“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each New Year find you a better man.” – Benjamin Franklin

Leave it to a “Founding Father” to sum up one’s goals for the upcoming year!  2011 makes me a little nervous and excited, it will be my first year without being in ministry, it’s my year of being 40, and it’s also the year that I HAVE/MUST/WANT to drop the weight that’s I’ve been carrying most all my life.

It seems that I must always fight against the “natural man” as Oswald Chambers described.  My angers, my fears, my habits, my prejudices…  And that is the beauty of New Years, it’s a chance to start anew and fresh.

I pray that this year brings you blessings and joy, and the Lord blesses and keeps you and makes His face shine upon you.

Goals and goal setting is not just for the workplace.  We should all have personal, professional, relationship, and even recreational goals.  Goals are benchmarks to work towards.  They are tangible evidence of our hard work and dedication.  We spend our lives achieving, and often failing to achieve, our goals, whether we know it, or not.

Walt Disney said, “A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there. With enough effort, he may achieve it. Or he may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he will know he has been alive.”  And he was absolutely correct.

Without setting some measurable point to work towards, we spend our days, and our lives, meandering from one circumstance to another, not knowing whether we are progressing or retreating.

Without proper goal setting:

• Our work weeks would be a chaotic jumble of deadlines, meetings, phone calls, emails, and conversations.
• Our personal lives would be void of exercise, nutrition, proper rest, or habits, and we would be at the very whim of every text, email, or phone call.
• Our relationships would be stagnant, not moving forward in the appropriate steps of progression.
• Our lives would be a complete mess, and our leadership wouldn’t be as effective as it could be.

How do you set goals?

Goal setting isn’t rocket science, it can be as easy as writing a simple list of 5 things to do during your work day.  It can be a list of books to read through out the year.  It can be signing up for a 5K race and having to train to properly prepare.

But let’s look as some simple, practical ways to set some basic goals for our lives.

The night before your work week begins…

• List out all the appointments you have in your calendar for the coming week. This lets you visually see what your week looks like and you can get an idea of where you need to focus your time to work between the appointment.
• Write out the TOP 10 actions you need to take that week.  You have limited amounts of time, you have certain tasks, phone calls, emails, or projects that need to be completed.  Make you list and complete each task as soon as possible.

Each night before you go to sleep…

• Look at your appoints for the day. You need to know what you coming day looks like, and get an idea where your time needs to be allotted.
• List out the TOP 3 THINGS that MUST be done. You can only truly focus on accomplishing 3-4 projects a day (assuming that you are working a normal 8-10 hour day), so you need to figure out the most important projects for that day to complete.
• List out the Phone Calls, Emails, Conversations you need to have. Knowing who you need to connect with helps you focus your time and energy.  If you need to talk to your I.T. Guy before end of day, you can structure your day to connect with him and not forget it.

Use Task Management Tools

There are great online resources like RememberTheMilk.com, Toodledo.com, and tadalist.com you can use, many for free.  These will help you manage your “to do” lists to help you accomplish your daily, weekly, or monthly goals.  Managing these smaller lists will help you attain your overall goals like time management, project achievement, and they can help you sleep better at night.

Write Out Your Goals

Download this PDF and fill it out.  It’s a very simple, yet profound tool to help you list out your goals for the next weeks, months, years.

There are 6 categories, Personal, Health, Professional, Financial, Relationships, and Community.  There are 10 spots to fill in under each heading.  Take 1 minute per spot and fill it out with a specific goal you want to attain.

There are 6 heading, 10 spots per heading, at a minute per spot, this simple exercise should take about an hour.  You can fill this out by yourself or as a couple.  You can use all 10 spots, or only 3 to 5…it’s up to you, but SET SOME GOALS!

Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on goals and goal setting, or if these ideas helped!