List Your Goals
If you want to manage your time better, the first thing you should do is determine what your goals are, Edwin C. Bliss says in his book, Getting Things Done: The ABCs of Time Management
Take a blank sheet of paper. List your personal lifetime goals, the things you would like to be able to look back on when you are 80. Not general things, such as be happy, but specific goals – a trip to Europe, a master’s degree, a vacation home, a specific weight loss, a working knowledge of Spanish, and so on.
Now list your professional goals. Not such generalities as a higher salary or a promotion or greater prestige, but specific things like a salary of a certain amount, promotion to a particular job, obtaining your professional engineer license, or election to a specific office in a professional society.
Then make a list of short-term goals, the things you would like to accomplish in the next six months.
Besides being specific, goals should be authentic and attainable – in other words, things you really want and are willing to work for. Keep in mind that they are subject to change at any time; indeed one of your priority tasks should be to look over your list of goals and update it. But your list should represent your best judgement of what you would like to accomplish as of this moment.
Now analyze your lists. They probably include more things than you can reasonably expect to do, so assign priorities. Select the three or four goals in each category that you consider the most important and write them down some places where you will see them every day. Memorize them. And keep asking yourself each day, “Is what I am doing now moving me closer to one of my goals?” If the answer is no, figure out some way the activity can be eliminated, delegated to someone else, or downgraded in priority so that it can be accomplished in your least productive time.
