Goal Setting: Part 2

In his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (and later in a follow-up book First Things First) Stephen Covey outlines an excellent way to manage your time. It’s not the first time I’ve seen the concept but it is one of the places I’ve seen it best articulated.

It’s the idea of “Roles and Goals� as a governing factor in how you prioritize your time.

Here’s how it works:

1. Write down all the roles you have in life. For example, employee of the company you work for, volunteer at the food bank, husband, father, son, friend, church member, and Christian. (I’ve listed 8 in this example, but you may have more or less). Each of those roles represents a relationship (relationship with your coworkers, with your co-volunteers, with your wife, with your children, with your parents, with your friends, with your church, and with God).

2. Each week, write down 3 goals that you can do that week to enrich those relationships. Sometimes you may find that you can enrich several relationships at once. This is also a great time to implement the goal-writing skills you learned from the last issue of ProdigalSon magazine. Don’t forget to factor in long-reaching personal and career goals into this section as well. For example, if you want to improve how well your sales skills are at work, one goal might be to schedule a time with the top seller in your office and pick their brain.

3. Once you have your goals written for each role, schedule them for that week. Don’t forget this step or it will never get done! Don’t procrastinate this step, either! Just finish writing your goals and go right into scheduling them right away. This will help you to improve the quality of your life and your relationships while at the same time helping you to achieve the goals you want for yourself.

One last thing to note: Whether or not you agree with Stephen Covey’s theological doctrine, one thing you can appreciate about his time management methods is the way he encourages people to weave their faith into their life. So don’t forget to weave into your life several faith-building goals. Here are some examples:

“I am going to read one book of the Bible each month by the end of August as measured by my Bible-reading calendar.�

“I am going to invite one person to church each week by the end of March as measured by the list of names I’ve written on my calendar.�

“I am going to spend my commuting time praying instead of listening to music by the end of January as measured by my faith journal.�

Send This To A Friend