LordKronos
06-18-2003, 02:05 PM
Posted by greggman at 06-15-2003 05:37 AM
To Steve (and everybody else).
I read all your wonderful articles on setting goals and making schedules. Thank you so much. Those are some of the best articles I've yet read (or heard) about those topics.
But, one thing I'd really like to see is a real list of someone's goals. Instead of just saying "goals are good", "you should have goals" I want to see someone's actual list. I spent about an hour trying to think up my goals, I came up with about 1 page. 18 short term, 6 long term. That sounds short comparing it to what you wrote.
And, as far as my schedule, I can't for the life of me figure out how to fit all the stuff I need or want to do into it so I'd really like to see some other people's schedules. How do you fit it all in? In fact looking at my schedule so far it makes me wonder how I even function with so little time in a day. I'm not even scheduling my worktime yet (well I blocked out 8 hours + 1 for lunch) and I don't have a girlfriend, wife or kids yet taking up any of my time. It's like "Oh my gawd, how am I ever going to be able to get this stuff done!?!?"
Do you mind posting your goals and schedule either here or in a future article as a sample for the rest of us?
Thank you
-greggman
ps: by the way I am ordering those books you mentioned but living in Japan it will be 2 or 3 weeks before they show up. I don't want to wait 2 or 3 weeks to get started so I'm here impatiently asking for examples
__________________
Greggman
http://greggman.com
Last edited by greggman on 06-15-2003 at 06:11 AM
Posted by Dexterity at 06-15-2003 01:29 PM
You had to ask this question... Ok, this will be a very long post, but hopefully some will find the info useful.
I've refined my goal-setting process over the years, expanding it into what I call my daily mental conditioning routine. I do this every single morning, and it usually takes about 30 minutes. I consider it to be a critical success factor for me personally and professionally. Here's what I do:
First, my life is divided into nine different areas. These are physical, financial, business, marriage & family, social, personal development, mental, fun & hobbies, and character. In the past I also had a spiritual section, but now I include this under personal development.
The format I use for this is simply an MS-Word doc. Each area gets its own page.
Each page is divided into three parts. The first part is where I list my #1 goal. In the second part, I have a list of positive reference experiences for this area of my life, basically a list of past successes. This helps me remember just how much I've accomplished, and the idea is to teach my brain that this is the pattern I want it to repeat. The third and final section is a list of all my goals for this area, stated as affirmations.
Here's an example of my current physical section, so you can see how it all comes together:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Physical
#1 Goal
My #1 physical goal is to reduce my weight to 180 pounds or less by July 31, 2003.
Positive References
1. I successfully went from SAD (Standard American Diet) to become a vegetarian, then a vegan, then a raw foodist. I've established a pattern of major dietary improvements over a 10-year period. With each change my diet has felt more abundant instead of more restrictive, and my energy has increased massively.
2. I consume no drugs of any kind, including caffeine, alchohol, sugar, white flour, refined foods, food chemicals, medicine, etc. I successfully broke all these addictions.
3. I've been exercising regularly for over a dozen years, including every single day of 1997 and 2003. Rain or shine, I can always exercise.
4. I've lost 10 pounds this year so far. Whenever I've temporarily gained a little weight, I've always been able to lose it.
5. I completed the 2000 L.A. Marathon in addition to many other long runs as well as thousands of 3-5 mile runs.
6. I'm a red belt in Tae Kwon Do.
7. I worked with a personal trainer during all of 2002, more than doubled my strength in every major muscle group, and dropped my body fat % significantly. I know how to train for results.
8. I've taken excellent care of my body over the years, never experiencing major health problems. I haven't had so much as a cold even once this year.
9. I've read dozens of outstanding books on health, nutrition, and exercise, and every year I increase my understanding of the principles that yield optimal health.
Goals & Affirmations
1. I am now releasing excess fat and toxins from my body, achieving a slim, muscular build at a weight of 180 pounds or less.
