My Lucid Reality

Last week for goal management we talked about the SMART method of determining whether a goal is worth going after.  Goals must be Specific, Measureable, Attainable, you must Want it, it needs to be Realistic, and Time sensitive.

This week, in part two of the goal management series I will discuss some of the project management techniques that I incorporate to help me reach my destination.

First, let us take the goal we’ve filtered through S.M.A.R.T. and set the stage for success a method suggested by the Domestic Executive is to change the wording or impact of the goal so that it’s something that shines for you.  The example Julie gave last week was losing weight.  A great goal is: I’d like to lose 20kg by the time my father visits me.
A Shiny goal: Walk with my dad again wearing my wedding dress.  This is a method that will use your goal like a guiding star that will continue to light your way to success.

Once you’ve defined your goal in a way that can make it shine for you, make sure to write it down.  A goal that isn’t written down is just a wish, and wishes rarely get you anywhere.  Write down the goal, be specific, know what you want, and know when you want it.  When you write down your goal, give it a rating subjective rating according to how badly you want it, your commitment level.  Do you want this with 100% of your soul?  Would it be nice to the tune of 10%?  This helps when you have multiple goals, you can organize “be president” below (or above) run a marathon.  The nice thing about having a rating for your goals is that it will help you know how you want to prioritize your time.  I understand that you are all busy people, sometimes a great thing has to win out over a good thing.  In the heat of the moment it’s nice to be able to reference where your priorities lie.

The next recommendation that comes from a history with project management is to find a stakeholder, someone who has a vested interest in seeing the success of your goal.  Someone who can be firm and supportive, whose advise you value, and whose shoulder you can cry on.  With most of my goals I use my Father as this figure, religious figures might work, and perhaps even a spouse, if they can get away with showing disapproval without having to sleep on the couch.  In a project you report to the stakeholder your progress regularly, they know your timeline, they understand your limitations, and are there to provide assistance and resources if such are needed.  You must get stakeholder approval before moving forward from one stage to another, or when changing things that will impact the cost, date, or quality.  In the same way whomever you pick for this role in your goal should be supportive, understanding, and available for occasional review.  They should ask “How are you coming with that?” and you have to be prepared to report your actual progress to this individual.  “I had chocolate covered deep fried twinkies as a midnight snack four times this week.”

Now is the part where I analyze the distractions and risks our goals will face.  The risks that you face depend a lot on your goal, to determine risks sit down and brainstorm about what kind of things can get in the way of accomplishing your goal.  One example that comes to mind is a married couple who wants to finish school, one major risk that they may face is an unplanned pregnancy.  In order to rate the risk I do this by looking at the probability, and the impact; then I create a mitigation. With the risk of unplanned pregnancy the probability may be 50% and the impact would be high.  The numbers are subjective and need to be honest; your stakeholder should be able to help you with this.

Risk Calculations: 0% to 100% probability; and High, Medium, and Low Impact, I multiply the probability by the impact, with High being 1.0 Medium being 0.5 and Low being 0.25, the end number determines the risk rank, and I organize my risks by their ranking.

Mitigating risks:  Once the risks are known and their impact and probability accounted for, it’s good to come up with plans that will help lower the impact, or reduce the probability; for the unplanned pregnancy, an “effective” mitigation is to never sleep together, a realistic mitigation is to find a method of birth control that will be effective up to the attaining of your goal.  Each risk can have multiple mitigation strategies, and it’s up to you to determine how many mitigations are enough, a stakeholder helps here is too.

What are your goals?  These methods of project management are effective in helping to control the progress of a project and they can very easily be applied to real life.  Next week I will address more methods that work with goal management and wrap this subject up.

How can you see any of these methods working for your goals?  Are your goals able to be addressed in this manner?  Please share with me your thoughts and suggestions.

One risk my personal goal that I mentioned last week faces is getting stuck here… and it needs to be fleshed out a bit, but there are a few things that can cement a person to an area, and I hope to avoid those.

Bibliography 

Project Management Institute 

Top Achievement

Goal Tracking Tools and Ideas