











{"id":99,"date":"2009-04-14T12:03:08","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T07:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/?p=99"},"modified":"2014-07-17T21:04:07","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T16:04:07","slug":"in-the-direction-of-your-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/2009\/04\/in-the-direction-of-your-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Direction of your Goals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know about you but I have never found it easy to achieve what I set for myself as goals. Along the way, the following kinds of things happen:<\/p>\n<p><em>Forget it <\/em>&#8211; what seemed like a worthwhile goal last week suddenly doesn&#8217;t seem that important anymore &#8211; probably because the motivation was temporary<\/p>\n<p><em>I can&#8217;t do it<\/em> &#8211; this is usually the &#8220;gee this is tougher than I thought&#8221; thought<\/p>\n<p><em>I&#8217;ll do this some other time<\/em> &#8211; you know you need to change but habit kicks in as the usual fallback savior<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a practical strategy for moving forward in the direction of the goal:<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->In a previous article I mentioned how it is usually more productive to work on the steps that lead to a goal rather than focusing solely on the outcome. Moving forward even if its incremental movement in the direction of a goal is better than procrastinating oneself to a standstill:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1- Don&#8217;t confuse yourself with multiple goals<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s say you want to be a better communicator.\u00a0 You can get ambitious and think about achieving success on many fronts or you can focus on a single goal such as &#8221; I want to write much better&#8221;. This is more specific, and more focused.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2- Identify the first 2-3 steps<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For example, enrolling in a writing course, practice writing letters and proposals, find a friend who can offer critique, take part in a competition etc<strong>. <\/strong>Doing this forces you to think of practical steps in the direction of your goal<strong>.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>3- Plan Phase 1 &#8211; very very short term<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The most important element is to take a small first chunk of the plan, ensure its not too difficult and to achieve it. Let&#8217;s call this Phase 1. This could simply be to make a call to enrol in a writing course by 5pm tomorrow. The key is that the deadline should be only a few hours away and it should be very do-able.\u00a0 Then congratulate yourself, and plan the next small increment.<\/p>\n<p>This is motivation in small steps &#8211; taking small steps before you say &#8220;forget it&#8221;, before you conclude &#8220;I can&#8217;t do it&#8221; and before procrastination sets in and excitement fizzles out. It&#8217;s much easier than mustering motivation for a large goal that may or may not materialize and is several months away..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know about you but I have never found it easy to achieve what I set for myself as goals. Along the way, the following kinds of things happen: Forget it &#8211; what seemed like a worthwhile goal last week suddenly doesn&#8217;t seem that important anymore &#8211; probably because the motivation was temporary I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-effectiveness","post-preview"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":963,"href":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdi.com.pk\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}