Goals

[Uhfgood]

I know this subject has come up time and time again, i'm not asking how to do goals, but i'm wondering if any of you use goals. Do you just keep them in mind in your head, do you write down a general idea, do you write a novel for your goals, including long-term and short term, etc...

What do YOU do?

I keep hearing how it's a good thing to have written goals, and i've tried a few times, but I rarely ever stick with it. I wanted to try again, but wanted to see first, if any of you do that. And as to how successful you are, that is at your goals not in life or whatever. Do you actually accomplish your goals, why, or why not? (sounds like an essay question doesn't it, but you can give one word answers if you want :-)

Keith

[Sillysoft]

I use goals quite a bit and I find them very helpful for getting things done. I will most often write my goals down. If I don't I find there is much less of a chance that I will actually fulfill them.

Short term goals sort of merge into being the same thing as my to-do list. Small items, and I cross them out when I am done. Medium term goals I will write down what I want to get done in the upcoming weeks. I don't write very much for each thing.

For long term goals I will sometimes write down more. It is more like a plan for the future. I like to write what I want to do along with some of the reasoning behind it. View it as a personal manifesto. Long-term planning doesn't have to happen very often, so it is worthwhile to make sure you flesh it out. Usually I will be thinking about my long term plans in my head for a while and then when I am happy with my thoughts I will write it out. I like to write such things into my weblog. I find that shouting my plans to the world (or a small portion of it) ensures that I will only write down plans that I am really serious about doing.

[GBGames]

I was always chronicly late, very forgetful, and fairly unmotivated. Then I started keeping a todo list.

It is very simple. I keep a small pocket notebook in my bookbag (the bag goes everywhere with me), and one one page I write out a list of items I want to do. Pay credit card bill. Read a book I just bought. Do homework #3 from one of my classes. Stuff like that. A nice list of things. When I think of something I want to do in the future, like look up the lyrics to some song I just (mis)heard, I put it down in my list to do later.

Reasons why it helps:
1) I aid my memory. When I have a list of things I came up with during the week, it is harder to forget them. On my list right now: review a game for gametunnel.com, read Accelerated C++, do homework #3 from one class (with due date listed next to it), do homework #3 from another class (due date again), register for classes for next quarter...aha! That last one is one I really need to keep in mind. I've been fairly busy and I forgot that I could register last week. Writing it down, when I get a chance, I can see it as a priority item.

2) My lack of motivation usually comes about if I don't have anything I know I should be doing. If I go from day to day, hour to hour, without a plan, I find myself wasting hours in front of Slashdot, this forum, or perusing websites in general. With a list of things I know I want to get done, I can constantly ask myself if what I am doing currently is accomplishing anything. Evidently, right now I should be doing homework which is due next week and not posting here. I should stop soon.

3) When I know things are due, I can plan ahead to get them done. When I didn't have a plan, I would let things slip to the last minute. It is easy to procrastinate when you think you have plenty of time to get your homework done, for instance. But when you see that homework isn't the only item on your list, you find yourself planning to at least do productive stuff. If you put off your homework, you are at least making an effort to do something on your list. And in the end, you'll probably find that your homework won't be put off so much. I want to get my homework done so I can work on the project that I see is also due next week, plus I want to go to a few events I put on my list.

Eventually, I will make longer term goals. I see that really organized people set goals for 10 years in advance, 5 years, 2-3 years, 1 year, and monthly. I am starting slow and thinking vaguely 2 years out about how I intend to get income. I currently have written down on a different document my goal to have a shareware business that makes me at least 50% of what I make at my current job. I'm starting to wonder if that is a bit too easy of a goal. If I make it to that amount within a year or even less, I'll adjust my longer term goals appropriately.

I currently have 12 items on my todo list, some with due dates beyond my control (like events and homework), and some that are just things I want to do, like reading the books and working on programming a game. This is working for me for now since I find that I get things done. I haven't crossed anything off of the list in the past few days, but know I am getting things done (homeworks #3 for both classes are halfway done). I probably should have subgoals for some things. And I am not saying that I am not getting things crossed off. This past week has been a tough one, but the weeks before I have been crossing things off with glee.

