How to Choose a Goal Setting System
We all know the importance of setting goals for ourselves, but many people haven’t realized the great value a good goal setting tool can provide. Selecting a right tool or system, not only can help you organize and clarify your goals, but most importantly, it can significantly increase your chance of reaching them more quickly and easily.
Select tools based on your goal types
The first step in deciding on a goal setting tool is to identify what kind of goals you are setting. Is it a personal development goal, a business goal, a career goal, or a health or fitness goal? Different goals call for different goal setting methods, so you will want to select tools that are specially designed for your type of goals. Sometimes it helps to use different tools for goals of different types.
Select tools that are easy to use
Secondly, it’s vital to select a goal setting tool that is easy to use. This can’t be over emphasized. A goal setting tool is to help you focus on your goals, on how you can achieve your results, not on anything else. If a system is too difficult to use, you’d do better without it.
However, “easy to use” does not have to be simple. A lot of people think that a pen and paper based system is easy to use, but they don’t realize it doesn’t support many of the important things required to manage your goals. It may seem easy at first, but it usually becomes very tedious and cumbersome after a while, and can be a major stressor for your goals.
Select tools that help you set SMART goals
A goal that is set based on SMART model (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) has much higher possibility of being accomplished. Choose a system that helps you set goals in a SMART way and you can take advantage of all the benefits this principle provides.
Select tools that support taking actions
Also important is that a good goal setting system must support you in taking massive action. Without action, no matter how smart a goal is set and managed, it will never be achieved. It’s that simple. We must take action, massive action if so required. So make sure your chosen system has great task management features.
Select tools that help you review progress
Another important feature from a good system is the function to help you review your progress and to keep things on track. This is usually accomplished through an integration of goal and task management, and a journal feature. Keeping a journal for your goals is a great way to help you stick to them and also motivate yourself.
Select tools that help you visualize goals
For certain goals, visualization is a great motivator. Whether you believe in “The Laws of Attraction” and “Creative Manifestation” or not, to be able to see your goals’ outcome, and to constantly keep that vision in mind are always helpful in motivating yourself to reach them. Pick a tool that has a vision board function and makes it easier for you to do visualizations.
Select tools that help you build habits
Finally, choose a system or tool that can help you form new habits. Many of our goals require a change in our behavior and thought patterns. This can be done through forming great habits that help make these changes happen more easily.
No matter what goal setting tool you choose, don’t get discouraged if a particular tool doesn’t seem to work for you. Just find and try another tool. It’s all part of the process in ultimately reaching your goal, especially for those hard and difficult ones. The most important thing is to keep trying and never quit, and always know that as long as you don’t quit, you ARE making progress.
Tutorial Video: How to Track Goal Progress
I’ve created a short tutorial video to help you understand how to track your goal progress with GoalsOnTrack. Please check it out below.
If you have more questions regarding goal tracking, please let me know, or check our help page at http://www.goalsontrack.com/index/help, where you will find FAQs and GOT user manual.
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How to Build Great Habits to Accomplish Your Goals
Most of goals we set for ourselves require us to follow certain good habits. For any goal to be achieved, there are usually two types of results we get. One is that our status or circumstances are changed in certain way, and the other is that some actions have been taken. Forming good habits can make both results become reality much faster and easier on our part.
For example, to get into a better physical shape, it requires changes in our body mass. By forming good exercising and eating habits, we can accomplish that goal faster. To reach a certain financial goal, we often need to take some actions to make things happen. By building good habits, we can set out to do the required things automatically, without the concerted effort every time we need to do them. Having good habits is a great help for reaching our goals.
Before we set out to build some great habits, first we must find out the existing bad habits we have that are stopping us from achieving what we truly want. Otherwise, they will always be there pulling our legs while we are striving to press forward.
Suppose our goal is to improve our health, now what are the bad habits we have that are sabotaging this goal? Is it eating too much ice cream? Or it is spending 4 or 5 hours per day in front of TV? Or is it that we tend to lose temper too quickly?
Another example, if our goal is to start a home business, what are the things we do that are keeping us away from that goal? Is it the poor spending habits that prevent us from saving the required startup capital? Is it the procrastination habit that stops us from taking needed actions? Or is it the pessimistic thinking habits that drain our confidence in the new business? Once we’ve identified what these habits are, we will then be ready to really attack them.
