Dot Connector Blog

Are you looking for an effective personal development plan template to help you set your goals?

Bill Parker has a post on his blog that shows how to set your goals using a very simple, effective method.  I believe that the best plans are both easy to create and easy to track.  Bill’s plan is both of these things.  From start to finish, his annual goal setting process is just 4 steps and only takes him 45 minutes to do.

Check out Bill’s personal development plan.

What I like most about Bill’s approach is the simple goal tracking chart that he keeps in his wallet.  This goal chart let’s Bill easily track progress on his goals throughout the year.  You’ll also see Bill’s goal tracking chart on his blog.

“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.”

- M.C Escher

If you’d like to work on goal setting and still haven’t created your new years resolutions, here’s the method I use to create mine.  I’ve also included some tools, articles, videos, and a podcast to help inspire you.

1. Review what you learned in 2008. Sit down and brainstorm a list of your the most meaningful moments, events, memories, accomplishments, and mistakes of 2008. Try to extract lessons from those things that you can use. You can read an excerpt from my list here.

2. Conduct a “personal brand” audit to see how you’ve grown in the past year. You can copy and use the brand equity checklist located here.

3. Honestly identify chronic problems you have. Most often, we limit our own growth with chronic bad habits. What are those 2 or 3 habits you have that impede your personal growth?  If you can’t answer that question, think about the 2 or 3 things you wish you could do better.  What’s preventing you from doing them?  Then, use the 5 whys method to determine the root of the problem, and try Leo Babauta’s one habit at-a-time modification method.

4. Ask yourself 3 simple questions: What are your passions? What are your values? What is your purpose?  If you take the time to sit down, clear your mind, and truly answer these questions, you’ll shift your focus to lining up your life with them.

5. Dig deeper to understand how to improve yourself this year using your answers from #4 above. Some recommended ways to do this: Envision U’s 45-day leadership challenge, Mark Stevens’ success self-analysis, Franklin Covey’s prioritization systems, and Tim Ferriss’ Low Information Diet series of articles.

6. Establish your prism – the lens through which you see things. As we learned in the Mark Stevens interview, successful leaders have a prism they use to provide context to the world around them. Right now, I like to use a combination of inspirational quotes, metaphors, and Newton’s laws as my prism.

7. Get motivated! Let these inspirational video and audio clips lift you up when you’re in a bad mood, or just not in the right frame of mind to work on setting goals: Tim Ferriss on thinking big and challenging conventional thinking (video, especially the last 1/3 of it). A former New York Yankee batboy on persistence (podcast, a fantastic story about how he got the job). Michael Jordan on failure (YouTube video).

8. Set no more than 3 achievable, memorable goals that you can do one at a time (linearly, so you aren’t trying to accomplish more than one at a time). Then, track your progress. Make sure you accomplish one of these goals in January to capitalize on the power of momentum!

Good luck!

UPDATE: Having trouble achieving those things you set out to do at the beginning of the year?  Check out these 5 tips from Zen Habits.

Note from Regis: One of my goals for Dot Connector is to connect you with a variety of people we can all learn from: from best-selling authors to successful entrepreneurs, and everyone in between!  This is a guest post from entrepreneur, friend, and colleague, Dave Rigotti.

Being in college, on the executive board for multiple student organizations, and running my own online business, I’ve developed a knack for personal productivity and efficiency.  As I became more and more active, I found myself going to bed later and waking up earlier – usually only getting 4 hours of sleep a night.  I couldn’t keep that up.

Here are my tips for getting that job done and freeing up a few extra minutes in your life.

1.    Get a planner.

You know, the kind you had in school.  They are extremely effective at planning your day and can help find inefficiencies.

2.    Download and use RescueTime.

RescueTime is a fantastic application that tracks your computer usage and reports how efficient and productive you are.  It’s free to use and quite easy to set up.

3.    Watch your TV shows online.

I watch most of them at Hulu.com, which has approximately 5-10 minutes less advertisements than if I watched it on the television.  Additionally, you can pause and come back and also watch it at your convenience (on the bus, doctors office, or even on the John).

4.    Stay focused online.

Using RescueTime or FireFox plugins, monitor you unproductive site usage, such as Facebook or Myspace and other sites that do not contribute to you accomplishing your tasks and goals.

5.    Set goals.

I’m surprised hoe many people do not set any goals, even if they are simple as “I’ll write 500 words of this paper by 5pm today.”  Goals formalize your work and for me at least, I hate not accomplishing a goal I’ve set for myself.  Just make sure they are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

Bonus: Find where you work best.

I can’t work at home – it’s too distracting – so I go to the local coffee shop that has free wifi.  In fact, I’m writing this article from one.  I suggest you find where you work best.

What are your tricks for staying on track?  Let me know in the comments!

This post was guest blogged by Dave Rigotti, owner of Career Fire.