It is a well-established fact that having goals and keeping to them increase performance. Setting achievable goals as many article and studies so far have proven to be quite advantageous to approaching and achieving better results and yielding success. There are numerous advantages to setting goals but what stands out the most are:
Increases motivation: setting goals help you see the end at the beginning. That is in itself the highest form of motivation anyone can ever wish for.
Increase effectiveness: the aim of every motivation is to in the long run lead to effectiveness. So when goals motivate you, they inadvertently make you more effective.
Making goals out of every project either personal or official places you ahead by a step and at the same time makes it fun as you look forward to achieving. We all know that warm feeling we get when we silently congratulate ourselves for a job well done after achieving a goal.
As helpful as goals are, they are also a dangerous tool when used wrongly. Yes, setting goals can go wrong, and in the end, we just keep asking “Where did I go wrong?”.
This will not be our focus here, however. Here, we will focus on how lists of daily tasks might be a great peril.
First, let’s look at goals from a timeline perspective.
Goals span across different timelines depending on the amount of time given to accomplish it. While some might take up a lifetime or a decade (Long term goals), others might be accomplished within a day (Short term goals). Some goals are even broken down to smaller forms of goals.
Being the bedrock of most goals, and in trying to accomplish them, lists of daily goals tend to make us lose the whole point of setting goals. This point is “Do it and do it well”. However, as a result of the timeline associated with accomplishing the goal, we tend to “Just do it”. In clear terms, our daily routine involves the getting thing done part such as “send invites, makes cold calls, general administrative works”. These set of tasks do not necessarily require much quality work to be done. And thus, they become more of a “robotic work” as not much thought is put into it. The risk here lies in translating this robotic approach to completing daily tasks into completing long term goals that require more quality and critical approach.
As efficient as you think this is, it is quite difficult to present your best work under this circumstance. This ends up as a trade-off of quality for quantity.
KloverHarris is not in the habit of pointing out perils and not suggesting ways of making up for it.
Here are a few ways you can avoid such pitfalls.
Use Process goals: these are goals that can easily be controlled by you. This way you control how you achieve every goal. It’s no longer about what to do but how to do it. To read more on types of goals click here.
Time-Track: This is different from timing yourself on how fast you are to spend on the task. However, time the actual time you spent on giving the best.
Avoid Using just one kind of goal: as much as you are to avoid making use of one kind of goal. You should also know when to use which.
We leave this with you: “Process goals deliver higher quality and quality beats quantity.” And every time quantity is pitted with quality, quality always wins…