One of the most effective ways to remove an old habit is to replace it with a new habit. Of course, this new habit must be something that can help us move closer to our goal, or at least not pull us away from it. I used to smoke a lot, and I tried many times to quick, but it never seemed to work, until one day I replaced the habit with drinking coffee. (Of course, if you’re already drinking coffee you may want to find something else to try) The point is, forming a new habit to replace an old one is often easier than to eliminate it independently, in a sort of cold turkey way.
Once we’ve dealt with those old habits, we should begin to find and build some new habits that can boost our motivation and productivity for achieving our goals faster. There are many good habits can help one achieve various kinds of goals. Some are quite obvious, while others may need a little experiment to find out if they’re really helpful or not. But all in all, building great habits is a sure-fire way to increase the chance of accomplishing our goals.
Tutorial: How to Use GoalsOnTrack Habit Tracker
We’ve created a short video demonstrating how to use our newest feature on GoalsOnTrack, the Habit Tracker. Please let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Harry
Habit Tracker Launched!
I am excited to tell you that we’ve launched a new habit tracker feature in GoalsOnTrack. There is now a new tab called “Habits” on the main navigation bar. On “Habits” page, you can now add new habits, and track them by placing checkmarks on the weekly calendar. The small icon before the habit name indicates how strong that habit is, based on the number of checks you’ve marked so far.
To form a new habit, that is, to see it showing 100% strength, you will need to mark 21 consecutive checks within the last 21 days for a daily habit. This is based on a theory that we tend to form a new habit by doing it for 21 days in a row.
Your habit doesn’t have to be a daily one, it could be twice a week, or maybe once a week. The same formula applies. Instead of 21 days, the new habit forming period could be extended to the number of times per week multiplied by 21. Once a habit is formed, you can mark them as “Formed” and continue to work another one.
Forming good habits and keeping them followed is a great way to get you to do things that are required to achieve your goals. Please give it a try and let me know how it works for you, or simply what you think.
If you’re interested in learning more about building habits and how to get motivated, etc., please check out Zen Habit’s recent post, 20 Key Questions on Motivation and Habits, Answered. It has some great ideas from how Leo built his own habits.
Upcoming New Feature: Habits Builder
Within the next 2 weeks or so, we will be releasing a new feature, called “Habits Builder”, to help you achieve goals more quickly and effectively through building great habits.
When we work on our goals, especially those life changing, long term goals, it often requires us to make fundamental changes in our behaviour and thought patterns. One way to speedite this type of transition is through building good habits that can really help us make these changes. Thus the reason we want to introduce this habits tracker/builder feature into GoalsOnTrack. Here is a sneak peak of how it might work.
As you can see, it’s a very simple user interface that allows you to quickly add some habits that are supportive of your goals, and then everyday, you can check on the weekly calender for whether you’ve kept that habit or not. For every habit, it tracks how many times you’ve sticked to it, and how often you did it. Based on that, the software will calculate an estimated strength of your habit.
For new habits you’ve just started, their strength obviously is very low, but as you put more checks into the calender, you will see the habit grows stronger and stronger, until one day, you will see that the habit strength is showing full, which means you’ve pretty much formed that habit.
For this release, we will try to keep it very simple and easy to use. As we collect more feedback from people really using it, we will see what adjustments we need to make or new features to add to it to make it more useful. Please stay tuned and, as always, let me know what you think about this new feature.
Thanks,
Harry
Top 10 Best Ideas For Setting Goals
By Hilton Johnson
You cannot pick up a book or participate in a training program today without the author or instructor teaching the power of goal setting. Yet, most people today spend more time planning a two-week vacation than planning their lives by setting goals. It’s been said that achieving goals is not a problem–it’s SETTING goals that is the problem. People just don’t do it. They leave their lives to chance…and usually end up broke by the time they reach retirement.
I thought that since this is such an important ingredient for developing a successful network marketing business, this was a good time to share with you some of the greatest thoughts about goal setting that I’ve discovered over the years.
So, here goes…The Top 10 Best Ideas For Setting Goals:
1. Make A List Of Your Values
What’s really important to you? Your family? Your religion? Your leisure time? Your hobbies? Decide on what your most important values in life are and then make sure that the goals you set are designed to include and enhance them.
