Many people think that they do not have enough time to set goals. They think they are too busy to set lofty goals that they will never be able to achieve. Most of the time people do not set goals because of the fear of criticism. In 19 years of formal education I never received 1 hour of instruction on goal setting. And it is the most important skill that a business owner or salesperson should work on. Two hours a week setting goals can make the difference between making have your quota selling or making 200% of your quota selling.

When it comes to online business development goal setting skills are critical. They most successful internet marketers and pro bloggers all set goal and have a system for reviewing these goals on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. If you want to be successful online the first thing you need to do is get very clear off line.

Objective

Do you have a process in place today to answer these questions on a regular basis:

• How do I make a decision?
• How do I make sure I am working on the right tasks?
• How do I make sure the work I am doing know is in line with my personal and professional values?
• How do the different parts of my life/business interact?
• What rules do I follow to accomplish my life/business?
• How do you allocate resources to your competing demands on your time?

Most small businesses do not have a process for answering an of these questions. They reinvent the wheel every time that a new challenge gets presented to them. If you want your business to work for you in a high leveraged capacity then you need to focus on a system for answering these questions. Lucky for you we are about to present just such a system but first.

Your Mental Model is the most important aspect of where or not you are going to be successful with you online marketing. You will find many techniques and processes that do not work. The way that you think about the challenges and what you choose to do about them will determine your success. In your activities you want to stay positive and think with a Win-Win mental model.

I know what you are thinking, “Tim has lost his mind.”. Well that may be true but know regarding this subject. This system needs to utilize information in a way that will allow us to make better decisions. The world has much too much information these days and far few people interpreting that information. No mater what you business or field you will be effected by information overload. There are far to many decision too make, too many choices to choose from and not enough time in the day to think about any of it. Saying yes to one thing means that you have said no to many other equally good choices.

Bentov’s Law – One’s level of ignorance increases exponentially with accumulated knowledge. When one acquires a bit of new information, there are many new questions that are generated by it,and each new piece of information breeds five-ten new questions. These questions pile up at a much faster rate than does accumulated knowledge. Therefore, the more one knows, the greater his level of ignorance.

If you remember learning how to blog or how to install a computer program the first time you will understand the meaning of Bentov’s Law. Every time that you learn one thing you had 10 more questions about other topics.

If you are a good decision maker 7 out of 10 decisions that you make will be wrong. The issues is not whether you are going to right or wrong but how long it takes for you to recognize when you are wrong and correct the mistake. It is this ability to be flexible in setting goals and evaluating them that separates the successful from the unsuccessful.

Goal Setting Process

What we need to solve this decision making problem are goals. Deeply desired burning goals. When you want something you find ways to get it done instead of ways to avoid doing it. As you learn to set goals for yourself concentrate on goals that you want to achieve. Decide what you really want out of life and then be determined to pay the price to get it.

The problem that most people have is that they never decide what it is that they really want out of life so they never find the opportunities that clarity reveals.

Now to clear up the definitions a bit so we can talk bout the nuts and bolts of goal setting and goal achievement. Wishes are not goals. Wishes are things that you could do, have or be but, that you are not willing to invest in yourself to achieve them. Goals are burning desired objectives. They are written in the present tense, are believable, have deadlines and can be measured qualitatively and quantitatively. Yes I said measured. If you can not measure it then it is not a goal. Roles are positions that you hold in your life. You have personal roles like husband, father, wife, mom and you have business roles like manager, engineer or salesperson. What you will quickly discover is that your goals will naturally fit into different areas of your life. Your roles allows you to think more clearly about all of the goals you want to set in that area of your life. Finally we come to actions. These are the small atomic steps that you must take on your way to accomplishing a goal. Taken by themselves they seem useless but added together they are unstoppable. I like to think of water when I think of actions. When you think of a drop of water you do not think of alot of power. But when you have lots of drops of water you get the grand canon carved. So it is the case with your actions. If you drive them with burning desired goals we will be unstoppable.

Practice Exercises

Now for the structure of the process. First you need to have a mission statement for what you want out of your business or life.

When it comes to mission statements clarity equals power. When you are doing what you want to do and it is supporting your purpose for being you will bring your whole person to it. They product of this will be a Mission Statement Card that you can use on a daily basis to connect with why you are working so hard.

The next step is to set a particular goal. I suggest that you limit your first goal setting exercise to one personal goal. After you get a feel for the system you can add it to up to three goals at a time but any more than that and you risk loosing focus on what you are doing.

Remember the more you desire what it is that you want to faster that you will be able to attain it so start with things that you really want. They product of the Goal Worksheet is to have goal cards that you can use to stay clear and focused on your goal at hand.

The final and ongoing step is to take responsible for getting the actions done that will lead to the accomplishment of your goals. You have to schedule when actions are going to be taken and record them on your what I call a character sheet. It looks like a schedule or to do list but it is much, much more than just a to do list. More on that later. The reason that I call it a character sheet is that it helps you build character.

In the next few weeks we will be talk all about how to uses these tools to create a mission statement, set goals and keep on track with them.

Next Steps

Here are my suggestions for building great habits. We will be talking about the details of the tools above and each of the following techniques in future Tuesday Mornings With Tim.

• Read 1 hour per day in your area of focus
• Journal Daily
• 20 Idea Method
• $25,000 Idea
• Allow Backsliding – No beating yourself up – Learn from it.
• The unschedule, Back Timing and Time Blocking
• Procrastination and Analysis Paralysis
• Review your goals daily, weekly, monthly and yearly

Please see the next post titled The Art of Goal Setting Take2 when you are finished reading this post.

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