After putting all your ideas out, you can then decide which ones you’ll keep and which ones you’ll eliminate in finalizing a goal.  While this may seem like a timely process, it assures that all your great ideas are captured, regardless of how silly or how seemingly impossible they may be, towards helping you accomplish your objective.

It’s always best to work on a large paper or even a dart board, as seen here on the left, (since this can be a fun process too).  You want to be sure you aren’t restricting your ideas with too small of a writing or working space. 

Get all of your ideas out – both those that are strongly or mildly interesting and even the crazy ones.  With even the wild and crazy ideas, there can be kernals of something useful and powerful to include.  So don’t be too quick to discard these kinds of ideas.   Then see where there are similarities, where your experience, skills and strengths most occur, and with which ideas you’d have the time, energy and resources for.  In other words, begin the narrowing and focusing process after you’ve got all your ideas out. 

Best not to jump into action on any of these ideas until you’ve done the shuffling process of discarding the true misfit ideas and see the patterns emerge on what you really want to pursue.  Now with less ideas you can move into the R&D phase and do examination of these ideas or goals in more detail, to determine the best one to pursue.

Sometimes no matter how quickly you move, you can’t get your projects complete in a day, in a week…or sometimes longer.  If you’re a high achiever, like so many of us, then you know what I’m talking about.  How do you deal with disappointment when you expected to get something done and it’s just not going to happen?

Face the necessary facts:  have a clear plan and timeline, schedule less things to do simultaneously and that gives you more likelihood you’ll meet your goal.  No plan and overbooking is gambling on the results.  Yet even when you have all systems in place, and have given yourself a little more time than you expect your project will take to complete, there are no guarantees you’ll get your project done.  Life has a way of interrupting even the most focused of us.  Hence, you may get frustrated or experience disappointment.

Solution: still plan, still put goals in a timeline, still say no to distractions, and do your best to work smarter, not harder. 

Speeding up will only cause nervousness and costly mistakes.  When you’ve given your best, been focused on the goal, and projects are still delayed, feel your disappointment for a short period when it comes up.  Then ask yourself these few questions, “What do I make this mean about me that I didn’t get this done?

Ask yourself,  “How vital was it that this be done today?“  (probably not as urgent as you make it seem).  “What do I need to do to shift my schedule to get this done at my next earliest opportunity?”  (take a look, refigure, and now just do it).  Finally, be sure not to use unexpected delays as an excuse to continually put things off!

What do you make it mean about you when you don’t complete something and how can you shift that back to the real focus – to get your project done and done calmly?

In a client session recently (and in a conversation with my husband this morning), I noticed that there’s a tendency to talk about goals in terms of the challenge, the struggle, the time it’ll take, the money’ll it take, etc. 

This year, how about making your mind up to shift the language you use around your goals.  Talk about your excitement, your wonder, your curiosity for how it’ll all play out.  Talk about next steps and who you’re using for support and what you’re doing today.  Notice how much more you feel alive and engaged and not worried or tired at the prospects. 

If your goals don’t get you moving and excited at some level, you probably need different ones.  For example, instead of “losing weight,” what about ”gaining a slimmer figure”?  Instead of “work on improving my relationship with my husband,” how ’bout “bring more love and fun into my relationship with my husband?”  Think about it…this alone can add a whole new launching pad – and energy – for your changes. 

It used to be everytime I tried to make a change I had to sit down and start from scratch, re-thinking what I needed to factor in to weigh the pros and cons of the change, whether or not it was good to consider it now, etc. 

Did you ever wish you had a simple blueprint for making important small  or large changes?  Here are the ten fundamental change steps that I use, share with clients and you can use.  I talk about them in more detail on the change portion of my ”The 3 C’s for Effective Living – change, creativity & communication” double-audiotape.

1:   Where am I now?

2:   What’s missing today?

3.   What do I most value at this time? 

4:   What motivates me now? 

5:   What is most important for me to focus on now? 

6:   What other life issues are pressing or pending? 

7:   If this were provided, would it fulfill what’s missing? 

8:   What am I willing to let go of to create that vision? 

9:   What do I need to learn or unlearn to move forward? 

10:  What actions do I need to take today and tomorrow to move me closer to getting there?

If you follow a plan for your changes, do you include these or similar steps?

A plan to accomplish your goal is important, but part of that plan needs to be well-thought out benchmarks chosen in advance and reached along the way.   These benchmarks are the best way to monitor your progress.  Otherwise the likelihood of your reaching your final goal becomes as challenging as trying to fly a plane in fog by radio instruction when your control panel is malfunctioning.  In order to reach your destination you have to do all the procedures in sequential order and follow all the steps and stages or it could mean serious problems. 

In business there are costs to measure, productivity measures, cycle times, performance-based requirements, customer satisfaction measures of you and the product and other important measures.  Determine upfront the benchmarks you need to give you satisfying results and useful stats for this and future projects.  Then gauge that your targets are met or what you need to do to adjust them, so you can proceed on course.

What’s one project that didn’t turn out right because you didn’t benchmark along the way AND what measures and monitors would you apply if you were doing it today?