2. Every day I eat only raw, natural, organic, unprocessed foods that nourish, cleanse, and energize me. I see my diet as abundant, energizing, and sacred.
3. Every day my breathing, posture, strength, endurance, and flexibility are getting better and better.
4. I awaken each morning before 6:00am to begin my day full of energy and drive. My energy remains high all day, and I sleep restfully at night.
5. I am now exercising every morning before going to work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every morning I read all of this aloud. As I read the positive reference experiences, I recall these memories in my imagination, and I feel the positive feelings again. This has a tremendous reinforcing effect, keeping me focused on positive thoughts and eliminating fear and doubt. It helps put me in a state of positive expectancy and certainty before I read my goals and affirmations. I'm telling my brain that I'm just as certain about my future goals as I am about my past successes.
The goals and affirmations section will vary depending on which area of my life I'm covering. Most of my present physical goals involve the creation of new habits of thinking and doing, so these don't have deadlines, since this is more mental conditioning than goal-setting. I have a deadline for a weight-loss goal, but the other goals here don't have deadlines. I may also affirm existing habits in order to turn them from beliefs into convictions.
I use exaggerated words intentionally. Instead of using words like good or great, I prefer to use words like outstanding, superb, fantastic, outrageous, massively, etc. This is a habit I picked up from Tony Robbins -- he calls it the vocabulary of success. I find that it helps the affirmations have more impact.
Finally, after 9 pages of this, I have one final page. Here's what it looks like:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Closing Affirmations
1. Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.
2. I am now creating the life I dream of. I am the person I dream of being, right here, right now.
3. I now have peace and power. I now have grace, ease, and lightness.
4. I now work and live in harmony with my purpose. I am now doing the inner work, and the outer world, easily and effortlessly, is now bringing me the fulfillment of my dreams.
5. All of this, or something better, is now manifesting in totally satisfying and harmonious ways, in an easy and relaxed manner, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all.
Power Questions
1. What can I do today to bring my goals further into my present reality?
2. How can I best concentrate and focus my energies today?
3. How can I really enjoy the process of everything I do today?
4. How can I increase my service to others today?
5. How can I outdo the expectations of others and really shine today?
6. What's really beautiful about today?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So once I've read all the other pages, I read the closing affirmations, and then I read and answer the power questions.
So is all this work worth the effort? Absolutely! When I do this each morning, it puts me in a really focused, passionate, and confident state, so after I'm done I enthusiastically dive right into my work.
__________________
Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com
Posted by Dexterity at 06-15-2003 01:44 PM
Of course, the stuff above is only one part of the process. The other part is to turn these goals into concrete plans and actions. If you can visualize all the steps in advance, you can create a detailed written plan and follow it step by step. But what if you can't see how you'll get to the end? The way to tackle these goals is to just keep affirming them. You'll eventually get an idea of how to take the first step, and once you take that step, the second step will become clear. I'll illustrate this process with one of my goals, which was to change to a raw foods diet.
A raw foodist eats only living foods, i.e. fresh vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds, and unprocessed items created directly from them, like cold-pressed oils and fresh-squeezed juices. Nothing is cooked, so you'll never use a stove, oven, microwave, grill, toaster, etc. I knew from what I read that this was the next step I needed to take in improving my diet, but I didn't see how I could do it, since it was such a different way of eating than I was used to. I loved veggie burgers and french fries too much. But I set it as a goal anyway and started reading it each day as an affirmation, trusting that I would find the inner strength to make the change. And a big part of my goal was that I had to enjoy the diet, feeling abundance instead of deprivation. This is important -- if you have a challenging goal that you don't think you'll enjoy, make sure that part of the goal/affirmation is to enjoy the process as well as the end result.
After a few days of affirmations of this goal, I realized the first action step was that I needed to educate myself about the raw foods diet. Years ago I had tried to transition to this diet, but after 3 days I called it quits because I was starving all the time. So I started reading articles on raw sites like www.living-foods.com. Then I got a couple raw foods "uncooking" books and started experimenting with the recipes, making things like fresh guacamole, carrot cake, nori rolls, and various juices and shakes. I ate at Chef Juliano's raw foods restaurant in Santa Monica and at the Raw Truth Cafe in Las Vegas. The food was so fresh and delicious that I grew more and more confident I could make the change. I understood the reasons for my earlier failure, and I knew I could avoid those mistakes now.
