Either its professional life or our personal life, all of us have some goals that drive our days and weeks and the path of our lives. Everyone has a goal of life – for which we struggle and concentrate our whole energy to accomplish that goal. If there was no goal or purpose, life would be useless. Therefore, keeping a goal both in our professional life and personal life keeps us alive.
Having a goal or purpose in our life, one needs to manage the activities that can collectively add to accomplish the goal and achieve the purpose of life. Investopedia defines Management by Objectives (MBO) as “a management model that aims to improve the performance of an organization by clearly defining objectives that are agreed to by both management and employees.” I would link MBO here with our personal goals and individual professional goals too. As an individual, we need to apply MBO on our personal life too as explained below.
- Goals are clear, valid, and SMART.
- Each goal is divided into sub-goals – that gives enough edge and time to accomplish the main goal. If a goal is very vague, sometimes we lose the power to concentrate on the main goal. Once the goal is divided into sub-goals then it is easy to concentrate energy on each sub goals which ultimately lead to the main goal. There is always a sense of accomplishment when you complete a subgoal.
- Goals should be set in a way that the activities performed to accomplish the main and sub goals makes you feel happy. If the activities are too boring and you don’t feel, then there are always high chances of lack of interest factor.
- Keep the activities in such a way that each activity is easily achievable and trackable.
- Try something new every day to have an excitement and enthusiasm alive.
- There always comes a moment when you are officially lost, but, keep in mind that after every dark there is a DAWN. If you are having tough times in carrying out an activity try to help from your colleagues, friends, and would be better to keep a mentor.
- Make yourself accountable. Better is to share with someone that you are working on activity A, so that you feel a sense of accountability. Majority times, it happens that we give more concentration of our professional goals rather than personal goals because in professional goals there is a high sense of accountability involved. To make yourself accountability, seeking the help of a mentor or coach is always beneficial.
- Use technology (apps, calendar, planners, notes, and reminders) to keep yourself on track.
When it comes to accomplishing goals, there are different philosophies. As a human, we are different from each other, so one thing will be working for one person but not for another person, but, the above steps has mostly given me good outcome and has been proved result oriented.
Good luck!