Eventually I will probably want to set due dates for the goals as well. I'm reading Accelerated C++ in my spare time right now (which I find plenty of since I get so much done when I set my mind to it), but I am not pushing to get it done anytime soon. It will be done when it is done. But the game? Maybe it will help if I make a subgoal with a due date. Even if I don't meet that goal by the date, I am sure I can see some progress, and that's better than looking at a computer screen with no plan and no hope to get all of the nebulous things I need to do done.

Eventually my long term plans, while vague, will trickle down and affect my shorter term plans. I want to make 50% of my current work income from my shareware business in two years? What can I do in one year to help make that happen? Six months? Within the next month?

It is like putting $1 away for everyday for a year. At the end, I'll have over $350 but it doesn't seem like it when I start out. Likewise, I am going to hit my goal, even if right now I am still teaching myself to program and don't have an idea of when I'll get a commercial quality game out. Working on those two things within the next few months are two subgoals towards the larger goal.

EDIT:
Damn. That was a lot of typing. Look what you made me do. I really gotta get back to homework. B-)

[GBGames]

Just finished one of my homework assignments. Crossing it off my list, feeling much better about the accomplishment and knowing that I have the rest of the week to do the other assignment and the project.

[Uhfgood]

That's a great response, and it's a good idea. Other people have suggested todo lists. Actually it gives me an idea and (I hope this is what I got off your post GBGames), is that maybe short-term/medium-term/long-term to-do lists are the way to go, rather than straight goal setting. (Although if you read up on goal-setting it's pretty much the same thing). I just figured that goal-setting means getting real descriptive, and stating long-term goals in the present tense. So maybe I should do 3-seperate lists, like to-do's and not worry so much on how i'll accomplish them until I get around to working on them?

Keith

[GBGames]

That's a great response, and it's a good idea. Other people have suggested todo lists. Actually it gives me an idea and (I hope this is what I got off your post GBGames), is that maybe short-term/medium-term/long-term to-do lists are the way to go, rather than straight goal setting. (Although if you read up on goal-setting it's pretty much the same thing). I just figured that goal-setting means getting real descriptive, and stating long-term goals in the present tense. So maybe I should do 3-seperate lists, like to-do's and not worry so much on how i'll accomplish them until I get around to working on them?

Keith

Some people like to have really detailed lists. I think this is useful when you have a lot of things you want to accomplish, and writing a one phrase todo item can easily make you forget that there was a reason for it.

For instance, let's say that two years from now, you want a home in Florida. So you write it down. TODO: buy house in Florida.

A year or even six months later, your tastes might change, your opinions might change, etc. You look at your long-range todo list and see "buy house in Florida."

Why the hell did you want to buy a house in Florida? Was it for the warm weather? Was it for the proximity to Orlando/Disney World? Did you hear something about the housing there?

In those cases, it probably helps to have a longer description, describing what it is you were thinking when you wrote it down. That way, when you go back to it, you know exactly why you wanted to accomplish that. It may turn out that your beliefs have changed, so your goals should appropriately change.

But I'm still new to this organizing-my-time thing. I use TODO lists to help me remember things I want to do, and to also give me some guidance. "Never be idle. It is amazing what can be accomplished when we are always doing." Thomas Jefferson said that, or some variation of it, and I've found it to be true. My todo list allows me to say, "I have an hour. What should I do that I need to do?" rather than say, "I have an hour. Now what?"

My short-term list doesn't need much description. Each entry is something I know I need to do. My books need to be read if I hope to learn from them. My homework needs to get done if I hope to pass my class.

Longer term, I need more description. Why do I want to make 50% of my current income from my business? I currently think that it is a good starting goal to (1) allow me to be self-sufficient, (2) get me closer to not needing to work for someone else, and (3) allow me the freedom to live wherever I want instead of needing the proximity of my job. I'll be honest and say that I just came up with those reasons formally, but my point is that I can now come up with short term goals that will help meet that. How important is it to me that I be able to live wherever I want? Right now I am fairly happy where I live, but in two years I might want to move. The flexibility would be nice, but it isn't nearly as important as the freedom of working for myself instead of someone else. So I have priorities.

Perhaps I should look at my current income and decide how much I might need to set aside to get my business off the ground. In that case, my short term goals might involve researching and outlining expenses I should expect, if only to make better decisions as a business owner.

So todo lists are a nice start. I think that longer term todo lists might require more description if only to let you come back to it without requiring you to guess what you were thinking. Sort of like comments in source code. B-)

[GBGames]

BTW, todo lists and plans are a tool for time management. People who are successful value their time. If you go through life without a plan, you will waste time randomly doing things in the hopes that you do something right. With a plan and a list of goals, you've already determined what "right" is for you, and you can now make sure that your actions push you towards those goals.