This all happened over a period of about four months. Finally I was ready, and I decided to go raw for just 30 days to see what it was really like. The first 10 days were tough, but eventually it became easy after the addictions and cravings subsided, and I lost 7 pounds, yet I was eating abundantly without restricting calories or fat. After the 30-day trial (hey, if it works for shareware, why not try it for other things), I decided to try cooked vegan food again, having a meal I used to love from one of my favorite vegan restaurants. And I actually hated it. It tasted completely dead and synthetic to me; my tastebuds had changed massively, and I craved the life energy of a fresh avocado or apple. I had grown so used to living foods that I no longer wanted anything dead to enter my body. Now I continue eating this way simply because raw food tastes so good to me. I had read this in Chef Juliano's book, that he eats raw simply because it's the absolute best-tasting food. At the time I couldn't see how that would be possible, but I found it was certainly true for me.
So simply by affirming this goal and taking small baby steps towards its achievement over a period of months, I was able to do it, and it was relatively easy. This is the same process I use with every other goal where I can't see all the steps in advance. Even if it seems hard when you first set it, just keep affirming it and believing that the resources you need to achieve it will come to you. Often the first step is simply to educate yourself.
Once you've accomplished a big goal, you can then add it to your positive references. Plus you gain the results of having achieved the goal. I find that habit goals are the most critical, since if you change something you do every single day, it will have a massive impact over the next 5, 10, 20 years. For instance, as a raw foodist my daily energy has absolutely exploded. I have an almost constant feeling of euphoria, like the feeling you get when you have the urge to laugh. It made me realize that most people who consider themselves healthy have never actually experienced true health -- it goes way beyond the mere absence of disease and discomfort. As a result this is something that will benefit me for years to come, so it was well worth the effort, and I did indeed enjoy the process.
__________________
Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com
Posted by greggman at 06-15-2003 02:22 PM
Hello Steve,
Thank you so much for taking the time out to post such a detailed reply. I'm sure your examples and explaintions will have a big impact on my life.
I will give your suggestions a try as far as coming up with my own cagetories, listing my successes in life in those areas so far, and coming up with my goals and affirmations.
I'm still a little lost on the scheduling issue. Trying to figure out how to (1) fit it all in and (2) still be things that don't fit a schedule. (meeting friends, going out with my girlfriend, etc) but I'm sure one way or another I'll figure it out. Thanks again for give me so much insight into being successful.
__________________
Greggman
http://greggman.com
Posted by bstone at 06-15-2003 03:43 PM
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by Dexterity:
Ok, this will be a very long post, but hopefully some will find the info useful.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh! One insight after another! Thanks!!!
__________________
Roman Kramar
Elastic Systems
http://www.elasticsystems.com/
Posted by KNau at 06-15-2003 03:47 PM
One thing I've learned is to treat your personal time with as much consideration as any business commitment.
That means every day you have a goal to spend "x" amount of time with your loved ones and nothing supercedes that commitment. It doesn't matter if you are deep into development of your game or if your boss wants you to work late - if you've scheduled time to take your girlfriend out to dinner then you drop everything and go. If you have faith in yourself you can always find a way to make it work.
Having said that, I still struggle with time management constantly and I don't know if it's ever something I will fully grasp. I think there's a part of me that gets off on "crisis management" so I'm always leaving things until the last minute.
__________________
Cancerian New Media
http://www.canceriannewmedia.com
Posted by Fariz at 06-15-2003 04:49 PM
I have an excel file for each month. My goals are splitted into 1 month, 3 months, and 1 year. I usually do not make plans for longer than 1 year for several reasons, though I have a list of general priorities and goals. Within the file I have tables for each day, where I put all the task I plan to do today.
