Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Stay focused on your long-term goals while doing everything else
Keeping up with your tasks can sometimes keep you from the big picture. In this week’s tip, mcaneted shares a very balanced approach to help you think about the immediate and the long-term, the tasks and the goals.
This is my ten step process for creating a system that keeps my projects coherent with my long term goals.
1. Create a “Goals” list in RTM.
2. Add every LTG (Long Term Goal) with a 0LT prefix. (e.g., “0LT become economically independent”)
3. Add your Middle Term and Short Term Goals. Try to use the “1MT” and/or “2ST” prefix. I use instead Quarterly Goals “1Q”, “2Q”, “3Q”, “4Q” prefixes for them. You can choose what better suits you. The only important thing is to follow the prefix structure so the magic can happen.
4. Create a four tag category system in which your goals are grouped. I did these four:
• Personal
• Family
• Health
• Work
5. Tag all your goals accordingly.
6. Analyze the relationship between all your goals per area. Make adjustments so that your short term goals are correlated with the longer ones.
7. Tag all projects tasks according to the four area criteria. I excluded from this my “Errands”, “Reference” and “One action” lists. The spirit of this is to give real meaning to your projects, separating them from your urgent but not important chores.
8. Create four Smart Lists (one for each area of focus) with the simple query:tag:"category name"(e.g., tag:"work")
This will show not only the tasks that you have to do, but the goals associated with each area in order from Long to Short Term. In one view you will know if your to-dos are serving your goals. Remember to sort the list “by task name”.
9. Create four Smart Lists (one for each area of focus) with the query:completedWithin:"1 week of today" AND tag:"category name"(e.g., completedWithin:"1 week of today" AND tag:"personal")
Here you see what you have done to achieve your goals for the past week. The purpose of this query is accountability. In just a glimpse you see if you are procrastinating or really working on the important stuff. Remember to sort the list “by task name”.
10. Review these Smart Lists once a week and make relevant adjustments to have a meaningful life.
By doing this simple practice, I have found cohesion between my life purpose and my everyday tasks.
This is just my personal system, make the changes you need to make it work for you.
Hope you give this a try.
Thanks for sharing this tip, mcaneted! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
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