Not that kind of goal...

It is not just todo lists and planning that can make your week a little easier, and increase your productivity. As you probably know, I have my own strategy when it comes to managin my week all figured out, I wrote about it in the post Using Weekly Planning to Increase Productivity, and unless you have read that one already, you probably should do so before moving on to this one.

By setting up weekly goals in conjunction with your todo lists and scheduled work, you’ll be able to get those more fluid tasks under control as well. This is how I do it.

What’s a Task and What’s a Goal?

It might not always be so obvious as one would think, to separate the tasks from the goals, and unless you know what you’re dealing with you won’t know how to manage it properly. That leads to further stress, since feeling insecure is never a good thing.

• A task is something that gets done in one swipe, checked off, and that’s it. Tasks go on the todo lists and into your planning.
• A goal is something more fluid, something you’ll have to return to, or work constantly on to achieve. You can’t really put it on the todo list because it’ll be hard to check off, and it’ll just add stress when you see it floating from one day to another, again and again.

There are a number of things that might be somewhere in-between. Let’s say I’m working with a new design. I can’t just put up “finish the design” on my todo list, so that implies that it is a goal. However, if I take my work on the project and split it into smaller pieces, I’ll have “deliver the mockup”, “send alternate logo”, “make dummy xhtml site”, and so on. These are things I could, and should, put on my todo list. I would have a hard time if I just put up “finish the design” as a goal, that would mean I’d have it hanging over me all the time, while splitting it up to make it into manageable tasks would make it a lot more rewarding to work with.

When to Use Goals

The whole idea with setting up goals is to remind you to get some things done beside the todo list. Goals shouldn’t be too imposing, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up if you feel they are sliding across the days. That’s the whole point, you just can’t put them properly on a todo list!

I’m following too many people, so I’ve set up a goal to go from following 370 people, to 350 this week

I’ve got a goal for this week, for instance. I’m a dedicated Twitter user (among other things), but sometimes I feel the amount of information is getting out of hand. I’m following too many people, so I’ve set up a goal to go from following 370 people, to 350 this week. I could say 300 right away, but I honestly don’t want to pressure myself into un-following too many people too fast, which could mean that I lost contact with the wrong people due to me being stressed about my goal.

I think that’s a nice goal. Something that I’ll be able to manage over time, without having to nail down on a particular day. I can just look at the update from someone I’d consider un-following, check the history, and then decide. I’ll do it as a part of my twittering, which is something I do daily.

Compare that to last week’s todo list, and you’ll see the difference.

The Essence of Setting Weekly Goals

I find that setting weekly goals helps me to increase my productivity. There simply just are things that won’t work on a todo list, but I still want to get a nice overview, without the extra pressure. You shouldn’t set your weekly goals to high, it is better to overachieve than to fail, and remember, we don’t want stress, so be sensible and start out small.

I hope this helped. If you have a way to manage your day, do share in the comments!