The G.O.A.L. Method

“I practiced the art of getting more things done rather than getting the really important things done well.”
– Alec MacKenzie

“We can no more afford to spend major time on minor things than we can to spend minor time on major things.”
– Jim Rohn

Now is the time to set your GOALs. Your “guides” are goals that will most likely stem from your personal values because, having gone through the process so far, you will have a pretty good idea of what kind of goals you truly want. Take a new sheet of paper and write at the top the words “My Guides.” Then, write down what you want to be, do, or have.

By taking your values you have listed and prioritized, associate a goal to each value and prioritize your goals according to the order your values have taken. Place a goal to which a value corresponds best. In other words, don’t look at the goal in itself but at its meaning. Some goals will end up with no value at all, which means exactly what it says — they have no real value whatsoever.

You should write them off completely and forget about them immediately. These goals can cause you to feel unsatisfied, unfulfilled, and unhappy. If not, just having them around can take your focus away from other goals that are more valuable and stop you from reaching them.

After you’re all done, re-prioritize your goals according to the specific order you have given them through their alignment. They may not necessarily respond to the exact value number. They simply follow suit according to the level of importance you have placed on them by harmonizing your goals with your personal set of prioritized values.

Now, take a new sheet of paper and re-list your newly prioritized goals. After that, you can start working on your goals with greater peace of mind and assurance. As Carl Trumbell Hayden once wrote, “Success is getting what you want while happiness is wanting what you get.”

The next step in the GOAL method is “O,” which stands for objectives. Objectives are mini-goals or milestone goals. Objectives come as a result of breaking a larger goal down into bite-sized chunks that are easier to achieve.

They are like checkpoints where you will be able to track your goals and easily detect and correct any deviations. They help to ensure that you’re on the right track since, after you’ve reached an objective, you can make appropriate corrections, focus on what’s important, change your objective, or change your goal altogether.

So, take a new sheet of paper again for each and every goal, and write at the top the words “My Objectives For (the goal you are working on).” Divide the goal up into as many parts as possible.

Instead of working on a goal with a deadline and probably feeling frustrated because you procrastinated until the last minute, you are achieving smaller goals within smaller time frames. You will become more productive and know where you’re going rather than be distracted by unproductive and oftentimes urgent activities.

We now get to “A” of the GOAL method for defining your actions. These are activities that will lead to the accomplishment of each objective. Ask, “What are the ’causes’ I need to produce the ‘effects’ I want?” “What steps must I take in order to reach my objectives?”

By breaking your goals down, you will likely discover what activities are truly important rather than urgent. In fact, some activities you never thought of will come to you almost automatically.

However, blindly taking massive amounts of action hoping someday it will produce the results you want can be very time consuming and frustrating. As Alec MacKenzie once wrote, “If you’re flying a plane and you’re lost, you may be accomplishing a lot just as the plane is going 600 miles an hour… But the bottom-line is that the plane is still lost.” Jim Rohn also wrote, “If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up; what he needs is education to turn him around.”

So what you do now is take a sheet of paper for each and every objective and write at the top the words “My Actions For (objective).” For each individual objective, write down all of the activities that are required for reaching your objective. You’re preparing an action plan, so to speak, and by developing action plans you will be able to tell how well you’re on track towards your goals (i.e., how well you are sticking to your priorities). If objectives are milestone goals, then actions are like stepping stones towards your objectives.

At this point, you need not concern yourself with deadlines. You need only concern yourself with the knowledge of what you must be doing, and how important it is, at any given time. To do this, you must put “livelines” on your activities, which is the “L” portion of the GOAL method.

Livelines are dates by which your activities are to be initiated. They help to streamline and concentrate your focus on what’s important at any given time, and make sure that you’re sticking to your priorities at all times. In other words, livelines are meant to guide you and not force you into action.

With each action plan, put a start-date on each activity. Remember that livelines are guides that will tell you what’s important and when they are important, rather than what’s urgent or when they are to be finished by. You do not need to prioritize them because, in reality, they have already been prioritized.

But in order to put realistic livelines on each activity so that you don’t end up with a mountain of them, ask yourself this powerful question: “Does it matter? Does it matter right now? And if so, how much?”

Tackling or hoarding lists of unimportant activities can deter you from following your priorities. They will cause unwanted grief by causing you to not reach your goals and, worse yet, to step over other goals let alone other values.