Usually I follow the procedure this way, I split my tasks into 3 level of importance, A, B and C. A usually used for something which must be done today, B for somethign, which may be transfered to other day, C is something which usually may be delayed up to 1 week. I paid attention that I mannage to do about 95% of A, and around 70% of B at the days they were planned. I also register how much time every task takes. In the end of day I fill in how many tasks were done or not done, and how many time it got. If I fail to make the task or postponed it I describe why it happened.
I usually check my daily plan every morning, my month plan every sunday, and my 3 months and a year plan 1st day of every month. I also indicate the progress, and if I am behind the schedule I think of a reasons and write them down.
In fact the fact I have a plan and can follow it saying not about my ability to be organized, but rather about my tendention to be very chaotic. Without plan I very soon become disoriented, and can make less with same or more efforts applied. For me having plan is a way to be effective.
I think it is very personal though, some people do great without any written plan, their subcontient program leads them thru this life better, than any contient efforts. But that is surely a minority. For majority of people having some way of organization to structure their life is fruitful.
Posted by Karukef at 06-15-2003 05:25 PM
Inserted into my journal. I'm not at that level yet, but there will be a time where I will have much use of that I am sure. Anything to reduce the time it takes me to acquire the knowlegde I need to become all I can be
Posted by Dexterity at 06-15-2003 06:10 PM
In terms of scheduling and completing tasks, I highly recommend the book Getting Things Done by David Allen. I use a system very similar to his. The book presents a fully integrated method of organizing all the various to-dos you have and scheduling them in an efficient order.
Perhaps one of the hardest things for me is to acknowledge that certain tasks will never get done. There are only so many hours in each day, and my reach will always exceed my grasp. So tasks I'd love to see done have to be delayed or eliminated, simply because they aren't important enough. Even as a company grows and adds more people, new opportunities will continue to spring up, and you'll never be able to tackle all of them. Ruthless triage is just part of the game.
__________________
Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com
Posted by Karukef at 06-15-2003 06:17 PM
Book recommendations are treats. Thanks.
To Steve (and everybody else).
I read all your wonderful articles on setting goals and making schedules. Thank you so much. Those are some of the best articles I've yet read (or heard) about those topics.
But, one thing I'd really like to see is a real list of someone's goals. Instead of just saying "goals are good", "you should have goals" I want to see someone's actual list. I spent about an hour trying to think up my goals, I came up with about 1 page. 18 short term, 6 long term. That sounds short comparing it to what you wrote.
And, as far as my schedule, I can't for the life of me figure out how to fit all the stuff I need or want to do into it so I'd really like to see some other people's schedules. How do you fit it all in? In fact looking at my schedule so far it makes me wonder how I even function with so little time in a day. I'm not even scheduling my worktime yet (well I blocked out 8 hours + 1 for lunch) and I don't have a girlfriend, wife or kids yet taking up any of my time. It's like "Oh my gawd, how am I ever going to be able to get this stuff done!?!?"
Do you mind posting your goals and schedule either here or in a future article as a sample for the rest of us?
Thank you
-greggman
ps: by the way I am ordering those books you mentioned but living in Japan it will be 2 or 3 weeks before they show up. I don't want to wait 2 or 3 weeks to get started so I'm here impatiently asking for examples
__________________
Greggman
http://greggman.com
Last edited by greggman on 06-15-2003 at 06:11 AM
Posted by Dexterity at 06-15-2003 01:29 PM
You had to ask this question... Ok, this will be a very long post, but hopefully some will find the info useful.
I've refined my goal-setting process over the years, expanding it into what I call my daily mental conditioning routine. I do this every single morning, and it usually takes about 30 minutes. I consider it to be a critical success factor for me personally and professionally. Here's what I do:
First, my life is divided into nine different areas. These are physical, financial, business, marriage & family, social, personal development, mental, fun & hobbies, and character. In the past I also had a spiritual section, but now I include this under personal development.
The format I use for this is simply an MS-Word doc. Each area gets its own page.
