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Goal and Objective tracking in Evernote Pt. 1 – Collection

By Michael Fletcher On January 10, 2010 · 36 Comments

You've tried setting and achieving goals before, we all have. You've probably spent hours online and reading about the goals you want to achieve, and just as many hours coming to the stark realisation: "Achieving goals is hard"

In this, the first step in setting and achieving your goals with the help of GTD and Evernote, we're going to tackle all the false starts you've had and start corraling the information you already you have at hand in Evernote while applying some Getting things Done (GTD) principles.

This first post will be the shortest in my series. The purpose of this step is simply to set up a trusted GTD system of collection in Evernote as well as collecting all the information you already have amassed which will assist you in achieving your goals and objectives with ease.

"A vision without a task is but a dream; A task without a vision is drudgery; A vision and a task is the hope of the world"

Collect everything

The GTD system that we're going to be setting up in Evernote is a very simple system to keep track of your resources and goals. We'll keep your list of goals in notes in Evernote, feel free to get creative with this, you can create images, put your goals as statements in a note or pdf file. Do whatever you need to do to get your goal statements into Evernote and make them easy to review.I'm a huge fan of GTD by David Allen. It is the seminal book on managing your productivity. You already have a lot of documents, magazines, newspaper clippings, books, brochures, reciepts in short stuff relating to your goals lying around right now. Go find it now so we can find it a home.

One place to collect them all

Okay if I’m going to achieve my goals this year I’m going to need lots of information. I’m also going to need to refer to most of it fairly often. The best way to keep my goals moving forward is to spend quality time on them. In order to do this I’ve organised my information into one trusted system, Evernote. The beauty of this is that I keep all my information in one place. I can search in one place for anything I may need. Example:

I want to finish the first draft of my novel by June 2010

In order to complete my goals I need to:

Increase my knowledge about novel writing
Do research for my novel
write about 75 000 – 100 000 words

In order to move on to the last stage of my goal, the important bit, writing 75000 to 100 000 words, I need to complete the first two steps. In order to help myself achieve that, I’ll create 2 new notebooks in Evernote:

Novel 2010 - I'll be using this notebook for all the things pertaining to achieving and tracking my ulitmate goal of getting my first draft written

<Novel Name> Research - I'll be using this notebook for capturing and tracking all the information I've researched for my novel

I will use these two notebooks to save all the information around completing the first two steps of my goal of writing my novel.

Increase my knowledge about novel writing and do Research for my novel

Now i’m going to collect all my writing related:

Books
Magazines and Articles
Courses
Blogs and websites

Once I’ve found them all (well obviously not the blogs those are in ye old feed reader) I now have a very impressive pile which I’ll start capturing in Evernote soon. Go ahead and start going through your desk cupboards, all dark corners that your "stuff" may be hiding. In my next post I will take you through the process for capturing everything you may find and making sure it's search-able in Evernote so you can build a massive reference library that will not only support you in achieving your goals and getting things done but will also track your progress. This post forms part of my series Tracking Goals and objectives in Evernote: Part Two - Goal and Objective tracking in Evernote Pt. 2 – Capture Image Credits

http://www.flickr.com/photos/octopushat/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

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Let’s make everyday New Year’s in 180 seconds a day

By Michael Fletcher On December 29, 2009 · 1 Comment

The shackled Muse makes mention how pointless New Year’s is in her post New year’s resolutions. While commenting on the post though it struck me how motivating those new year’s resolutions can be. Sure we all get a bit cock-eyed and proclaim from the stage of New Year our lovely intentions, much like Miss Universe rambling on about world peace, but in those few moments as we rattle off our goals we’re energised. Our misguided resolve to magically become better people, tomorrow, invigorates us and stirs us into action, well almost.

New Year’s Resolve

That big fat wad of New Year’s resolve is what gets us all fired up. The reality of 12 months spent like a little old lady with a large bowl full of coins at a casino, pulling every one armed bandit in hopes of some luck dawns on us. Oh the shame and horror, 12 months wasted and how many more years do we really have, who know. Oh the horror. That’s when lights go on! We need to sweep the cobwebs clear. Start exercising quit smoking stop and buying our tools to catch the roadrunner from acme. In the cold dark shadow of a whole year’s inaction our options are simple, collapse in a snivelling heap or start planning to make it better.

This is the bit of the New Year’s resolution we need to tap into. The reflection and the refocusing on the good stuff. The meat and potatoes of our life. Now imagine if we did that every morning. Looked back on the day before and said oh crap, I can’t do that again.

All is quiet on New year’s day

So it’s new years day we stare into the mirror at our hangover ravaged face and you know what? I’m off work today and I don’t really have any work to do tomorrow. So I’m livin’ la vida loca . Yes, and we’re off to the races extending New Year’s eve to New Year’s day. I’ll start eating better tomorrow. I’ll quit smoking tomorrow.

The day after New years comes and we’re still wasted from our jelly shot drinking heroics the day before. We’re back to work and we feel like death, but dammit we will do what we resolved… tomorrow.

The day after the day after New Year’s

The problem you see is not New year’s resolutions, it’s the day after the day after New Year’s. Whenever we’re living “out there” in tomorrow or the in the day after we’re in deep trouble.

The key then for a great 2010 is to bottle that New Year’s resolve:

Decide that the first step to achieving your resolution is right now!
Right now write down your resolutions
Now write down the reasons behind your resolutions eg. if you want to lose weight, why do you want to? To feel better about your self? To increase the quality of your life? Only you can answer These questions. Review the reasons often. They tend to change and you’ll tend to lose site of them.
Set a SMART goal – Take your time now, and set a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time driven goal for your proposed resolutions
Keep these goals in 2 places, Next to your bed so you can review them daily in the morning and night and in your time management system. Whether you use a traditional diary or a tool like outlook leave a note in your diary or a daily task in Outlook to review your goals and the reasons they are important to you.
Spending a minute in the morning, afternoon and night on reviewing your goals you’ll be immediately more in touch with them and will start feeling the energy of New Years spilling over from day to day. Three minutes a day is equal to 18.25 hours, so you’ll be spending bout one day, less sleep, on your goals not a bad deal, for achieving the stuff most important to you in 2010