You can't find an hour to do something to help your business? Do you have a lawn to mow? Pay a kid down the street $5 to do it for you. Isn't your time worth more than $5/hr? $10/hr?

When you start thinking about your time as something really valuable, you'll find that you'll guard it a lot better. Want to spend time with your family? Nothing else should be allowed to interfere. Want to work on your game? Nothing should interfere.

Time is your most valuable asset. With a todo list, it is a lot easier to block out periods of time to certain tasks than without one.

I would definitely look into this book:
No B.S. Time Management for Entrepeneurs
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...32156852&itm=2

I don't like how the author talks about technology like it is the stupidest thing in the world, but he does have a point. Don't use technology for the sake of it. I use pen and paper todo lists very effectively, although I personally think getting a PDA would be very useful. Copy/paste alone would be a great feature.

But otherwise, the book really opened my eyes to what it means to value your time. Then I would check out the blog at http:///www.stevepavlina.com as well as the resources section here: http://www.dexterity.com/articles/ especially the personal productivity and motivation section at the bottom.

[Uhfgood]

Thanks for the replies GBGames, yeah I read all the dexterity.com articles, i've been to Steve P's site, looks interesting.

I'm going to start doing the goal thing I guess, and review it every day if I can. I've already started a "today" todo list :-) and i'm not getting stuff done that fast, but it's working.

Thanks for the advice.

Keith

[Kai Backman]

There are two things about goalsetting that I find give great leverage:

1. Keep one main goal. I have a written list of maybe 80 separate goals and aspirations, but I always keep just one single main goal. Decide what's most important and don't switch until you complete that goal. Preserve (and you might need to preserve a few years, so pick something important). Embrace one thing singlemindedly.

2. Start your every day by working at least 4 hours towards your primary goal. If it is business related, start working on a task furthering your primary goal immediately when you enter your office. Avoid everything else. If you need to do production, start that editor the first thing when you boot up the computer. Even a few seconds of non related activity might waste half a day before you realize it. To be able to mindlessly act in the morning it is a good idea to plan your day the night before. Make it a habit to work on your most important thing first.

[Uhfgood]

What about several items you feel are of equal importance?

Actually as far as having a bunch of goals, and picking one, kinda goes along with the to-do list idea. I suppose if I have several things, that are of equal importance to me, I would put them on a list, and then work toward the one that's on the top or bottom of the list, and do them in order.

I figure you want to start with the longest range goals, and then split it up into smaller pieces, to put on the medium term, and then further into the short term.

Keith

[Kai Backman]

What about several items you feel are of equal importance?

You can only go in a single direction at a time. You can have plenty of plans and directions for where you want to go going in the future, but in the present you can only go in a single direction. If you try to go in more than one, you will end up either stuck, or going off in some intermediate direction with a lot of energy wasted.

[GBGames]

I would suggest blocking out time for each goal/task. You have three major goals? Pick one to start with, and work on it for about 30 minutes or an hour. Then stop. Go to the next goal and work on that. Repeat. That way, you get something done for each task, which makes you feel more productive than to worry about three tasks at the same time.

I find that what slows people down is the worry and the fear of not getting things done on time, ironically. Some people feel that writing down tasks and plans for 5min to 30 min is actually taking time away from their "real" tasks. Truth be told, you'll get more done when you know what it is you need to do.

I sometimes spend time before bed checking my tasks to see what it is I might want to do the next day. Then I might write a specific todo list for that day that is a subset of my major todo list.

It isn't very sophisticated, and I can work on it, but it is a good start for me and revising things helps me realize what it is I need to do a better job organizing.

Anyway, if you have three tasks, you might be afraid to work on one thing exclusively because you feel like you are taking away time from your other tasks. Don't think that way. Think that you are dedicating time to one task because later you will be dedicating your time to other things and shouldn't work on that task then. The other tasks will have their own time that you are guaranteeing at the beginning, and the fear of not accomplishing things, and the freezing of your ability to work that results from it, should go away.

[mahlzeit]

You can only go in a single direction at a time.

The goals need not necessarily conflict. You can, for example, work on becoming healthier and on becoming rich at the same time.