2. Begin With The End In Mind
Tom Watson, the founder of IBM was once asked what he attributed the phenomenal success of IBM to and he said it was three things:
The first thing was that he created a very clear image in his mind of what he wanted his company to look like when it was done. He then asked himself how would a company like that have to act on a day-to-day basis. And then in the very beginning of building his company, he began to act that way.
3. Project Yourself Into The Future
The late, great Earl Nightingale created a whole new industry (self-improvement) after a 20-year study on what made people successful. The bottom-line result of his research was simply, “We Become What We Think About.”
Whatever thoughts dominate our minds most of the time are what we become. That’s why goal setting is so critical in achieving success because it keeps us focused on what’s really important to us. He then said that the easiest way to reach our goals is to pretend that we had ALREADY achieved our goals.
That is, begin to walk, talk and act as though we are already experiencing the success we seek. Then, those things will come to us naturally through the power of the subconscious mind.
4. Write Down The 10 Things You Want This Year
By making a list of the things that are important to you, you begin to create images in your mind. It’s been said that your mind will actually create chaos if necessary to make images become a reality. Because of this, the list of ten things will probably result in you achieving at least eight of them within the year.
5. Create Your Storyboard
Get a piece of poster board and attach it to a wall in your office or home where you will see it often. As you go through magazines, brochures, etc. and you see the pictures of the things you want, cut them out and glue them to your storyboard.
In other words, make yourself a collage of the goals that excite you…knowing full well that as you look at them everyday, they will soon be yours.
6. The Three Most Important Things
Decide on three things that you want to achieve before you die. Then work backwards listing three things you want in the next twenty years, ten years, five years, this year, this month, this week and finally, the three most important things you want to accomplish today.
7. Ask Yourself Good Questions
As you think about your goals, instead of WISHING for them to come true, ask yourself HOW and WHAT CAN YOU DO to make them come true. The subconscious mind will respond to your questions far greater than just making statements or making wishes.
8. Focus On One Project At A Time
One of the greatest mistakes people make in setting goals is trying to work on too many things at one time. There is tremendous power in giving laser beam focused attention to just one idea, one project or one objective at a time.
9. Write Out An “Ideal Scenario”
Pretend that you are a newspaper reporter that has just finished an interview about the outstanding success that you’ve achieved and the article is now in the newspaper. How would it read? What would be the headline? Write the article yourself, projecting yourself into the future as though it had already happened. Describe the activities of your daily routine now that are very successful. Don’t forget the headline. (Example: “Jane Doe Wins Top Network Marketing Award Of The Decade.”)
10. Pray & Meditate
As you get into bed each evening, think about your goal before you drop off to sleep. Get a very clear colorful image in your mind of seeing yourself doing the things you’ll be doing after you’ve reached your major goal. (Remember to include your values.) And then begin to ask and demand for these things through meditation and prayer.
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How to Set SMART Goals and Get Things Done Web 2.0 goal setting and task management software. Vision board, DnD todo lists, goals and time trackers, goal journal, and more. |
GoalsOnTrack New Feature: Vision Board
We’ve just launched another feature for GoalsOnTrack, the Vision Board. It helps you visualize your goals by flashing a series of goal pictures you have uploaded or set for your goals. To see how it works, just go to your “Goals” page, and then click on “Vision Board” button at the top. Remember that only your active goals’ pictures will be shown on Vision Board.
Below are two samples of vision board running for 4 active goals.
What’s new with the site?
We have been working on a new feature after we launched task reordering feature last week. This new feature, called “Vision Board”, will help you visualize your goals and subconciously focus your mind on what you want to accomplish. We are in the final process of testing the new feature across different browsers and operating systems. It should be launched next week.
In addition to that, we’ve also fixed a few minor bugs, related to daily stats area, and in removing recurring task (thanks to Edward for alerting us about this bug).
We’re always finding ways to improve the site and make the app more useful for people reaching goals. So please don’t hesitate to send us any ideas or suggestion that you may have that could make the site better.
GoalsOnTrack New Feature: Drag-and-drop Task Reordering
We’ve recently launched a cool new feature that allows you to quickly prioritize your tasks on dashboard, simply by drag-n-droping them into the order that you want.
Below is a simple video I created to demonstrate how it looks like:
