owner of 30 or more apartments." (expansive)
"I will quit smoking by July 31." (future tense) -> "I quit smoking by July 31." ('quit' is negative)-> "I am free from cigarettes by July 31."
More important than the outcome, is how you see yourself. If you couldn't imagine yourself as a person achieving the goal, then it won't occur.
Who do you have to become, to achieve the goal?
Never leave the scene of plan without taking action. After setting a goal, at least 1 crumb-sized action must be taken immediately. Who could you message, call, email...?
[+] [-] ihodes|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokyokawasemi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamben|7 years ago|reply
I keep pretty high level (like I don't want a million tiny tasks), but everything that's listed has to be accomplished within a few hours or a working day at most.
Anything there over a week, or not getting done is moved to a 'longer term' board, which is more of a brain dump of ideas and things I'd like to get moving on at some point. Basically I want my to do list to be current and not a bucket list.
I keep the 'stuff in play' Breeze list pinned next to a Google Calendar window. GCal has dates of everywhere I need to be and dates of everything I need done in different colours.
I think I could still be more efficient, but this works pretty well for the time being.
For 'reach' goals, I've separated the year into 4 quarters of 12 weeks with a week off between each one. It's easier not to lose motivation over 12 weeks. I have a BitBar plugin that shows me days gone and days left in the quarter. Before each quarter I'll write down what I want to achieve and then how I intend to do it. After 12 weeks I'll review and revise. Most of these can be tracked with something like HabitBull - "I want to lose 5kg this quarter, I'll visit the gym 3 times a week". Then just tick as you go. If you don't hit it, figure out why and what to change next 12 weeks.
[+] [-] enitihas|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] your-nanny|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noelwelsh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arminiusreturns|7 years ago|reply
I also still strongly believe in the power of notepads and moleskin. Some things are too sensitive to be digitized.
[+] [-] ojuara|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpatel576|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcrittenden|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pixelmonkey|7 years ago|reply
https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits
Simple interface where you set your "habits" and how frequently per week you expect to do them. (E.g. exercise 4x per week, eat healthy 6x per week). Then you simply check off each day whether it happened. The analytics makes it clear if you are doing the right thing. Really good.
[+] [-] nicostouch|7 years ago|reply
Essentially the difference is people sometimes complained of losing a lot of data because no cloud backups and no iOS version hence i'm doing web+android+ios. Also a lot of people wanted to be able to track doing habits multiple times per day or track some specific metric (30x pushups) which I've chosen to implement. Small things like that but they add up.
[+] [-] awb|7 years ago|reply
Knowing quantitatively that I'm improving in a certain area is a huge motivator (as is knowing that I've stalled).
In the past, when I forget to exercise for a few days I would get down and think that exercising was to changing, time consuming, etc.
Now, I can see that those periods of inactivity are just small dips in an overall positive trend of exercising more.
[+] [-] ohmatt|7 years ago|reply
I didn't even know about the statistics, as I just wanted a way to check yes or no and see the past week to see if I needed to change things from week to week. Knowing I can see the trends changes everything... I think I'm going to need to add a few more things to this because this could be extremely helpful for me with several things. It was helpful enough just seeing week to week at a glance, but being able to see trends and long-term progress is great.
[+] [-] beachsam0rai|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ljf|7 years ago|reply
I redo my GTD card weekly and drop stuff off every time that I 'thought' I wanted to do but just the act of writing it down and reviewing shows me it is not a priority. For a while I kept my old cards, but now I ditch them.
GTD = Getting Things Done - https://hamberg.no/gtd/
-
I use a combination of a mental/back of index card kanban board for purchasing goals (a cadence of what I can afford to save/spend, leading me along a list of prioritised items I want <or don't want by the time I can buy them in cash usually>) - been thinking about making an app for it for a while, but beyond my skills.
Right now I have two or three 'main' hobbies - paddle boarding, brewing beer and cycling. While I have a good salary, we have 2 kids and a single income, so things I would have just bought without thinking just a few years ago, now get thought about for a good while before pulling the trigger. If anything I'm happier this way. I stops me buying 'hobby crap' that I never use, and gives me time to find the best item I'm looking for (is it worth buying that huge saucepan cheaply, or waiting to get a better one? Or second hand?)
[+] [-] thesimon|7 years ago|reply
I kinda like my work and my life, but I feel like I should have a big future goal.
[+] [-] rohitb91|7 years ago|reply
Whatever you want
[+] [-] awb|7 years ago|reply
1. Pick an unobtainable goal. I had a big goal that I achieved and the sense of diretionlessness was real. Some people say it's better to have a goal you can never finish like "meet as many artists as you can" or "end hunger" as it'll continue to be your guidepost in life.
2. Enjoy the process. If you're working just to get to your goal and you achieve it, you'll have a few moments of bliss when you do and then it will fade. If you enjoy the process itself rather than just the end result then you can experience bliss more often.
[+] [-] xeromal|7 years ago|reply
You could also start hiking taller and taller mountains. 14k or higher is where it starts getting fun. The mountains get as high as you want.
Learn how to ride a motorcycle. Super useful if you live in CA. A lot of people think its too dangerous, but honestly a little danger is good for the bones. We put ourselves in too many bubbles. The long-term goal could be to ride down Baja.
Have you tried to pick up cooking? Make advances recipes? You could have a goal of cooking for a huge party and everyone being amazed at the food.
[+] [-] jrowley|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jclif|7 years ago|reply
https://jamesclear.com/integrity https://jamesclear.com/goal-setting
[+] [-] dbla|7 years ago|reply
1. Primary Goals
2. Secondary Goals
3. Immediate Goals
5. To-do this week
6. Daily
I started it at the end of 2015 so there's a card in primary goals list for each major thing that I would like to have accomplished (or just continued to do) by the end of 2025. Each primary goal gets its own label and a checklist of what specifically accomplishing that goal means to me.
Secondary and immediate goals are how I broke down the bigger goals into smaller, more manageable parts. For example, one of my primary goals is "Health." So a secondary goal might be "rock climb twice per week" or "research ways to improve my memory". Every card in every list has a label/labels that relate them back to a primary goal.
The weekly and daily todos further break everything down into things that I can focus on in the next day or week.
Here's what I learned:
- For all of 2016 (the first year) I would update this Trello board religiously every day with my weekly and daily todos. I found that I actually didn't enjoy doing this. While things were getting done, they didn't seem to be things that were that important or impactful. I stopped doing this so I could completely cut out those last two lists. Now I re-visit the board every so often when I feel like I need a reminder or what past-me thought was important. Sometimes I update the primary goals (I've only added to this once and never removed from it) and more frequently I'll decide that a secondary or immediate goal didn't make sense so I'll get rid of it or add a new one. The whole process is much more free form and I think that works better for me.
- One of my mantras that has come out of this exercise has been "don't do something for just one reason." The things that I tend to enjoy and accomplish successfully are ones that have multiple primary goal labels on them. Sometimes they only have a loose relation or benefit but it's still more compelling to me because if it turns out one of the benefits doesn't work out the way I planned then there's still a reason to be doing this thing for another reason.
Still an ongoing experiment but I'm generally happy that I'm doing it.
[+] [-] nferracin|7 years ago|reply
I find this setup quite helpful for:
- breaking down huge goals (such as learning a new language)
- having short/mid/long term goals all available at a glance
- giving priority to stuff I'd otherwise keep procrastinating (I tend to procrastinate for weeks or months doing several things until I put everything in one checklist at the top of the current year column and power through them all in a short time)
- giving myself some perspective and appreciate all the things achieved in the past months/years. Things that were once just dreams or seemed very hard to achieve are now the normal day-to-day life and it's way too easy to undervalue them.
I use the board in a positive way, in the sense that I don't see deleting tasks or failing to achieve something as some kind of failure. I only celebrate the green "done" labels.
EDIT: formatting
[+] [-] liminal18|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bibac|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skeleton|7 years ago|reply
A somewhat boring example is it's unlikely you enjoy doing your university exams, however your state of happiness after completing your degree will be higher than if you had instead done something more enjoyable with your time (e.g. play video games).
[+] [-] matwood|7 years ago|reply
Also, reaching a goal is great, but for many goals it's the process of getting there where the real personal growth comes from.
[+] [-] 300bps|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hso1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicostouch|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drngdds|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swah|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ojuara|7 years ago|reply
So true!
[+] [-] tomcooks|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrivers|7 years ago|reply
For standard tasks, I use Excel to track my weekly tasks. I prefer Excel compared to a web application because it's just always open on my laptop: https://imgur.com/a/bp2sJYY - I break them down into priorities (Low - Absolute), class (blacked out column, I use the names of my two orgs), category, and a target date I set at the beginning of the week. - Anything not completed transfers over to the next week and is reassigned an appropriate priority and date. - Started this level of detail in Jan. 2018 and have been very happy with it.
For larger, more complicated projects I use a top-down approach I call strategic planning. I wrote a detailed article on the approach here: http://bit.ly/2zWlARj
[+] [-] neilsharma|7 years ago|reply
I have four types of notes: personal, work, learning, and health. For each type of note, I have a short term and long term list of tasks.
All tasks in my short term lists should be cleared within 1-2 days. This includes everything from paying bills, doing a few online course lessons, committing a PR or two, running 5 miles, purchasing something online, etc. I also include a few habits in this that I try to build, like "daily affirmations". The key is to make these as bite-sized as possible.
My long term TODOs are essentially a backlog dump that I pull from when I need to refresh my short term TODOs. Many of these are fuzzy ideas that I haven't broken into actionable steps, like "learn docker", "plan europe trip", or "hack on X". Some of these are small tasks that I just haven't gotten around to doing, like "add expenses to tax return", but at least its written down somewhere. I groom this every now and then.