Each page is divided into three parts. The first part is where I list my #1 goal. In the second part, I have a list of positive reference experiences for this area of my life, basically a list of past successes. This helps me remember just how much I've accomplished, and the idea is to teach my brain that this is the pattern I want it to repeat. The third and final section is a list of all my goals for this area, stated as affirmations.
Here's an example of my current physical section, so you can see how it all comes together:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Physical
#1 Goal
My #1 physical goal is to reduce my weight to 180 pounds or less by July 31, 2003.
Positive References
1. I successfully went from SAD (Standard American Diet) to become a vegetarian, then a vegan, then a raw foodist. I've established a pattern of major dietary improvements over a 10-year period. With each change my diet has felt more abundant instead of more restrictive, and my energy has increased massively.
2. I consume no drugs of any kind, including caffeine, alchohol, sugar, white flour, refined foods, food chemicals, medicine, etc. I successfully broke all these addictions.
3. I've been exercising regularly for over a dozen years, including every single day of 1997 and 2003. Rain or shine, I can always exercise.
4. I've lost 10 pounds this year so far. Whenever I've temporarily gained a little weight, I've always been able to lose it.
5. I completed the 2000 L.A. Marathon in addition to many other long runs as well as thousands of 3-5 mile runs.
6. I'm a red belt in Tae Kwon Do.
7. I worked with a personal trainer during all of 2002, more than doubled my strength in every major muscle group, and dropped my body fat % significantly. I know how to train for results.
8. I've taken excellent care of my body over the years, never experiencing major health problems. I haven't had so much as a cold even once this year.
9. I've read dozens of outstanding books on health, nutrition, and exercise, and every year I increase my understanding of the principles that yield optimal health.
Goals & Affirmations
1. I am now releasing excess fat and toxins from my body, achieving a slim, muscular build at a weight of 180 pounds or less.
2. Every day I eat only raw, natural, organic, unprocessed foods that nourish, cleanse, and energize me. I see my diet as abundant, energizing, and sacred.
3. Every day my breathing, posture, strength, endurance, and flexibility are getting better and better.
4. I awaken each morning before 6:00am to begin my day full of energy and drive. My energy remains high all day, and I sleep restfully at night.
5. I am now exercising every morning before going to work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every morning I read all of this aloud. As I read the positive reference experiences, I recall these memories in my imagination, and I feel the positive feelings again. This has a tremendous reinforcing effect, keeping me focused on positive thoughts and eliminating fear and doubt. It helps put me in a state of positive expectancy and certainty before I read my goals and affirmations. I'm telling my brain that I'm just as certain about my future goals as I am about my past successes.
The goals and affirmations section will vary depending on which area of my life I'm covering. Most of my present physical goals involve the creation of new habits of thinking and doing, so these don't have deadlines, since this is more mental conditioning than goal-setting. I have a deadline for a weight-loss goal, but the other goals here don't have deadlines. I may also affirm existing habits in order to turn them from beliefs into convictions.
I use exaggerated words intentionally. Instead of using words like good or great, I prefer to use words like outstanding, superb, fantastic, outrageous, massively, etc. This is a habit I picked up from Tony Robbins -- he calls it the vocabulary of success. I find that it helps the affirmations have more impact.
Finally, after 9 pages of this, I have one final page. Here's what it looks like:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Closing Affirmations
1. Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.
2. I am now creating the life I dream of. I am the person I dream of being, right here, right now.
3. I now have peace and power. I now have grace, ease, and lightness.
4. I now work and live in harmony with my purpose. I am now doing the inner work, and the outer world, easily and effortlessly, is now bringing me the fulfillment of my dreams.
5. All of this, or something better, is now manifesting in totally satisfying and harmonious ways, in an easy and relaxed manner, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all.
Power Questions
1. What can I do today to bring my goals further into my present reality?
2. How can I best concentrate and focus my energies today?
3. How can I really enjoy the process of everything I do today?
4. How can I increase my service to others today?
5. How can I outdo the expectations of others and really shine today?
6. What's really beautiful about today?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So once I've read all the other pages, I read the closing affirmations, and then I read and answer the power questions.
So is all this work worth the effort? Absolutely! When I do this each morning, it puts me in a really focused, passionate, and confident state, so after I'm done I enthusiastically dive right into my work.
__________________
Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com
Posted by Dexterity at 06-15-2003 01:44 PM
Of course, the stuff above is only one part of the process. The other part is to turn these goals into concrete plans and actions. If you can visualize all the steps in advance, you can create a detailed written plan and follow it step by step. But what if you can't see how you'll get to the end? The way to tackle these goals is to just keep affirming them. You'll eventually get an idea of how to take the first step, and once you take that step, the second step will become clear. I'll illustrate this process with one of my goals, which was to change to a raw foods diet.
A raw foodist eats only living foods, i.e. fresh vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds, and unprocessed items created directly from them, like cold-pressed oils and fresh-squeezed juices. Nothing is cooked, so you'll never use a stove, oven, microwave, grill, toaster, etc. I knew from what I read that this was the next step I needed to take in improving my diet, but I didn't see how I could do it, since it was such a different way of eating than I was used to. I loved veggie burgers and french fries too much. But I set it as a goal anyway and started reading it each day as an affirmation, trusting that I would find the inner strength to make the change. And a big part of my goal was that I had to enjoy the diet, feeling abundance instead of deprivation. This is important -- if you have a challenging goal that you don't think you'll enjoy, make sure that part of the goal/affirmation is to enjoy the process as well as the end result.
After a few days of affirmations of this goal, I realized the first action step was that I needed to educate myself about the raw foods diet. Years ago I had tried to transition to this diet, but after 3 days I called it quits because I was starving all the time. So I started reading articles on raw sites like www.living-foods.com. Then I got a couple raw foods "uncooking" books and started experimenting with the recipes, making things like fresh guacamole, carrot cake, nori rolls, and various juices and shakes. I ate at Chef Juliano's raw foods restaurant in Santa Monica and at the Raw Truth Cafe in Las Vegas. The food was so fresh and delicious that I grew more and more confident I could make the change. I understood the reasons for my earlier failure, and I knew I could avoid those mistakes now.
This all happened over a period of about four months. Finally I was ready, and I decided to go raw for just 30 days to see what it was really like. The first 10 days were tough, but eventually it became easy after the addictions and cravings subsided, and I lost 7 pounds, yet I was eating abundantly without restricting calories or fat. After the 30-day trial (hey, if it works for shareware, why not try it for other things), I decided to try cooked vegan food again, having a meal I used to love from one of my favorite vegan restaurants. And I actually hated it. It tasted completely dead and synthetic to me; my tastebuds had changed massively, and I craved the life energy of a fresh avocado or apple. I had grown so used to living foods that I no longer wanted anything dead to enter my body. Now I continue eating this way simply because raw food tastes so good to me. I had read this in Chef Juliano's book, that he eats raw simply because it's the absolute best-tasting food. At the time I couldn't see how that would be possible, but I found it was certainly true for me.
So simply by affirming this goal and taking small baby steps towards its achievement over a period of months, I was able to do it, and it was relatively easy. This is the same process I use with every other goal where I can't see all the steps in advance. Even if it seems hard when you first set it, just keep affirming it and believing that the resources you need to achieve it will come to you. Often the first step is simply to educate yourself.
Once you've accomplished a big goal, you can then add it to your positive references. Plus you gain the results of having achieved the goal. I find that habit goals are the most critical, since if you change something you do every single day, it will have a massive impact over the next 5, 10, 20 years. For instance, as a raw foodist my daily energy has absolutely exploded. I have an almost constant feeling of euphoria, like the feeling you get when you have the urge to laugh. It made me realize that most people who consider themselves healthy have never actually experienced true health -- it goes way beyond the mere absence of disease and discomfort. As a result this is something that will benefit me for years to come, so it was well worth the effort, and I did indeed enjoy the process.