[Uhfgood]

Is it really necessary to work on one thing at a time? I know you sort of answered it in a round-about way already, but let me give you an example.

I have two game projects I want to do. Let's call them Prject A and B. I supposed that each would take 5 years to complete. However how do I factor that in, should I say in 5 years i'll switch from project A to project B, or should I say I have 10 years total to finsih both A and B.

Let's say project A is my primary concern, should I work mostly on A, and then allow a little bit of time each day to B, until A is done to wish B will be my primary objective, or do I say a firm "no" get A done first, forget about B, until 5 years later?

And what if properties of A are directly applicable to B, if I said I should only do one at a time, should I still try to apply A's propeties to B, or should I still go with my firm "No wait" approach.

Should I make it a point to see if I can integrate A's properties into B, so B takes less time in the long run?

Sorry about these kinds of questions guys, I guess I am turning it into a kind of "how to" thread, which I wasn't before :-/

Keith

[Sillysoft]

I say you have to pick one of ideas and work on only it. Put the lesser one away for now. It's enough work getting one game finished as it is.

[Rainer Deyke]

If you only think about project A for five years, you'll drive yourself crazy. I think you'll find that you will make faster progress with project A if you spend some time each day/week/month/year thinking about other game projects.

[GBGames]

Generally speaking, you'll find that game projects get easier as you get more experience under your belt. But on top of that, you can also leverage your earlier work to be more efficient. Let's say that Project A and Project B are both going to be in 3D. If you are spending 5 years writing a 3D engine for Project A, you might find you'll still spend a few years working on Project B's engine if engine A isn't good enough. If, on the other hand, you take into account generality, you might work longer on the first project, but it will make subsequent projects easier.

Project A's engine could be used in Project B, and if you did it right, you'll shave off months to years of work off the second project.

Scripting engines, AI, etc. If you can develop something with generality in mind, you can apply it to all of your projects and not just your own.

To save time altogether, use a ready-made engine that already is designed for generality.


I would personally try to find out what the two projects have in common that could allow you to develop that commonality. Doing that development would allow you to do "two things at once" in a manner of speaking. Still, when working on Project A, you shouldn't be working on Project B when they are mutually exclusive. I don't think that would require you to put B on hold until A is done so much as to say, "For the next three [hours | weeks | months] I am going to work exclusively on A."

Then do it. Once your time is up, assess your situation and decide if you would like to continue with A or work on B for a bit. You might find that you work on A for three hours, learn something that you could use to apply to B, work on B for an hour, then go back to A for a week.

I'll admit right now that this post is all based on theory, as I haven't worked on multiple projects simultaneously. I have juggled a job, school, social time, and a project, but not enough to say whether or not I can vouch for what I am doing. But it makes sense to me, and if anyone thinks I am wrong, I would love to hear about your experience/knowledge on the subject.

[Sean Doherty]

I would be interested to hear some other opinions on this topic. Especially from some people who have successfully release games while holding full time jobs. Also, seems to be a bit of a divide between people that feel that you should only work on one thing and people who feel it is better to concentrate on multiple projects at the same time?

How many goals does the average person have at a time?

How large are you goals?

[KNau]

I used to set goals, have progress charts, regular self-performance reviews, etc. with always a hit or miss success rate. Sometimes I ended up with something that resembled my goal and other times I was way off the mark and got frustrated. After some soul searching I finally figured out that I was setting the wrong goals.

Take, for example, weight loss - here was how it would have originally looked.

"My goal is to lose x number of pounds of fat and replace it with lean muscle mass by y date."

Pretty standard. I would then write a list of to-do items and target dates that would hopefully get me to that place. By all accounts this is how goals are supposed to be written - very specific, including a target result and a target date

What I ultimately realized is that I was setting "end result" goals and that's not the most efficient way to go. My goal wasn't actually to lose x pounds because you can't just mentally wish fat away. You have to do something and since I was overweight it was obvious that was where I needed to focus my goal setting. Not on the end result but on the behaviors that would get me there. The revised goal would read:

"My goal is to create a habit of daily exercise and proper nutritional intake."

It's not even necessary to set the target of say, 20 pounds, because if I did the above task (daily exercise, proper nutrition) then that result would be achieved anyways, without having to even think about it. If anything a specific target goal would end up limiting your potential. What if I could have lost 30 pounds? What if I set a goal to sell 100 copies a month when I could have ended up selling 1,000 copies? People tend to stop at their targets and change course before the full effects of their actions can be realized.

Another example, before:
"My goal is to double the size and income level of my online business by x date."

After:
"My goal is to spend at least half of my work time, every day, exploring new marketing opportunities for my products"

Okay, that's enough - sorry for the long post. My advice is rather than chasing the carrot and the stick, look for the dead simple processes and habits that, if done on a daily basis, would automagically give you the carrot. Since the dawn of philosophy people have been saying that life is a journey, not a destination and yet we are still setting goals using a static "end result" mindset. I say, take your eyes off the target and focus on the path instead. Errr...something like that

[monco]

EDIT: Replaced my text with a couple of better written reviews of Covey's time mgmt philosophy:

http://www.ideamarketers.com/library...rticleid=35324

http://www.usenix.org/publications/l...8-4/first.html

[monco]

KNau - Looks like you simply replaced your goals with the means to achieve them.

[GBGames]

Well I think you can still make traditional goals. The problem is, what did you do to try to achieve them?

Want to lose 20 lbs by February 1st? It isn't enough to have the goal. Now you need to make a plan. Perhaps your original plan wasn't good enough. Maybe you needed to build that new habit as part of the plan, rather than as a goal itself.

But hey, whatever works, right? B-)

And about focusing on one task vs focusing on multiple:
I've read some more books and articles since my last post. It is much better and more efficient to concentrate on a single task at any time.

This is actually not contradictory to what I said above though. When I suggested working on Project A and Project B at the same time, I wasn't actually saying work on two projects simultaneously. I was saying that if you can leverage your single task so that it works for both, by all means do so. Working on a 3D engine is a single task (well, for the purposes of my argument here). The benefits just happen to extend past a single project.

So concentrate on a single task. But nothing says you can't plan in advance how to make a single task work better and more efficiently for you.

[Sean Doherty]

Does anyone have any software that they use and would recommend to keep track of goals and tasks?

[Abscissa]

Does anyone have any software that they use and would recommend to keep track of goals and tasks?

I personally just add a todo.txt into my Visual Studio projects and use the built-in text editor. That's worked fine for me, at least for project-specific goals/tasks.

[formfarbeminze]

Does anyone have any software that they use and would recommend to keep track of goals and tasks?

i do use a palm tungsten and the palm desktop software. it is nothing i would label excellence but it gets the job done (since 1,5 years in my case).

software i heard good things about: ActionOutline, LifeBalance, Progect, Notepad Deluxe, iOrganize. there are so much tools out there...

before the palm i used a plain texteditor. it worked well. some people use excel. not bad since you can build your software via macros along the process.

[GBGames]

I thought about using an application to keep track of my todo list, but I found that a notepad and a pen work very well.

There are two todo list programs I found in Debian Gnu/Linux, one for KDE and one for Gnome, I think. I tried both, but they were more for tracking time spent on tasks than actual todo lists. I ended up using knotes, which basically acts as sticky notes on your desktop. Each category of todo gets its own note.

But I find that I use my notepad/pen more than anything. There is something very satisfying about crossing out your tasks that can't easily be mimicked in software.

On a side note, I would love to get a Palm handheld to keep a list of tasks with me during my day. The notepad is nice when I have my bag with me, but it doesn't fit in my pocket nicely, and I've seen belt holders for Palms. It just seems like it would be more convenient to have.

[formfarbeminze]

KNau - cool! thanks.

Well I think you can still make traditional goals. The problem is, what did you do to try to achieve them?

after all this whole goal setting thing is about semantics. there is no standard about how to label the things. i think, you have to decide what you want to gain out of all that planning stuff on a personal level. businesswise planning is just part of your work! what are you going after you retire? what about health care etc what is the market for your products? and so on. you just have to decide on this things anyway. better do it in a organized manner.

[GBGames]

Yep. Whenever I read the same thing in three different books, I tend to think that it is true. "Always work from lists." Being organized saves time, resources, and some other third thing.

[DavidRM]

Does anyone have any software that they use and would recommend to keep track of goals and tasks?

NOTE: Blatant Self-Promotion

I track my goals and projects in The Journal. Since I designed and developed the software, yah, I like to use it. And I just released a major upgrade. So feel free to check it out and see if it works for you.

-David

[Raptisoft]

Ha, I only have one goal, so it's easy to track: www.privateislandsonline.com