I have a third type of note -- daily accomplishments. I essentially just bullet everything I accomplished that day outside of routine chores like "cook dinner" or "call parents". I archive this daily. I get lazy and don't fill this out 80% of the time.
Not sure if this is the best system, but it sure beats my old system of having a giant list of TODOs written on a piece of paper
[+] [-] roryisok|7 years ago|reply
In all my note taking I try and keep things plain text. I have a folder for the year with a file called goals.txt with a list of everything I plan to achieve. I then have a done.txt file with everything I did achieve, divided my month. This is because life invariably throws things at you which were not on your initial plan, but are worth remembering that you did
[+] [-] chillacy|7 years ago|reply
1. Habits which have some weekly frequency (meditate 10 mins 3x/w) and are all aligned to one or more...
2. Goals which are measurable (complete 3 headspace packs) and all align to...
3. Values which are unique to me (mental health) which agree with...
4. Principles or rules of nature which apply to everyone (better mental health leads to more happiness, happiness leads to better life quality)
I create a board every quarter to re-adjust my values, goals, and habits.
[+] [-] nihlaak|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohmatt|7 years ago|reply
Getting home from work exhausted, not from stress exactly, but from just being focused and working for the whole day + commuting + going to the gym, makes it hard to find the energy to do the things I WANT to do. So I end up going for the easy thing, which is browsing HN or Reddit, watching TV, playing video games. I do enjoy those things, but feel like I waste time when I do them.
I have realized in the past several months the very common idea that getting started is the hardest part. Most of the time when I force myself to just start on something, I end up investing hours into it.
The other problem is that I want to do too many things, and often don't want to start on a side project, or practicing an instrument, because I don't want to do just one thing for the night and neglect other things, which leads to just doing nothing of value that I wanted to do.
I just try to constantly remind myself that if I spend an entire night practicing keyboard, it's a thousand times better than thinking about the things I want to do, and then browsing the internet all night.
To the original topic though: I use a combination of Keep, OneNote, and a Habit tracker to help. It's just the breaking through and starting on things that is the main issue for me. Thinking of trying out a kanban board to track personal goals though.
[+] [-] slowwwclap|7 years ago|reply
Regarding the question... As a solopreneur, it is important that I create my own strong structure and discipline - I use a combination of methods to track my personal goals/habits.
First, it's the Coach.me App to track my daily habits/ritual - the core of all progress. I'll execute tasks that are routine for me, and its a reminder to focus on habits I am struggling with or striving to build. These change overtime depending on my goals (next piece).
Second, it's a series of planning documents that include a) mission, b) long-term goals/focus, c) short-term goals/focus and d) maxims/principles to live and work by. I keep all these in a folder in my desk below my pile of weekly business bills called: 'Focus / Structure'. I review it periodically on different levels of focus, and if I notice I am struggling with something, I'll keep a duplicate copy of the specific item that needs focus on my desk alongside my day-to-day work.
[+] [-] lcall|7 years ago|reply
By marking things done or "archived", it also provides a journal feature or personal log, of entries created or archived in any date range (defaulting to "yesterday and so far, today", to help with daily standup reporting).
http://onemodel.org (AGPL)
[+] [-] xtiansimon|7 years ago|reply
If that's the case, then for me this is the wrong question. To suggest I should try to organize my goals is similar to asking me to graph the neurons in my brain, or catalog my dreams. My objective is to "capture/track my ideas" and aspirations. I work to develop my practical skills for, writing, coding, drawing, reading, recall/findability.
Many ideas prove low-value, or impossible to realize. I simply work to find a way to effectively express my personal ideas in the highest fidelity. If I imposed organization on this mess, I would sub-consciously limit my expressions.
That said, if an idea proves to have merrit, then I devote my time towards definable projects. I hope to complete them in a timely fashion.
I'm not part of a leasure class. I have enough pressure at work, so I don't sweat it. That's my choice.
[+] [-] frankdenbow|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apicardami|7 years ago|reply
Currently, I use a goal system with 3 components: (1) long-form essay writing to explore goals, desires, interests. I then capture this into a Google doc for the year and make it the Backlog. (2) Google spreadsheet for logging, tracking and measuring progress. (3) Periodic Reviews and retrospectives in the form of blogposts.
Here's the Goal System Tracker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U0ufWHqntVcz89nebyRt...
Here are the Blog Posts (Reviews & Retrospectives) https://apicardami.com/category/goals/
[+] [-] ioddly|7 years ago|reply
e.g. "I want to run a marathon" becomes a daily "Exercise" habit. It's good for both progress and logging; now if I want to know what program I was running on June 28, 2015 for example I just filter for Exercise and go back to June 2015.
It was originally a Trello board so it's got an obviously kanban-ish look to it, but it's got things built in to collect things like time spent on habits overall, streaks.
I'm still working on the best flow for longer-term projects and "negative habits" (i.e. losing weight, not compulsively using the internet).