The Importance of Being Organized and Setting Goals

By: Mark Dale
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:52
Print this article | Tell a friend | For publisher |

Rating:

 

As you create your online business you will build up an ever increasing list of web sites, accounts, domain names, affiliates, memberships, etc, etc. You'll often find yourself in a situation where you spend far too much of your time trying to keep on top of managing your daily routine. By being unorganized you can easily lose track of what you were doing, or planning to do, and often you end up wasting half of your day on useless tasks instead of concentrating on what is important...making money and building a successful business!

It doesn't matter if you are a web designer, an internet marketer, a project manager, or whatever. If you don't organize your monthly, weekly and daily routine then you won't be able to set any goals. If you don't set any goals then you won't have any focus and you'll just end up becoming frustrated and unproductive. By being organized and setting goals you'll also be able to measure your performance against those goals, thus giving you the opportunity for self improvement.

I've devised a system that works for me and I hope you can benefit from my system and become more organized. I use this system to set both my business and personal goals, for instance keeping fit or losing weight.

To set your goals you need a method to record them. I prefer to do this electronically (i.e. Microsoft Excel), but you may prefer to use the old paper and pen way. Therefore, if you don't want to use a computer to record your goals and progress, then go and buy a good hard-back notebook and pen instead. It doesn't matter which option you choose!

The only other thing you need to find is a little bit of spare time. Set aside half an hour to an hour a month for your monthly goals, 10 to 15 minutes a week for your weekly goals, and 5 to 10 minutes a day for your daily tasks.

Setting your Overall Goals These are your long term goals. You record these only once, but you must always refer to them on a regular basis. On the first page of your book, or on a new blank spreadsheet or document write today's date and then add a few paragraphs about what you want to achieve in the medium to long term, for example your goals may be:

I will lose 14lbs over the next XX months by going to the gym at least 3 times a week and eating a healthy and balance diet.

Within six months of today I want to be earning the equivalent of $1,500 per week from my multiple income streams web business. I want to be working from home and working the hours I choose allowing me to spend more time with my family.

Setting your Monthly Goals At the beginning of every month I produce a spreadsheet of what I want to achieve that month. I keep this simple and create one row for each high-level task I want to achieve. For example:

"Add a membership system to my web site to capture visitors email addresses" "Write new eBook on the Importance of Being Organised".

I also create a column for recording the priority in which I want to complete the task and a column for the date the goal was completed. If during the month you think of new ideas, either add them to this month's spreadsheet/page (if practical to do so), or add them to next month's goals. An optional column I use would be for "project". You can use this to categorize your tasks into say "Web Site Development", "Personal Health", etc.

Setting your Weekly Goals Usually on a Sunday night, or first thing Monday I add my goals for the week. This is normally a break down of my monthly goals. For example:

"Develop the membership sign up page for the web site" "Create a screen to send a user their password if they forget it" "Add a blog entry to the web site introducing the new membership system"

As well as adding "priority" and "date completed" columns, I also create a column to record the time taken to complete the task.

Recording your Daily Tasks The first thing I do each day when I get to my computer is plan my daily tasks and record them into my daily task spreadsheet as and when I do them. I used to do this in my page-a-day diary, which is still perfectly acceptable, but I'd just rather use my spreadsheet now. I enter everything in to this spreadsheet, including things like "took the dogs for a walk", "went to the gym", "posted items ordered from eBay shop", and so on.

One extra thing I do daily is rate my performance on my daily tasks. This has to be an honest assessment, otherwise it's completely pointless and you are simply deceiving yourself.

After a couple of weeks of recording your goals and tasks this way you will be amazed at how much more you get done. I also found that by being organized I'd have much more spare time for my wife and children and I'd sleep much better at night because I wouldn't lie in bed thinking what I had to do the next day!

Article source: Expert Articles