__________________
Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com
Posted by greggman at 06-15-2003 02:22 PM
Hello Steve,
Thank you so much for taking the time out to post such a detailed reply. I'm sure your examples and explaintions will have a big impact on my life.
I will give your suggestions a try as far as coming up with my own cagetories, listing my successes in life in those areas so far, and coming up with my goals and affirmations.
I'm still a little lost on the scheduling issue. Trying to figure out how to (1) fit it all in and (2) still be things that don't fit a schedule. (meeting friends, going out with my girlfriend, etc) but I'm sure one way or another I'll figure it out. Thanks again for give me so much insight into being successful.
__________________
Greggman
http://greggman.com
Posted by bstone at 06-15-2003 03:43 PM
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by Dexterity:
Ok, this will be a very long post, but hopefully some will find the info useful.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh! One insight after another! Thanks!!!
__________________
Roman Kramar
Elastic Systems
http://www.elasticsystems.com/
Posted by KNau at 06-15-2003 03:47 PM
One thing I've learned is to treat your personal time with as much consideration as any business commitment.
That means every day you have a goal to spend "x" amount of time with your loved ones and nothing supercedes that commitment. It doesn't matter if you are deep into development of your game or if your boss wants you to work late - if you've scheduled time to take your girlfriend out to dinner then you drop everything and go. If you have faith in yourself you can always find a way to make it work.
Having said that, I still struggle with time management constantly and I don't know if it's ever something I will fully grasp. I think there's a part of me that gets off on "crisis management" so I'm always leaving things until the last minute.
__________________
Cancerian New Media
http://www.canceriannewmedia.com
Posted by Fariz at 06-15-2003 04:49 PM
I have an excel file for each month. My goals are splitted into 1 month, 3 months, and 1 year. I usually do not make plans for longer than 1 year for several reasons, though I have a list of general priorities and goals. Within the file I have tables for each day, where I put all the task I plan to do today.
Usually I follow the procedure this way, I split my tasks into 3 level of importance, A, B and C. A usually used for something which must be done today, B for somethign, which may be transfered to other day, C is something which usually may be delayed up to 1 week. I paid attention that I mannage to do about 95% of A, and around 70% of B at the days they were planned. I also register how much time every task takes. In the end of day I fill in how many tasks were done or not done, and how many time it got. If I fail to make the task or postponed it I describe why it happened.
I usually check my daily plan every morning, my month plan every sunday, and my 3 months and a year plan 1st day of every month. I also indicate the progress, and if I am behind the schedule I think of a reasons and write them down.
In fact the fact I have a plan and can follow it saying not about my ability to be organized, but rather about my tendention to be very chaotic. Without plan I very soon become disoriented, and can make less with same or more efforts applied. For me having plan is a way to be effective.
I think it is very personal though, some people do great without any written plan, their subcontient program leads them thru this life better, than any contient efforts. But that is surely a minority. For majority of people having some way of organization to structure their life is fruitful.
Posted by Karukef at 06-15-2003 05:25 PM
Inserted into my journal. I'm not at that level yet, but there will be a time where I will have much use of that I am sure. Anything to reduce the time it takes me to acquire the knowlegde I need to become all I can be
Posted by Dexterity at 06-15-2003 06:10 PM
In terms of scheduling and completing tasks, I highly recommend the book Getting Things Done by David Allen. I use a system very similar to his. The book presents a fully integrated method of organizing all the various to-dos you have and scheduling them in an efficient order.
Perhaps one of the hardest things for me is to acknowledge that certain tasks will never get done. There are only so many hours in each day, and my reach will always exceed my grasp. So tasks I'd love to see done have to be delayed or eliminated, simply because they aren't important enough. Even as a company grows and adds more people, new opportunities will continue to spring up, and you'll never be able to tackle all of them. Ruthless triage is just part of the game.
__________________
Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com
Posted by Karukef at 06-15-2003 06:17 PM
Book recommendations are treats. Thanks.