Focus on Goals

While writing this article I was faced with many various components of life which come up unexpectedly, causing myself to lose track. Talk about the irony of it all! I must say that writing this article has definitely helped me to reconfigure my goals and once again, regain focus, or as Dorothy and Dolores state in their book, Organizing for the Creative Person;

“F = Follow
O = One
C = Course
U = Until
S = Successful”

With winter holidays and New Years on the horizon, many of us are spinning circles, getting our houses ready to welcome in family, tying up loose strings, and thinking ahead to our goals for next year. It’s alright to have a lot of goals and dreams, but without properly
organizing your time and ideas, you’ll lose focus and show little achievement.

Take time to write down your goals, and concentrate on each one separately.
Start this by sectioning them off into these 4 groups:

1. Urgent and Important
Emergencies, deadlines, short-term goals – these goals are likely to change at the drop of a hat, as they can come up at any moment and any time, but need to be handled before anything else can be done. Always try to allow space for the unexpected, or use this time to add the perfect touches to goals in this next category.

2. Important but not Urgent
Goals here deserve your greatest amount of time and energy. When your schedule is properly planned and attended to, urgent matters are less likely to come up and cause trouble. Instead you are working to make things happen, moving closer to that flickering light at the end of the tunnel.

3. Urgent but not Important
Urgent matters are likely to come up, like your phone ringing profusely, new emails dinging your inbox, or just your little one repeatedly yelling MOM! MOM! MOM! Just because all of this commotion is happening around you, doesn’t mean you need to drop everything and rush to it. This is an easy thing for most of us to do, as the distractions sometimes seem like better ways spend your time. Exciting new ideas might be sprouting up all around you, but just jot them down and revisit them later. Sometimes ideas seem great at the moment, but in the end offer very little to achieving your goals.

4. Not Urgent and not Important
This is something that many of us don’t schedule in, but should. Although we don’t need to devote a lot of time to matters in this category, we do need it in order to maintain the ebb and flow of our goals. Use this time to add that final touch, send thank you notes, or just to recheck your work.